Duchess Jane

When my car rolled 100,000 miles, Duke and I were on 294 on our way home from Alsip, IL, from a party and the South Side Irish Parade.

When our truck hit 200,000 miles, I was on Linden Road in Rockford, driving from home back to work at the end of my lunch break.

I thought about turning the radio off so as to avoid embarrassment, but what the hell.  My last video from inside a car pretty much took care of illustrating my taste in music.

Duke is having a bad week.

I'll let you know what he looks like if I have to tell him one more time.  ~pounds fist into palm~

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I had the most perfect night last night.  Sushi at Marc's, beers at Carlyle, dessert at Chocolat by Daniel.  On the way home on the back of the motorcycle, a little buzzed thanks to a tiny but potent serving of Bourbon Barrel Cherry Stout, there was a divine wind on my face, a perfect rhythm created by the engine and the center line flashing past, and my discontent little baby soul had been more than soothed, it was nourished.

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We are going to make another attempt at a live chat room for Top Chef.  The new season starts Wednesday, August 19th, and our Top Chef chat room celebrity guest host will be the stunning Amy from Runs with Spatula.  I'll be there too, but Amy is the foodie that will have intelligent conversation with you about actual food type stuff while I occasionally interject things like "Oh my god, I can't believe she's wearing THAT" and then you'll all tell me to scamper along to Project Runway.  Which starts on the 20th, the very next day.  Be there too.

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More pimping:  Midwestern Moxie is still seeking team members.  We are a team of women and men (yes, men, we have 2 officially registered and 1 who has made promises) who are meeting up at Grant Park in Chicago on Saturday, September 26th, to run, walk, laugh, cry, and drink our way towards a cure for breast cancer.  You will have the choice of walking or running a 5k or running a 10k (or sneaking off to the bar, no seriously, I will look the other way).  We have no minimum fundraising requirements, as my goal this first year is to build a big fun team and spend some time with all of you.  If a couple of people that I'm trying to strong-arm agree to join us, it will be the biggest DuJane Reader Face2Face meetup in the history of this website.  So please, join me, sign up, bring your family, your friends, your running shoes, and your love of celebrating cancer.  OH YES I DID.  I WENT THERE.

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Thank you all again for your feedback and conversation on the ads removal post.  Love you guys so much.  I got so much action there, I wish I'd had ads, because that would have been some serious cash.  I kid!  I kid!  We all know the internet doesn't make it rain until I make comments about bisexuality on Hoseheads. 

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The IRA is at Wilmot Raceway on Saturday night.  I might be too.

The Yankees play the Sox on Sunday.  I might will definitely be there too.

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Read elsewhere:

Eat Me Daily's piece on the LA Times piece on Hungry Girl.  Agreed.

V4M alerted me to Burbia's post about the crazy lawn chair neighbor war.  Read the whole thing.

Vanity Fair edits Palin's resignation.  Brilliant.

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This week, years past:

2008:  Duke dug a moat around our garage and Marc accused Pipes of being a chemist.

2007:  Duke lost his mind and started gluing rocks to shit.  My entire blog happened in real life in the same room at the same time.

2006:  We went to IKEA for the first time (and our relationship survived) and Duke showed me how he fits his head into a latex glove.

My sushi. Duke's 20 oz ribeye. He's finally stopped whining.



Sent from my Sweet Mobile Internet Robot®.

Work at the Stately Manor has not slowed at all despite my numerous recent extended absences.  I'm starting to get the impression that I don't do nearly as much work on the house as Duke does.  Shocking, no?

So this past week has been devoted to our driveway.  I always forget how long it is.  I'm standing in front of the motorcycle trailer to take this before picture, so there's still another 15' of driveway behind me.

I think that even people who have been to my house will be surprised to see the driveway like this.  It's usually covered with cars!  One truck is in the garage, one truck is on the street, two cars are on the street, one car is still in Pittsburgh.

Duke started by powerwashing it, then patching every little crack, on his hands and knees, completely destroying his back in the process, until he started walking like his dad and/or the main character in Up!

Half of the driveway has been resealed as of now (not shown in picture) and the other half is scheduled to be finished this weekend.  After that, I think he's going back to work on Ewok Village 2010, the new mega super crazy deck project.

When I imagine you all out there reading me, I always think of my regulars as having ad-blocking software (whether that's true or not, though I know in many cases, I personally set up the ad blocker for a few of my regulars).  So in starting this post, I feel like I need to say "For those of you not running an ad blocker and not reading from a feed reader" and then I feel like I'm maybe talking to three people at best.

So to you three:  yes, the ads are gone.

