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Travel-weary Bethany

In Which Bethany Recounts Her Eventful Travel Experiences From The Weekend.

For those of you who follow me on Twitter (@squaredonut) or are friends with me on Facebook, you'll know some of the drama of my Sunday and Monday at the airports and in between.

But there were plenty who expressed confusion over what the HECK I'd gotten myself into and several who haven't heard the story, so come back later today as I try to piece together my attempts to get back to Houston this weekend.

Stay tuned! (I'm not gonna lie - it might be this evening.)

- Bethany

Devastated Bethany

In Which Bethany Loses All The Data On Her Precious Mac And Has To Start From Scratch

Yeah. I'm still in shock from the news I got last night at the Apple Store. My hard drive is gone. What makes this so hard to believe is that I'd just been using my computer an hour before - I was just being grumpy about it running SLOW. And if I hadn't tried to fix it myself (using Apple's support site, mind you - nothing even half-sketchy!), I probably could have saved everything.

I know, I know - I should have had a backup. (Especially since witnessing @kristenrudd's data woes last year.) So... I've been thinking about the whole backup issue for a while, and the biggest problem I had with it was - what if there's a fire and I lose my computer? It won't help anything if the hard drive's in the house too! And online storage is so stinkin' expensive. But I'd been putting off a decision that I now realize should have been resolved a LONG time ago.

The good news is that last spring, I dropped my PowerBook and smashed the screen. How is that good, you ask? On that computer, only the screen is broken. Thus, two partially broken machines = one pretty decent one. I've at least got everything through last April/May. And I found a good program that should let me grab everything from my iPhone.

But I've spent the last several months cleaning off my hard drive, deleting lots of files (i.e., photos I would never ever need/want) and cataloging them. I even got iLife '09 and had started using the facial recognition feature! All that work is now useless.

The moral of this story, kids? BACK UP YOUR SHIT. Because you never know what can happen.

Update: Just to explain the fascination with all things Mac...
Yes, Macs crash on occasion. Yes, Macs get bugs (though supposedly they don't get viruses). Yes, once in a blue moon, Apple sends out an update that messes your computer up (the move to DRM-free music on iTunes messed up a lot of people's iPhones... including mine, of course).

The difference? You can walk in to the Apple Store, and 99% of the time they have an answer to your problem. And since they own both the hardware and the software, there's no one else to blame. Therefore, they can't be like PC manufacturers and send you to Microsoft, who sends you back to the manufacturer, who then sends you to another company... the cycle can go on for-ev-VER.

My friends, you actually get help the first time you ask with Apple. So if you're a PC know-it-all, Mac probably isn't the way for you. But for those of us who can't repair our own computers, Mac is the way to go, for sure.

Because even when I'm practically sobbing as I leave the store, I WAS given an answer and they DID fix the problem... they just didn't find my files.

Saluting-Her-Heritage Bethany

In Which The Bethany Who Takes Pride In Her German Heritage Steps To The Mic

I get oodles of questions about the meaning behind my user name/blog address/email address, "square donut". People always think I'm so creative with that title, that I've picked something so incredibly random.

I hate to burst your bubble, but I gotta tell on myself. I'm not that creative.

"Square donut" is one of the translations of my last name. Rather, you can buy a pastry called a Fasnacht in Amish Country (maybe other places, too).

I even tried to make them from scratch for a seventh-grade immigration project. (I mean, how perfect was it that my last name was actually relevant to the project! I knew I'd be the hit of the class. Please don't mention how much of a geek I am; it only gets worse.)

However, the recipe (which I declare a translation from my family straight from Germany - I don't care if it's true or not) didn't work out very well, so I just ended up using a doughnut recipe and called them Fasnachts. No one knew the difference, and I'm sure I got a wonderful grade on the project, like always. :o)

Back to Fasnachts. Since the Lenten season is drawing nigh, people all over the world are about to celebrate me. Or at least my last name. I just like to pretend I'm THAT cool. (But I've got an older sister who regularly bursts that bubble.)

ANYway. Fasnacht - the day celebrated 'round the world. Never heard of it? That's just because you don't speak German. People get drunk, overindulge, flash their assets, etc. on this day. *sigh* shouldn't I be proud?

Yep, my surname is the day of the year where everyone acts like the beasts we are in preparation for 40+ days of fasting/denial/self-flaggelation/whatever as a symbol for the 40 days Christ spent in the desert before he started his ministry.

Just like the weekend before you start your crash diet, people all over the world stuff themselves full of everything's that bad for them (food AND otherwise, of course) before they give it all up in worship to God. (No comments here about how the best idea would be to just NOT DO THOSE THINGS in the first place, I promise.)

Fasnacht = Shrove Tuesday = Fat Tuesday. But I prefer NOT to use the "Fat Tuesday" title and will forevermore use the more friendly "Fluffy Tuesday" in its place.

The coolest part of my name's history is that there are Fasnacht pastries because apparently lots of Germans like their doughnuts and would GORGE themselves on Fluffy Tuesday before they gave sweets up for Lent.

