I have a feeling the change-in-the-weather that was predicted is going to be a really big, really bad one.

I woke up with a migraine this morning. I slammed down some Excedrin Migraine, forced myself to eat (my stomach was a little oogy but I knew if I didn't eat breakfast I'd be worse.) I had time to lie back down so I did, with a cold pack on the back of my neck (that sometimes helps). It was kind of unpleasant to do because it's COLD here right now, even my house is kind of cold.

But I feel better now, and my hyper-sense-of-smell has quietened down, and I don't seem to be having the slightly-dyslexic episodes that I usually get with a continued migraine, so maybe I headed it off.

They're predicting possible "wintry mix" later this week. Fortunately none today; one of my classes has a very important field trip this afternoon.

******

It's interesting - both Jess Hutchinson and TChem are talking about blogs and their purpose. (Well, TChem is inspired by her blog-i-ver-sary). One of the things Jess said struck me - that blogging is a little bit like a newspaper column but also a little bit like show-and-tell. I think that's true, at least of craft-bloggers: there's a strong component of sharing-for-the-sake-of-sharing (or possibly for-the-sake-of-inpiring-others) in the craft blogs.

There are some other blogs I read. Some more politically oriented, some more culturally oriented. The more political ones are very much like newspaper columns - or rather more like editorials in that the author is either trying to convince you of their point (or in most cases, preaching to the choir, given how people choose to read blogs). The more culturally-oriented ones (Mental Multivitamin and A Sweet, Familiar Dissonance, for example) come closer to the spirit of the craft blogs in the sense of largely being a show-and-tell - except in the cases of those two blogs, the "show" and "tell" are more "Here is this link to a provocative article or a lovely series of nature photographs" or "Here is a passage out of a book I am reading; here is how it relates to what I am thinking right now."

Or actually, maybe, they're more "show" and some of the political/scientific/religious/opinion blogs are more "tell." As in "Here's something I'm thinking about; see what you think about it" rather than "Here's what I think and here's why I'm right." I guess I like "show" more than "tell" in that sense.

When you think about it, blogs as a group are perhaps a bit like a newspaper - the newspaper as coral-organism, where the whole is made up of a whole bunch of little individuals, sort of like a coral reef is actually thousands upon thousands of tiny animals each building their own shells. Except in coral, all of the shells are more or less of a kind. (I am imagining now the weird fantastical coral that would result if each coral animal built its own shell as individualistically as bloggers make their blogs). There are the opinion blogs, and the news-reporting blogs, and doubtless there are weather-blogs, and then there are the art-and-culture blogs, and the celebrity-following blogs. And then...I guess you'd call it the Lifestyle section, like the part of the newspaper where there are recipes on Wednesday and maybe human-interest stories, and pictures of people's pets and babies...that would be the craft blogs, I guess.

I don't know where I'm really going with this, other than the idea that each of us is out here and each of us is creating our own particular universe - kind of like the bower-bird, to use another biological metaphor, only instead of putting shiny blue things out to attract a mate, we are putting out words and pictures to try and attract readers...

And yet, at the same time, I also tend to think of blogs as being a little like magazines. Each blogger their own magazine editor, in a sense. And I like that idea. When I was a child, a friend of mine and I had a project for a few years where we would periodically make "magazines" that we gave back and forth to each other. They were mostly imaginative stories about the made-up doings of our extensive "families" of stuffed toy animals (kind of a "Society Page," if you will). But we also had the occasional recipe, or idea for a craft project, or something. And you know? I really enjoyed that silly little thing - the idea of being in charge of content and layout and writing something someone else would read... I suppose it is really no wonder that as an adult, when a chance to do a more grown-up version of that thing presented itself, I jumped on it. (I didn't know about 'zines until I already had the blog, and I probably wouldn't actually have time to put together and distribute a real 'zine, also I live in an area where I'd probably not have much of an audience...I tend to think of 'zines as a more urban thing).

I guess there are a lot of things that blogs are sort-of-like: show and tell, a 'zine, a fan club, a newspaper. But nothing that they are exactly like. (And I wonder: what will reveal itself in the future as a way of connecting or self-publishing? Already there are podcasts, which I don't think I'd be interested in doing, because frankly I write more interestingly than I speak, but I do wonder...