Blog, blog, blogging along

I wonder how many of us still call what we write about our daily lives, our ideas, our opinions, our pets, "Journals."

In the early days of "blogging," when the term "blog" was starting to be used more often, there was a real snobbishness about us "Journalers." Blogs, at the time, were generally (not always, but more often than not) written by young people, with poor grammar, and nothing that you wanted to read unless you were a giggly teen talking about cute guys or unless you were angst ridden and totally illiterate, where you wrote in incomplete sentences, with poor spelling and poor grammar.

At least that was the feeling. We "journers" were so much above all that. (How arrogant we were!)

Well, there is real no distinction now between "journals" and "blogs." I still call Funny the World my journal, but when I post the exact same content with the exact same photos onto Blogger so it can be subscribed to thru an RSS feed, I call it a "blog." I often even refer to Funny the World as a Blog, though it makes me cringe almost as if I'd called San Francisco "Frisco" (don't you ever do that to a native San Franciscan, by the way!)

I resisted getting a blog reader for a long time. I couldn't get the hang of the first one that came out (the name of which I can't remember) and I even installed Google Reader a long time before I actually started using it. In the interim, subscription to blogs became much easier and following them on Google Reader was the easiest way in the world to keep up with the blogs that I found I was interested in. I became hooked.

And you know how blogging goes...someone has a blogroll and you start clicking on something that looks interesting and next thing you know you've marked another blog to follow.

I've added some really interesting blogs in the past year, some for their photographic content, some for their writing, some just because they hit me in an interesting place. I thought I'd share a few and see wht you think of them.

Among my new "must reads" when they are updated include:

- Pioneer Woman. My friend Joan first turned me on to her. She's been around for a long time and the fact that she has thousands of followers and routinely gives away very nice prizes (iPod? DSLR camera?) from time to time tells me that she's one of the Important Blogs. But I'd follow her anyway. She gives great Photoshop tips, she makes great recipes, and her stories of living on a ranch, with all the photos that go along with it are fascinating. Great horse and cow and kid photos here. And the writing is wonderful. She may have 3 entries a day, one photograhic, one "house" based (decorating, cooking, etc.) and one run of the mill day to day life.

- And speaking of cooking, you can't complain about Noble Pig, whose blog I have linked to here before. She still turns out mouth-watering recipes and even more mouth-watering photos on a regular basis.

- Before leaving cooking, I have to talk about Cake Wrecks. I suspect more and more people are stumbling across this blog. For anybody who has ever deocrated a cake, this will tickle your funny bone regularly, with pictures of cakes that people actually paid money to a bakery for. The idea is that the pix are supposed to come from a professional bakery, so I don't feel so bad that many of them are much worse than things that I created and felt bad about.

- I recently found Poop and Boogies, the adventures of a young-ish father. This was a case where I was intrigued by the title and followed a link on someone's blog and found myself giggling enough times that I added him to my list of blogs to follow.

- Of course I can't not read Indigo's blog, Thoughts Outside My Head. Indigo (that's not her read name!) is the person whose site, "That's My Answer" I visit every morning to answer such deep questions as "Who is standing out as winners on The Celebrity Apprentice? Who are you hoping will be fired next?" "Do you carry an umbrella when you go out in the rain?" "Could you have given up Facebook/Twitter for Lent?" and "Would you rather be in the movies or a soap opera?" Her blog itself is more like mine--"how I spent my day" combined with, well, thoughts outside her head.

- I just came across "I Do Things So You Don't Have To," intrigued to read about how she ate expensive ice cream so I didn't have to. She seemed like a kindred spirit when I read, "In this time of economic hardship, we are trying to cut back on some of our luxuries, such as US Magazine and cat food. NO! I’m kidding. I can’t live without US Magazine. The cats, however, can live on table scraps and dust bunnies." She goes on to talk about gourmet ice creams including such oddball flavors as queso (Vanilla with kraft cheese pieces), maiz (vanilla with sweet corn) and donut 'n' cream. Another entry was entitled "I avoid housework so you don't have to" (thanks--but I'd rather avoid it myself). Anyway, she has promise so she's currently on my 'must read' list.

- My friend Bill Dahn (The Dahn Report), who tentatively stuck a toe in the blogging water a year or so ago, has garnered a nice following and has turned his guestbook into more of a chat room. He is caring for his aged mother and is getting a lot of support for others of our age who are taking care of aging parents. We've also seen him go through a successful weight loss program, we sent him sympathy when a hoped-for relationship with a woman didn't work out, and smiled with his tales of what he was learning in a comedy workshop he took last year. He's a neat guy.

- I've also started reading Blogging in Paris because, well, Jeri and I are going to Paris, so I figured I should start getting a feel for blogging there!

- And of course you have to read My Mom's Blog, written by Millie Garfield, who is almost my mother's age and who has become quite an internet celebrity in the time I've been following her, simply for learning how to surf the net in her 80s.

- I've even started reading Ken Jennings' blog, that Jeopardy wunderkind who walked away with over $1 million. His blog is actually quite entertaining.

There are lots of others, but these are some that I haven't really given much attention to here and I thought I'd share them with you, if you're looking for something new to read.