Metablogging: February 2004 Archives

Laura's back from her break! Yay!

Old news, but Vociferous Yawpings is back too.

We've pulled the life links together and updated CURE's link.

Welcome to the blogroll:
Theosis
Republic of Virtue
Popcorn Critics

Goodbye to:

Eternal Rebels. They turned out to be merely temporal and have closed up shop.

If you have been trying to email us recently, you may have had trouble -- Pansy and I were both busy and our email box filled up with over two hundred pieces of SPAM.

We're going to give a new address a try. Correspondence to the Two Sleepy Mommies can be directed to:

twosleepymommies
AT
yahoo
DOT
com

1. The Group Read discussion for Chapters 1-6 is up! Come post your questions, answers, thoughts, questions, favorite lines, observations, long comments, short comments....

2. Happy Birthday to Erik! Alas, I saw the announcement too late to plan my menu, so I will have to have roast pork and Sapphire martinis another time.

3. I did make pizza last night. I tried using bread flour to make the dough and was very, very pleased with the results.

4. I also had my very first grease fire in the kitchen. Yikes! It was all my fault, too -- I just was not using my brain. I had filled a saucepan with water and bit of olive oil and brought it to the boil (the plan was to use it to cook the sausages for the pizza.) I got sidetracked washing the dishes, though. I looked up and realized the pot had gone dry. I turned off the burner and removed the lid. I neglected to move the pot off the hot burner, though -- really, where was my brain? -- and all of a sudden FOOM! the remaining olive oil ignited. So there I was with flames shooting up ten inches into the air, and all I could think of was "oh no! the microwave!!!!!"

So I pulled the flaming sauce pan out from under the microwave and realized that you really do need both hands to extinguish a fire. I have a fire extinguisher in the kitchen, but I couldn't remember where it was. (It was under the sink, behind the dish drainer and dish pan. ) By now my husband had heard me yelling and he came in to see what was going on. I put the pot down and he started for the sink to fill a cup of water to throw on the fire.

By this time I'd recovered my wits. I grabbed the can of salt that was sitting on the counter and threw salt on the fire to smother it -- it worked right away. (The microwave and pot seem to be okay.)

When my sister was small, she gave my mom with a present: a small coffee can filled with baking soda and decorated with crayon drawings of fire. She'd made it in Brownies. The idea was that you kept it by the stove so that you always had something at hand to smother a fire. I think I need to make one of those, since I cannot count on having a Brownie to make one for me.

I was also disturbed to realize that the smoke alarm didn't go off during this little adventure. So at the least I have a battery to replace. If I don't get it done this week, maybe I can get my dad to do it for me when he comes next week.

When we first installed comments, we considered posting a comments policy. We had seen the combativeness, flame wars and general nastiness that sometimes cropped up at other blogs, and we didn't want that for our blog. We figured there were plenty of other places for those who liked that kind of combat to fight their dogfights and stamp their little "kill" stamps on the side of their airplanes. We wanted TSM to be one of the places a reader could take a break from that kind of thing.

We never actully posted a comments policy (beyond a playful "no trolls") because we never really needed it. Our readership was small and shared our vision. (A mysterious penchant for turning even the most serious threads into discussions of pizza, cookies, hairstyles, clothing, and beer also helped.) We have had to edit or delete very few posts and have only had to ban one commenter. There has been the occasional flash of temper here and there, but overall the tone of our comments boxes has been civil, friendly, and free of personal attack.

That's the way we want to keep it. It's especially important to us now, for we are seeing many new names in our comments boxes. Some of those new names will be those of young readers -- homeschooled tweens who are here for the Group Read. We don't want any of these young readers getting flamed, and we don't want to see any of them being shown a bad example.

So:

We don't play rough here. We don't like profanity, blasphemy, flaming, personal attacks on anyone, or general incivility. We may edit or delete offending comments -- or ban offending commenters -- at our discretion.

[C]ivility is considered a higher good than First Amendment rights here. Incivility will be uncivilly suppressed. -- Church of the Masses comment policy.