Day 207

Today finds myself in the YMCA of the Ozarks, staying at Trout Lodge. It is very awesome here. It is also very cold. I am here for pleasure, there is a conference going on, and we are having a lot of fun.

Anyway, I woke up this morning, and decided to walk out on the balcony to check the weather. It's cold. But what I did not see last night when I got here because it was dark, was that there is a giant lake right behind where we are staying. It is gorgeous. It is also frozen, which is the awesomosity of the day.


I was thinking about trying to ice skate on it, but I have a feeling that the ice skating would be immediately followed by swimming, which doesn't sound like as much fun.

Actually, to be more specific, it is not just frozen over lakes that are awesome, but when someone throws a ball to the middle of the lake, I think it is a little more awesome.


Well, there are a bunch of my friends here, and I don't just want to sit in my room being all lonely, so I am going to go socialize. I hope everyone has a superriffic day!!

Day 206 Video

YouTube decided to let me upload my video finally, I hope you enjoy it. I will have another early next week, hopefully Monday, but no promises.

Day 206

Well, today's awesomosity comes from an e-card I was sent. It was maybe the coolest e-card I have seen. And this site, www.someecards.com has some very awesome cards to browse and send, though quite a few are rather inappropriate. You can also make your own, which is what I did, for you all, my faithful Constant Blog Readers. Here it is:


Now, I also have another Haiti video, I hope you enjoyed yesterdays. As I did yesterday, this will count as my picture of the day.

Ok, so YouTube has foiled me again. It is uploading. I will post it as soon as possible. However, since I will be gone all weekend, you can try going to http://www.youtube.com/user/benmulen to see if it has uploaded yet over the weekend.

I hope you all have a fantastic evening and weekend! I will post more Haiti videos hopefully Monday.

Day 205 video

So, I finally got the video from yesterday to upload. Here it is. I will have another to post later today. Enjoy.

Day 205

Great afternoon everyone! I hope you are having an awesome day!

So, a few things today. First, my good friend Err Mackey (that's Mr. Mackey to you Webster German students, and Brent to most everyone else {you may also know him from the blog as he and his wife Melissa were awesome in replacing my truck battery a few months ago}) posted a picture on one of my favorite sites (and books), Deadly Viper. Well, it was Twittered about by the guy that runs the site, and I told Brent about it, and its awesome. Way to go Brent!!

Now, I also told you that I had been "vlogging" (is there a better word for video-blogging, or is vlogging the technical term?) while in Haiti. Well, here is the first installment from last Thursday. By the way, this also totally counts as my picture of the day. Enjoy.

So, the video really does not want to upload. I WILL post it here when it gets uploaded to YouTube. It is awesome though, you'll just have to wait.

I hope you all have a fantastic evening. See you tomorrow!

Day 204

Great morning everyone!

Today's awesomosity comes from my friend Molly (she guest-posted Monday). She sent this link to a pretty cool, creative, and useful tool called Dabbleboard. It is an online, sharable whiteboard. It can be used for all kinds of fun and useful stuff.

Here is a link to a quick drawing I created for one of the videos I will be making as a result of my trip to Haiti.

Here is one of the drawings that someone else created, just to show you a little of what this website is capable of.

Have some fun on there, its a pretty cool little deal.

Have a great day, I hope to have some of my video blogs from last week ready to go soon.

Day 203

As you can all probably tell by the removal of my vacation voicemail message, my vacation email auto-reply, and myself blogging on my own blog, I am back in town. Hooray!!

I did think of one thing when I got back and turned my phone on for the first time in a week (it was a weird week, not having a phone at all, I felt naked) and checked my messages. I had 3 texts. Why is there no auto-reply to text messages? At least one or two of those texters could have been seriously helped by an auto-reply. Someone should invent that.

So, what is awesome today? Too much stuff to mention. I'm going to go with my house. My bed, my shower, my toilet, my lamps (I love lamp), my kitchen, my couch, my razor, and all that good stuff.

While in Haiti, I had extremely comfortable living quarters, but there is nothing quite like home. I did figure out a way to blog while I was gone, vlogging! So, now all I have to do is sort through my 6 hours of video footage to find my self-recorded video blogs, do just a very little bit of editing (to show video of what was awesome each day) and voila! I will have the awesomes from Haiti. And it was very awesome, so stay tuned for that.

By the way, thank you so much to Joe McGill, John Matlock, Katie Morgan and Molly Loeb for guest blogging. Un-thank you to Joe Elder, who stopped the consecutive streak of blogs on this site at 197. Just kidding Joe, you know I love you.

Have a fantastic day, and to prove how much I love my razor, here is a picture of what I have done with it.

Day 202

Happy Monday AND Martin Luther King Day to everyone!

My name is Molly and I am very honored that Ben had asked me to choose the Awesomosity of the day today. I picked the video below because- well, it’s awesome! It is from the documentary "Playing For Change: Peace Through Music", directed by Mark Johnson and Jonathan Walls. Playing for Change is an organization with the goal of connecting music and art schools around the world to promote unity. They were featured on Bill Moyer, click here to see it (but warning- it’s over 10min long!).

Anyway here is the video-


I just love when I find some kind of music, video, art etc that inspires me to be more positive and hopeful…. Bringing us to, Task-O-The Day: Stop and listen to some really good music, then share it with a friend. It’s easy enough to do and pretty awesome!

Here I am at work- getting TONS of things done…. Like this blog!

Day 201

Ben is the eternal optimist - which is why I am surprised by his openness to me (the eternal pessimist) to guest write one of his blog entries while he is away on this amazing trip . . . maybe it is his optimism that I will come up with some Awesomosity. My name is Katie, and I write a blog called Sarcastic and Single.

Today's Awesomosity comes from what is going on up in my living room as I type. A large, impromptu gathering of friends. Some dear friends, some new friends. The Awesomosity is friends. I once told a friend that friends are the family that you pick. And I think that is true. Most people feel very lucky if they have one or two close friends - and many (as evidence of our society) are aching for friends, companionship, community. So at risk of getting a little sappy - which is not my nature - I will stop it at that. Friends are the family you pick, and I have been fortunate to have some great family here in St. Louis, which is great for those days that I really miss being at home and around my family.

Task-O-The Day: call a friend and tell them that you are thankful for them. It has the potential to be totally awkward, but in the end it is worth it.

Wow, how totally out of character for me and for this blog. Oh well, I'm just a guest.