My mum and I are upstairs. I’m working on my websites, Mum is writing out Christmas cards. 

My dad walks upstairs: “Dorothy, if I wanted to look this thing up on the internet, how do I do that?” 

I am in my bedroom, but my ears perk up. I wonder if he wants to research his arthritis medication I’ve been wanting him to learn more about. 

My mum looks at the tube of paint he’s holding out and replies: “You’d just type ‘artisanal paint” in the Google bar.” 

She walks over to the computer to show him. My dad sits down at the computer, places the cursor in the Google search field, then hunts and pecks to find the letter keys. 

He finds the paint site. He finds the paint he is missing from his painting palette. He marks it all down on a piece of paper.

My dad will be 70 in January and didn’t use a computer until fairly recently. I am really proud. 

Now we just have to teach him to point-click-buy.

Happy birthday to my blog. With this post, I have 365 published blog posts on YukonJen since 2005. I’m not sure what that says about me as a blogger (one blog-year equals four person-years maybe?). But I am extremely pleased as a writer. I’ve always wanted to be a writer. Throughout my life, I’ve always started writing projects and let them fall by the wayside. This blog is the first writing project that I’ve started and I’ve kept up (through multiple, multiple changes in my life). I love this blog. I am Jen. And Jen I be. Blogging is my therapy. 

I thought I’d publish a few interesting stats.  

I wrote my first post on 09 April 2005. It had seven words.

I think my longest post is the one I wrote on hiking the Chilkoot Trail with my sister and my niece in 2005. We did it over four days just before my parent’s 40th wedding anniversary. 

My most active posting months seems to be a tie between April 2005,  April 2008 and November 2009. 13 posts for each of those months. I am sooooo motivated to break that record though. Now I know why statistics are so important!

My least active months are March 2006 and July 2009.

My most viewed blog entry: My life-saving butt.

My most viewed blog category: All about my butt.

My personal favourite blog entry is my entry on the perils of using hand sanitizer (an entry in the All about my butt category). 

I have readers in 33 different countries (they don’t always comment, but I know they are out there). Some of them are new visitors (usually finding the butt blog). I like the 50% or more who are returning visitors though. 

Thematic is the fourth WordPress theme I have used on my blog. I started with the plain vanilla and WordPress 1.2. I had IMJTK design my first custom theme for me. I don’t have any screenshots of that, but I did like the rotating quotes at the top of the page. Last year, I found this crazy, flashy, Notepad Chaos, a free theme from Evan Eckard over at Smashing Magazine and I liked that for a long time. 

This year, I’m starting with plain white. A blank canvas. I’m going to decorate it as I go along. 

In the life of my blog, I’ve worked at Turin Networks (now Force10), Bush-Field Estate Vineyards and Winery, Dilithium Networks, and Intuit. I started two vacation rentals: HealdsburgBungalow.com and FitchMountainLookout.com. I’ve started a number of my own websites and helped a number of other people start theirs. I am finally consolidating all of my helping into a personal consulting business: 9068Creative.com (am still working to launch that site though). Still, I keep coming back to YukonJen. 

In the life of my blog, both Facebook and Twitter were born. WordPress graduated to a dynamic web-publishing platform. Social media exploded. Online communities exploded. (At a seminar I attended the other day, I heard that Fortune 500 companies are paying $200/hr for people with my skills.)

All I can say is bring it on 2010. Bring it on.

A few days ago, I asked for your favourite Christmas songs and now I have a few submissions from my social feeds. Here are the first three:

You can’t go wrong with a Newfie carol. This one is submitted by Kara in Faro. I love the Great Big Sea.

My friend Peter James sends this upbeat alternative from France (er..Britain?). He’s a Brit (the husband of my good friend Vicky) and they live in a tiny village in Brittany, France. Regardless, I think it will get you moving.