This is a decision I've been thinking about for awhile.  There is a lot of talk pretty much everywhere about blogging, swag, paid product reviews, free trips, free goodies, and cash cash cash, and what this all means.  The FTC is stepping in.  Most of this doesn't apply to me, because I have never done a paid or freebie product review.  My nonstop talk about Project Runway, my FoodSaver, and my crockpot have all been the result of my own love of those things, not because of relationships with networks or manufacturers.  And we can all agree that the Ford thing didn't work out the way they'd hoped.

I never put up a disclosure statement about my relationship with sponsors because I never really felt it was an issue, it was something I'd deal with if I ever decided to accept a free product or write a review.  But then at BlogHer last weekend, I started to feel . . . icky.  It seemed that almost everyone I was meeting was shoving not just their business cards in my face, but the cards of the companies that paid for them to be there.  I paid my own way.  And I met far more marketing people and corporate sponsor representatives in my first few hours at the conference than I met writers.  I was deeply uncomfortable.

I'm not a mommyblogger, and this sort of thing seems to be much more prevalent with them, but as witnessed at BlogHer this weekend, it will always be assumed that when I say I'm a blogger that I'm a mommyblogger.  Not knocking them.  No problems with them.  I have no children.  That's it.  One of the things from BlogHer that has stuck with me the most is a quote that I'll have to paraphrase from Amber Rhea from the Lifeblogging panel.  She said that she found it funny/strange that the panel was called Lifeblogging, because when she started blogging years and years ago, there was a different word for lifeblogging:  "blogging".  That's what blogging meant before it became all about finding the perfect niche to attract the perfect marketing campaign, before something had to precede to word to clarify exactly what kind of blogger you were. 

I tweeted over the weekend that I was starting to tell people my blog was about pandas, because I was so tired of answering the question with "it's a lifeblog" or "it's about me" when that seems like such an obvious answer.  Obvious, though true, it made me uncomfortable to feel pushed and pulled towards one label or another, one way to push content towards sponsors or another.

So I spent a lot of time thinking about my ads, whether they were really any different.  Sure, I don't point people towards the products that were advertised, but they appear.  On my site.  Next to my words.  It's a tacit endorsement.  Was I really any different than the women at BlogHer who introduced me first to their corporate sponsor, and secondly to themselves?  I told myself I'd give it a week.  Think it over.  I took 2 days.  Then I signed into Twitter last night and saw @mooshinindy post "I just deleted the ads off my blog. IT FELT SO GOOD. I am now going to write, not whore. TYVM."  And I thought DONE.  DONE AND DONE.  And hitting that delete key felt pretty good to me as well.

I would like to clarify that this has nothing to do with the reference I made a few weeks ago to a "friend" who said some rather douchey things to me about my ads and my behavior.  What he was telling me was that he felt that I make some decisions in my life based on how many comments I think the resulting blog post will generate, how much attention I will get, and how that will translate into money.  Therefore, I do wild things to make money on the internet.  Where he was dead wrong is that if that's true, it's about attention, not money.  I didn't make enough money to fuck up my real life for the sake of profit.  Even Dave Eggers acknowledged halfway through A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius that writing autobiographically becomes self-aware at some point.  Do I ever do something, go to an event, take a photo, and think "Boy, the internet is going to love this!"?  Yes.  Of course.  But if it wasn't the internet, it would be "Boy, this is going to make the best story to tell the next time I see my friends."  And now that I don't have ads, it still holds true that I could conceivably get attention for a decision I made offline that I talk about online.  I may feel dirty about corporate sponsorship of my blog, but I don't feel dirty about the inherent exhibitionism of my blog.  If you aren't here to read about me, you must be a really big fan of my dog, and even he makes decisions that get noticed on the internet.  Mostly when I'm dangling cheese in front of his big corporate cheese-sellout face.

I never had a conversation with you guys when I put the ads up.  I should have.  I felt like I had to have this conversation now.  I will probably work on a disclosure statement that sounds all legalese (I have an entire team of lawyers or people willing to translate English into funny lawyertalk for me).  And I promise, cross my heart, hope to die, that if I do ever accept a free product from a company, I will label the post very very clearly with "SOMEBODY GAVE ME THIS CRAP, YO".  I really don't think any company who reads what I had to say about Ford will be desperate for me to share my honest opinion about their product.  But it could happen.  I'm never saying never.

Some banners that might look like ads might appear in that space soon - most likely for a Komen breast cancer fundraiser that I'm doing.  If I ever put up anything that isn't a charity or any type of graphic that I'm being compensated to display for you, I promise to clearly label it as an advertisement.

Thanks for reading this, and hit me with any feedback you may have.