How To Receive Blogger/Blogspot Comments Via Text

I don't do much with my blog except post stuff, so this makes it easy to respond (or at least know when I should respond) to a comment. I have used Gmail Filters for years, so was aware that this would work, but only set it up recently...

To do this you must first have blogger comments sent to your email address. You're probably already set up for that. If not click here for easy instructions.

1) If you don't already know your picture text email address, find it by texting a picture to your email.

(Leave this email address for later)

2) Open an emailed-from-blogger comment email;

3) Click on the More Actions tab, then choose Filter Messages Like These.

4) Click on Next Step (You should see  noreply-comment@blogger.com to the upper left in the From: box)

5) Check the Forward It To box, then in the white space enter your pix message email address

(The from email address as saved in step 1)

6) Click Update Filter (But Don't check the box for 'Also apply to conversations below'.)

And that's it. Pretty simple huh?



(You will also receive comments that you've signed up for on other people's Blogspots)

How To Receive Blogspot Comments Via Email

I'm working on a post showing how to have your blog comments sent to your cell phone.

But to automatically send Blogger comments to your cell phone via text you must first have blogger set up to send all comments to your email address.

This step was taking up too much space, and I think this is an opt out thing, so you're probably already set up this way. So anyway I gave it it's own post...

If you don't receive comments to your email, then here's how to set that up...

Go to your blogger Dashboard. Choose the Settings link.

Then choose the Comments tab.

At the bottom of the page enter your gmail address in the space provided.

Save the settings.

And that's it....

Hangers!

Went to Kohls and bought a shirt for Leah and one for myself. Asked the clerk, "May i please have some slacks hangers?" and she gave me 4. (Had almost forgotten that they would do that.) Was on the way home and started laughing at myself because i was excited about my hangers and just kinda 'whatever' about the shirts. Pinchey hangers are awesome! I hate ironing.
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Yesterday when N8 came home

He knocked on my bedroom door. My family is quite social. We might not know where a person has gone once they leave the house, but at home there is usually games and conversation.

One of the 4 of us let him in, then Leah asked, "Where have you been and why wasn't I invited."

Then we all fussed about how we never see him anymore.

He said ,"I just ate. Then I went bowling"

"Who all was there? Where did you eat? Why do you never invite me?" Leah asked.

"Hibachi, and no one was there."

"No one?" even Seth, who had wandered in, was incredulous "You went bowling by yourself. How long did you bowl"

"10 games."

"All by yourself?"

"Yep...Hard day at work its very stress relieving."

So the 6 of us sat and discussed N8...

Then we discussed him again the next day on the ride home from work.

"Maybe He's got himself a woman," Jeff said.

"Yeah, but thats not N8. N8 would tell us." I said,

"Unless he was ashamed of her." I jokingly added

"--Or of us" Elijah said

More Randon Xmas Stuff.

Christmas is still somewhat scary for me, but things turned ok for my family. I think life as a Christian is like that. God takes the bad stuff and makes good stuff out of it. Doesn't make the bad stuff not bad just makes life awesome in spite of it. (Romans 8:28 has been one of my fav verses for a long time...) Like the time Joseph was kicked out of his family and sold into slavery; it was really awful, but God fixed it so it was good.

So yeah, good stuff: the church we are at now has been good for us and to us. We have grown here, and I think we have been better off here. It was a good time for a new place.

Our church people do Christmas, but most of them aren't mean about it.

(Far as I can tell, and don't correct me if I'm wrong,) Lisa is more worried about making us mad than mad at us for not coming to her Christmas thing. People should just live their lives, and if there is piece of your life that I'm uncomfortable with, I'll stay out of that particular piece.
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Two of the first few years we were here our pastor asked me, "How would you feel about having a Christmas play at the church?"


I told him, "We wouldn't come, but you guys could do it anyway. You don't have to change things for us, and seriously I mean that."

Later I told Mom how they usually had a play and hadn't because of us she just said, "That was nice of him."

"It's really scary," I said. "What if he hates us later because of changing things?"

He still preaches a sermon geared toward Christmas around the 25th, so is not like he changed everything. And really if I'm being reasonable he is not a person who is going to ask us to leave because we are different, but I would not have expected that from the other guy either...

I love Christmas lights; the white ones outlining houses are so pretty. And I'm completely cool with going Christmas shopping with my friends. (The sales are not so good; why do people think they are? It’s cool anyway. I need long sleeves T-shirts.) It’s awesome to have time off work. I listen to Christmas music occasionally (none of the annoying stuff though. I dunno how even the most staunch Christmas lover can stand some of that.). There is a Christmas song, 'Happy Birthday Jesus' it’s sung by a little boy. Anyway it is adorable, and there are a few other Xmas songs that I'm quite fond of.

I could argue very convincingly either for or against celebrating Christmas. (I'm not going to... I'm just telling you I could.)

I don't care if my friends celebrate Xmas. If someone asks me why we don't, I tell them a little about the pagan background. Maybe mention Jeramiah 10:1-5 or tell them to pick up an old encyclopedia & look up the origin (It's definitely nastier than Halloween), but I know most people don't think about Nimrod & Semiramis, and instead associate Xmas with Jesus birth. Is not like I think everyone who celebrates Christmas is bad Christians.