Ludo sends me one from Switzerland. He says this song is the song they sing at Mass on Christmas Eve before they drink vin chaud outside the church and visit with everyone in their village that they haven’t seen since the previous Christmas Eve. He says it sometimes snows when they are all milling about visiting. It certainly gets me wishing for some mulled wine and Christmas snow.

I remember when I first heard this song. I was making dinner. I don’t know who I was making it for or what I was making. But I heard this song on the radio and it stopped me in my tracks. I turned up the volume and looked out the window over the sink.

This song wasn’t about Santa. It wasn’t about babies and mangers and wise men. It wasn’t commercial. It wasn’t about snow. Or reindeers. It wasn’t funny. But it affected me. It made me stop and think about what my Christmas season should be.

I’ve never heard that song again, but every Christmas I say to myself I should look that song up–that one that tells the story of Christmas 1914. Today, I’ve gone and done so. It’s called Christmas in the Trenches by John McCutcheon.

I am humbled by history.

Do you have a song that makes you stop what you are doing and think about Christmas?

Just a note to explain because a few people commented. It’s December again. I usually give my blog a make over in December. This year, I’m going to try a few new things (new features, new functions) so I’m reverting back to a simple theme with lots of whitespace for awhile as I try things out. Dennis over at Fastpipe introduced me to this theme: Thematic. 

I thought I’d try it out. I am in Whitehorse, Yukon: a landscape covered in frost and snow right now. Hence the title: snowscape. It’s appropriate I think. 

And bbbrrrrr…it’s cold. 

I admit. I am a wuss.

It’s that time of year again Charlie Brown. I mean, “Can somebody tell me what Christmas is all about?” Well, I know what it is not about. It is certainly not about listening to the same old, same old music. The stuff you hear everywhere? On the radio? In the mall? At your company’s Christmas party? This is the internet!  We have YouTube. We have Shazam. We have iTunes and Amazon. If you are like my blogger friend Fawn, you can make your own music. There is no reason–no reason at all that we should settle for the same old, same old.

I’m tired of hearing the same songs all of the time. And I’m not like my friend Fawn. But, I can make my own playlist. I thought I’d try to find my favourite–not often heard–Christmas music online and share.

Here is the first Christmas song that I’d like to share. It’s Bing Crosby and a very young David Bowie singing Peace on Earth and Little Drummer Boy. I don’t remember when I first heard this song, but it’s not one I often hear. I have a few more (yes Redd…Smurfin’ Beer is on the list), but I’m just going to do one at a time.

What is your favourite Christmas carol. The one you love, but rarely hear? The one you hear and keep meaning to look up with Shazam or on YouTube. Who do you want to dedicate it to?

Christmas 2009 has definitely started. Happy holidays everyone.

No, not culottes…but short pants. I was hemming a pair of jeans today. I had two pair from earlier this year that were too long and this is the first time I have taken to hem them. They weren’t just a bit too long, they were more than five inches too long. I haven’t hemmed a pair of pants for a few years, but I was quite confident with my hem tape. AND I was borrowing my Mum’s sewing machine to finish the seams.

Regardless. I laid my jeans out on the ironing board. Seams together. I carefully measured the inseam—29.5inches—and folded them up. I pinned them and tried them on. PERFECT!!!

PERFECT!!!

I took them off and I laid them back on the ironing board. And without thinking (nor measuring twice I guess), I cut them off. I don’t really know what I was thinking, but I remember thinking about what my Mum had cautioned: “Don’t cut both sides at once.” (Meaning both sides of one pant leg.) I carefully cut down the inseam to where I’d marked 30.5 inches (one inch for seam allowance). Then (this is when I wasn’t thinking), I took the pant leg (which was doubled over) and cut, straight across.

I looked confused at the pant leg which was now in three pieces. The bottom fold was just cut off and then there was the original bottom of the leg.

Oh.

I’d cut straight across at 30.5 inches with the pant leg folded up. The pant leg was now 28.5 inches.

Oh well. I’ll wear them as capris next summer!