Which all means I come by my self-indulgence genetically. I'm saluting my heritage without even trying! :o) I mean, how could I hold my head up high if I was a skinny, size zero model??? My last name would mean nothing!

So people of the world unite! On this Tuesday, remember to raise your pudgy, doughnut-filled hand as a salute to me and my forefathers. Because we're one of the many reasons why we all could use a diet (or for the more holy among us, could use a little fasting).

I'M BACK!

Hello, interwebs! I'm back! It's been forever since I've blogged, and I need a place to be creative, to be weird, to mock my sister do whatever I want.

The new theme is "Bethany in a Box".

I've recently come to the conclusion that I compartmentalize everything in my life.

There's Work Bethany - she's pretty cheerful, a hard worker, vigilant about people doing the best work they can, and chock-full of adrenaline from all the last minute projects that come through her department.

There's Home Bethany - she doesn't move once she gets in the house. If the grocery shopping doesn't get done on the way home, it's not getting done. She also needs a lot of space and is quite grumpy when she doesn't get it.

There's Church Bethany - she's a great worker bee, but has gotten to the point where she can only focus on the production quality of the service, not the actual content. Which has to change, pronto! But this Bethany's pretty darn reliable, too.

There's Friend Bethany - she can be loyal, but she's also flaky. She might not return your email or wall post for quite some time. It's not because she doesn't care... she even has several responses written in her head. They just never make it to you because Friend Bethany's not the greatest at follow-through.

There's Family Bethany - this one can get mixed with Home Bethany too much. Family Bethany's best friends are her mom and her sister, but they're also really annoying at times. (A statement that her mother disagrees with, btw.) Family Bethany also gets frustrated that no one likes to make plans, and that the end game is very rarely what she had expected. She also tries to spend a night a week, getting fed by her sister and spending time with her nephews and neice.

This is only a few of the Bethanys that might come out of the box on this blog. Feel free to mock - I fully intend to!

And maybe down the road, the Bethany that comes out of the box to write on this blog might be an amalgamation of them all.

Coming soon: Saluting-her-heritage Bethany - just in time for the holiday celebrating her family (if you know German, that is)

life gets away from me...

Hello all! It's been a long time since I've posted anything, and I am here to say it's not because nothing big has happened to me. And it seems that I never post because I don't know how to catch up. (And, as I've said in the past, I compose blogs in my head and never commit them to webpage.)

- My sister's episode of Wife Swap aired! (I thought I'd put this at the top of the list, since it was the last thing I posted)
- I went to Ireland with a bunch of people...and I only knew two people when I got there! But I fell in love (totally platonically) with our Irish guide, made tons of friends, and have plenty of people to stay with when I visit Denver someday (and check out my photos!)
- My younger sister (adopted) was in a car accident and is on her VERY long road to recovery
- My company bought a much larger company and things are somewhat stressful as we face the changes (and I've volunteered to move temporarily to Dayton, Ohio, to help with the transition - but that offer hasn't been accepted yet)
- a new friend! A chick named Laura Holt started working in my department at work, and we have totally clicked.
- So many little things that I can't count...

I am just writing to say that I haven't forgotten about this little thing we like to call a blog...and I don't want this to be a biography on my life. Hopefully, I will talk about issues and things on my mind. But also a place where people can catch up with what I've been doing for the past days/months/weeks/years.

So stay tuned for more in the days ahead!

Real life vs. "reality" TV

So, as most of you know, I have a different view of the "reality TV" topic. A couple weeks ago, my sister left for a week at another woman's house as a part of the hit ABC show, Wife Swap.

OMG, right?

Obviously, I can't say much about it right now because I don't want to jeopardize my sister's spot on the show, but I just have to say that I was naive. My thought was, "Well, it's obviously not ALL of what this person's about, but we're obviously seeing events that DO go on, right?"

Riiiiiight...

Let's just say that my family will no longer be watching Wife Swap after Dana's episode airs. I remember being very critical of a woman on the show who said to the house-husband during the "rule change": "I think a man should be providing for his family by doing manual labor." I thought, how in the world can she think that??? Manual labor??? Plenty of men provide for their family with office jobs!

What I think now is, I wonder who made that decision? I wonder what that woman really thought about this guy working outside the home? AND I wonder how much fun it was to send this very metro-sexual man out to dig ditches? :0) So...sorry for judging you, lady.

Because, how will my sister be judged by America? And how will her family look on TV? Who the heck knows. Because they have 150 hours that have to be cut to 22 minutes...for the Clover family alone.

All this to say, I'm very happy for my sister and this opportunity. And VERY happy that it's over! I promise to tell everyone when it airs, and hopefully to defend my sister's honor if anything bad seems to be happening.

AND I am much closer to my niece, Brooke! She spent the night at my house a couple nights, and I got to take care of her for half of the week. She is absolutely adorable (which I knew beforehand), and I love to be with her. While my four pre-adolescent nephews are (jokingly) my "birth control", my time with Brooke makes me greatly anticipate that time in my life when I have children.

Disclaimer: my nephews are great, too. It's just that hormones and arguments between the four of them can definitely take away from their attractive qualities. Again, let's see how they look on TV!