Go forth and fill your libraries with media.
Seriously, thanks to everyone for being so amazing and patient. You are the reason I love Vox.
I was just told that the Amazon Conduit will be fixed by tomorrow. I will post here as soon as I get word that it's back up and running.
I know this has been frustrating and I am sorry there wasn't more I could do to make it less so. I really appreciate your patience though.
Cheers,
Bad news. As many of you have probably noticed, the Amazon Conduit was not fixed in the last week's release. Unfortunately, there was an undetected bug that is preventing the conduit from working.
We are working on this bug fix and hope to have the Conduit back up and running this week.
I will keep you posted.
Thank you for being so patient.
Blog Action Day is every October 15th, when blogger are asked to post something about a single issue to show our strength and conviction as an online community. It's a great way to feel connected to the greater good, and the participation of so many bloggers to support the world's leading non-profit organizations is something you can do to help, right now. By blogging today, you're supporting some of the world's leading non-profits and sharing your voice for change.
This year's topic is climate change, and we'd love to read your thoughts on the topic. If you participate, leave us a link to your post in the comments, so we know to check out your post!
Go to www.blogactionday.org to learn more, get a badge for your blog showing your participation, and see some ideas for your post on climate change.
Can't wait to read your posts!
~ daisy
The Amazon Conduit will be working again on October 15, 2009. Thank you to everyone for your patience.
Have a great weekend,
daisy, Team Vox
I'm even more excited to go to Roma next spring after seeing this bit from the wonderful travel blog, Galavanting.tv.
In his final years he wasn't a happy man. He had lived a life increasingly full of alcohol, lost his son to alcohol and watched my grandmother succumb to dementia (most likely brought on from years of alcohol) before she died a few years ago. He stopped liking people. He was grumpy, angry and crabby all the time. He pushed away many people in his life with the terrible negativity that had grown around him.
He wasn't always like that. In my younger years it was easier to hide the negative effects of alcohol from the grandchildren. In truth, he was one of the reasons why I feel like I had such a happy childhood.
There are so many things I remember about him. He loved to bake and a birthday cake from him was a treat. He and my grandmother made incredible candy at Christmas every year. They had a big house on the edge of a canyon overlooking the Snake River in the tiny town of Burley, ID. Every summer we would go down there for a month or so. I looked forward to the summers for that reason...it felt so magical to go visit them. The sunsets there were incredible. So was the garden, the Russian olive trees, the massive lawn that eventually when we were old enough we had to help them mow. Papa had a riding lawnmower to do most of the lawn but there were hilly parts that we had to help with the push mowers. For years my little brother begged Papa to let him ride on the lawn mower. He thought that was the best thing in the world. In the house they had a wonderful fireplace in the family room downstairs, with a huge hearth that became our stage. We put on countless plays there for relatives every summer. In the basement was his pool table, where I learned to play pool both correctly and incorrectly.
He loved animals and there were always cats and dogs in his life. When I was little it was Penelope, a huge St. Bernard. I've never seen a live one since then...they're such big dogs that I don't think many keep them as pets. He let me name one of the kittens that his cat had one year. I named it Little Paw. They kept the kitty and he used to write me letters and send me pictures of the cat as it got bigger.
I collected stamps with him. Sheets of stamps, first day covers, 14k gold stamps. A few years ago he gave them all to me...it was the one thing I hoped I would be able to keep from him and he knew it. We used to go fishing a lot. I remember one time I sat my ass down on an ant nest of fire ants. I think, despite my pain, I convinced him not to throw me in the lake fully clothed. I never wanted to put the worm on or take fish off the hook (or watch him clean the fish, which he did right after we caught them). He was ok with that. He just liked having us around.
He wrote me letters all the time when I was little. I loved getting his letters. I loved hearing about Burley and the cats and dogs, and all the goodies that he was baking. I loved dreaming about going back to visit them.
As we got older and more jaded, and more aware of the pain that their alcohol abuse had inflicted on my mother and her siblings during their life, much of that lustre wore off. I did keep in touch with him over the years and after my grandmother died and he was sober, living alone with his little dog in the empty house, I tried to call him every week if I could. I'm the only grandchild that even bothered, mostly because had pushed everyone away. We would talk about things he remembered, about World War II, about selling insurance at Prudential (I still have these funny round TUITS that they used to give out as a marketing gimmick), about politics (he loved Hillary, which shocked me, but couldn't stand Obama because he was black, sigh), about things I remembered growing up.
I hope that he's in a place where that self-inflicted pain and loneliness is gone. Where he is full of the memories of good things, and good times with the people that he loved.
I love you Papa.
In my last Team Vox post, I let you know that we're aware that the Amazon conduit is broken and that we're working to fix it. Many of you want to know when it's going to be fixed and I'm so sorry I haven't gotten back to you about that sooner.
Unfortunately, I don't have an exact date to give you, but rest assured, the Amazon conduit will be fixed in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, I'm about to finish my latest book and I could use a few suggestions as to what to read next, so... if you don't mind, let me know in the comments what's on your nightstand and/or what book you think I absolutely must read next.
Thanks! :)
Some of you may have noticed that right now you cannot add books from Amazon to your Vox library. Giving people a glimpse into what's on your night stand is important to many of you, so I just wanted to reassure you that we are doing our best to get this bug fixed. I'll keep you posted.
So sorry for the inconvenience.
Hope you have a great weekend!
daisy
As I typed that, I was reminded of an old Bananarama song, "Robert Deniro's Waiting (Talking Italian)." What a goofy but sweet song that was!
At any rate, I've started taking a beginning Italian course, to help me prep for a trip to Rome in the spring. I bought an exorbitantly expensive textbook, Oggi In Italia, for the class. I've been studying a bit on Livemocha as well so I have some of the basics down. And yesterday, I attended the first class.
Basics mostly...how the class will be structured, the alphabet, the various sounds, etc. But the teacher, who I have to admit originally being a little worried about when she explained that she was still a student herself at BC, looks like she's going to be awesome.
I've got 7.5 months to cram as much into my little brain as I can before I go. I know that I would be able to get around anyway as most places I'm going will likely have English speakers, but I want to really experience it on a different level. I want to be able to talk to cab drivers, restaurant owners and shopkeepers with some level of confidence. I want to be able to understand the gist of conversations going on around me. Plus I think that when you start to learn the language you can't help but be even more swept away by the culture.
I'm very very much a beginner so when you comment back with phrases I'll have to go look them up. :-) But I'll keep plugging away at it!
Live Mocha is excellent, by the way, when it comes to learning a new language. I love the way they deliver up the lessons and have native speakers help correct written and spoken grammar in a way that isn't too confrontational or nerve-wracking (not face to face unless you want to enable instant messaging). If any of you join up, add me to your friends, even if you aren't learning Italian!
