I have a new tenant over in the sidebar.  It is Bridget from Bitchet.  Please go over and give her some clicks!!!  Tell her that I sent you!  You guys are the greatest.

My weight loss has stalled at 28 pounds and it is starting to really tick me off, so I have decided to step it up a notch and add a second workout to my daily routine.  Now I will be waking up at 5:30 to do Taebo and then either running 3 miles at night or becoming a slave to my elliptical trainer.  I did the Taebo this morning and I can already feel the burn in my upper legs and in my ass.  I am pretty positive I will not be able to walk tomorrow.

So if I do not post tomorrow, it is because Billy Blanks has killed me by making my legs hurt so bad that they have fallen off my body and I am not able to move.

Well, I got smacked by the nice folks over at IT2M. If you are not familiar with this site, you should go check it out, you will definitely get a few laughs. Basically you submit your site for review and they either “smack” it if it is liked, or rip you a new ass if it is not liked. So if you do submit your site, make sure you can handle some criticism!! Charred did my review and here are his comments:

This review is for soapbox.SUPERSTAR.

Really.

I promise.

This template is actually rather decent; while the color scheme is not something I’d use, it’s a long way from tasteless. The Web Divas have done a good job implementing your design.

I Do have a few issues with the layout, though:
For someone who claims to be “anally organized,” you sure do have a lot of crap in your sidebar; simplify it.
If you insist on having your sidebar justified-right, then your renter’s screenshot should also be justified-right.
17 posts displayed on your front page is a bit much.
The pictures leading off your posts should be centered.
At least you have the good sense to keep them all the same size.

I hate animated gifs with a passion.

Your content’s ok, but not great.

Punch it up a bit.

In my last review, I recommended Keys for Writers: A Brief Handbook by Ann Raimes. I will repeat that recommendation, and add Writing With Style: Conversations on the Art of Writing by John R. Trimble.

As far as my sidebar goes, I have seen much worse, but I will see what can be skimmed down. I am not sure where you go in EE to change the number of posts displayed on the front page. I am a very visual person, so I love putting pictures with all my posts. Some blogs I have gone to have nothing to catch your eye and make you want to read them. I do like doing the pictures as animated gifs, because it takes up less room.

All in all it was a great review and I am thankful for Charred’s constructive criticism! And for smacking me, he has given me one more thing to stick in my sidebar (HA!)

This is so disgusting, I will never get ice in my drinks at fast food restaurants again:

Fast-food ice dirtier than toilet water

Jasmine Roberts never expected her award-winning middle school science project to get so much attention. But the project produced some disturbing results: 70 percent of the time, ice from fast food restaurants was dirtier than toilet water.

The 12-year-old collected ice samples from five restaurants in South Florida—from both self-serve machines inside the restaurant and from drive-thru windows. She then collected toilet water samples from the same restaurants and tested all of them for bacteria at the University of South Florida.
In several cases, the ice tested positive for E. coli bacteria, which comes from human waste and has been linked to several illness outbreaks across the country.

“These [bacteria] don’t belong there,” said Dr. David Katz, medical contributor to “Good Morning America.” “It’s not cause for panic, although it is alarming because what she found is nothing new. You’re not more likely to get sick now. But she’s done us a favor by sounding the alarm.”

Both Roberts and Katz said that the ice is likely dirtier because machines aren’t cleaned and people use unwashed hands to scoop ice. Toilet water is also surprisingly bacteria-free, because it comes from sanitized city water supplies.