It's just that I don't.

And if you hate me for it don't tell me. I've changed from the whole I'd-rather-have-it-told-to-my-face mindset. I think I prefer plasticized friendliness.

Scar(r)ed of Christmas

Every year around the 1st of December I start to panic. (I'm a little early this year.)

I don't belong here.
Christmas is scary.
I wonder if these people resent me.

I don't have a big hatred of Christmas. I might celebrate it at some point in my life. One of my brothers celebrated Christmas with his (then) girlfriend for a couple of years. I guess I could celebrate it now if I chose to.

But Christmas scares me because people are mean this time of year. They think if you don't celebrate it you don't love Jesus or something I guess...
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I've actually been in a Christmas play/thing before. Lemme tell you about it:

My family went to another church for a while (11 years actually.) One year in December we had a skit thing. (I can't remember exactly what it was all about, but it was lovely.) We dripped hot white candle wax all over the carpet & sang "Carry Your Candle" in the dark. I love fire.

We had been told that it was not for Christmas--But it was.

Which is not to say that it was terrible or evil; just that it was a Christmas thing? It was a good play and a few families had filled brown paper lunch bags with nuts, fruit, and candy which they handed out after the play, then passed them and fruit baskets through the (poor) neighborhood where our church was located. I think if people are going to have Christmas celebrations that's a good way have them.

But my family doesn't celebrate Christmas.

We talked about it afterward, and my fam was like, 'yeah that's what it was, but we asked.... didn't know.' So anyway we didn't say anything about it. It was over and bla.

The church knew we didn't 'do Christmas', but we had never asked them to not have Christmas celebrations at church. It was really their call--Not ours. (They should've told us that it was for Christmas when we asked though.)

The next year around the beginning of December during church a man asked, "Are we gonna have a Christmas play again this year?"

The pastor's daughter answered, "Yes, we'll do the same song we did last year." Then we went on with our service.

So anyway in a couple of weeks, when it came time for play practice my family didn't stay. We didn't throw a fit. We didn't ask anyone else to not have a play, or be in a play. We didn't slam Christmas. We just didn't stay and practice. (If you don't believe in something, you don't do it; that's how it is.)

(Honestly my parents had not asked them to not have Christmas plays. The church had just skipped it for the 11 years that we were there. Maybe they felt obligated to...)

Sigh.

The next service was a Wednesday. (My Dad had a recently started business, and worked late every weekday, so never made it to Wednesday service) The pastor asked my brother who ran sound to instead sit in the pews and stuck a cassette tape in the recorder. (We never taped the midweek service, so that was different, but I assumed it was a sermon he was extra happy with....)
Anyway he chewed my family out the whole sermon saying at one point, "If you don't believe that what I believe is right, you don't need to be here. You should go to another church." Then after church he gave my mom the tape & told her to give it to Dad, then the pastors wife yelled at my mom for a while, and made her cry.

It was very dreadful.

We did leave.

(My best friends Dad left also. He was recently saved, and after sitting through the service said "If that's what Christians are like I'm not going to be one.")

gOt No SKiLls

I'm saving soda pop tabs to make belts out of. I'm not very good at removing the tabs though. I tend to either bend the things in half or tear the bottom circle out. Sometimes the whole silver top of the can comes off (no pic's of that though.)
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H's & K's (In which I unintentionally hurt half of everyone)

Quietly freaking out over the chaos, and considering not posting my next scheduled post, because it's not completely all happiness & candy.

Still I am not (currently) planning to remove the last post.

But you are definitely due an explanation. Please do me a big favor and read this for now.

I did not tell anyone that she had to wear a skirt to 6 Flags or to my house or to any other place. I didn't write that on my blog either. If you thought I said that, please reread that post. I've not edited it at all.

I didn't realize it was taken that way until someone referring to my blog told me, "I don't think people shouldn't be allowed to do things with the youth group just 'cause they don't wear skirts."

And then all the comments sounded like that also. (I have them texted to me automatically, so I had read them but couldn't reply for a while.)

You should reread what I wrote. Maybe you mixed up my h's & k's.

I told her to wear jeans. (And now a quarter of everyone else is mad at me.) I did ask her to wear a shirt (as in a blouse or a top that wasn't spaghetti strap, and didn't show boobs.) and I made sure to point out that I didn't know if most other people cared... (And maybe asking her to wear a shirt is just as bad to you. I don't know.)

But she asked me.

Honestly there would've been more of a requested dress code if it had turned out that the youth pastors drove the van as they were thinking about doing. I don't think that it's wrong to have a dress code for church activities.

In fact, I wouldn't have thought it would've been wrong for a person to answer the question with "If it's a youth trip thing pastor would prefer for you to wear a skirt." (I didn't say that, I'm just saying I think it would've been ok.)

I know about 5 years ago when a friend, from our church, and I were about to go to VA with the pastor's family he asked me, "Does she know how we dress. Did you talk to her about that?"

I guess my take on it was; it would be less awkward for her to hear it from me than for me to tell her to talk to the pastor.

But I'm not totally sure where he is at now. I will call and ask to talk to him & his wife about this, and ask how he would want me to handle this in the future if it comes up.

Also
Just because someone lives differently doesn't mean they think they are better than everyone else...