Happy October birthdays to Sesame Street characters The Count, Grover and Betty Lou

Image via WikipediaDon't know if you've noticed, but I have a thing for Sesame Street. Maybe as I approach 40, I find it harder to accept being a grown up and just regress further and further into childhood. Hmm. So I should be asking for a pacifier soon, right?

I'm sure the whole October thing isn't a coincidence as it's likely around the time new seasons were starting and thus new characters were introduced. But happy birthday to three Sesame Street characters this month, including my favoritest, Grover. (Sorry, Abby, but it's true. He's my favorite. You're a close second, though!)

First up is Count Von Count (AKA the Count, guy with scary laugh, arithmomaniac) on Oct. 9. According to Sesame Street Unpaved, he's 1,832,652 years old. That book came out in 1998, so he'll be ... really, really old this year.

Grover's birthday is Oct. 14 and our "cute, furry little monster" friend will be 38. Or maybe 40. Depends on whether you want to count the pre-Grover years on the Ed Sullivan Show and the first season of Sesame Street when he was green and nameless. I love that he's the same age as me. That's so cool! (Yeah, I can't remember if I'm 38 or 40 either.)

Bringing up the rear on the birthdays is Betty Lou, who celebrates on Oct. 24. She's at least 36 as she made her first book appearance in 1972. Couldn't find her first TV appearance. Not that we noticed, probably. She was almost a throw-away Muppet from the beginning and certainly never had the star power of Zoe or Abby Cadabby. Poor girl.

It's not a birthday, but don't forget to celebrate National Grouch Day on Oct. 15. We can pretend it's in honor of Oscar just to round out the month.

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How to survive a zombie attack - in plain English

The video below is just silly, but in general, The Common Craft Show takes the "back of the napkin" concept to video in a great way, explaining the simple and the surreal. I stumbled upon them while doing some research for a discussion I'm leading next month on using social media in marketing. They've got some great videos explaining about social media, RSS, podcasting, Twitter and more. This video here? Tackles the all important topic of surviving a zombie attack. Because Halloween is just around the corner. Enjoy!

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Now dropping by from Sesame Street - Zoe!

I've been hitting the Sesame Street sauce again over at Squidoo. Can't help it. Just love Sesame Street!! (Except for Elmo. Just not going to budge on that one.)

Anywho, I do like Elmo's best friend (originally "girlfriend"), Zoe, so she has now joined my Sesame Street characters contingent. Sadly, there's not a lot of info on her. She's orange (obviously), likes ballet (obviously) and, well, that's about it as far as facts go, really. (Something about a pet rock, but I've never seen it. Maybe it's an imaginary pet rock.)

So why do I like her? She's incredibly upbeat and just generally having a good time with life. And she doesn't have any language skill issues like Elmo. Bonus points for that! She never took off quite the same way Abby Cadabby has, although she is really popular. She just lives in Elmo's (and now Abby's) shadow. Always the sidekick, rarely the star. At least she gets more attention than Prairie Dawn and Betty Lou. They were the sad female squad until Zoe, Rosita and Abby came along. Hooray for some great girl power with Zoe!!

What's with the backpack hate?

We went to NY for the Labor Day weekend. Had a great time as always - challenge of the subway during non-regular hours, fat and fluffy french toast at Sarabeth's on the Upper West Side, adventures in a hotel room smaller than my bathroom.

But our trip this time was marred by a severe case of backpack hate at sporting venues. We went out to Flushing Meadows for a day to catch some tennis at the U.S. Open and had tickets for a game at Yankee Stadium (final season!). In both locations, suddenly a backpack was verboten. Now, I know, the pack I use on trips isn't the most stylish thing, but that wasn't the issue. It was just that it was a backpack.

I still can't quite figure it out. You could take in a tote big enough to carry a five-year old or a sling with the same kind of strap, but the second it had two straps on it (making it ergonomic), it was banned. What gives?

The weird thing was that there was no issue with taking a backpack in at the Empire State building or at the natural history museum. Nope. Just at the sports events. I just don't get it.

So, is this going to be a trend? Do I need to start carrying something else when I travel? A backpack leaves my hands free, distributes weight properly and allows room for everything I might need in a day. Not to mention, it fits under the seat in front of me on an airplane. Where am I going to get all that in another bag? (Not to mention something that my hubby will actually carry half the time.)

So it was off to eBags.com for me. I looked at messenger bags, slings, totes, hell I even looked at diaper bags. (They have lots of compartments and tend to be water-proof. Bonus!) My thought was to stick with something that I could put across my body to get the hands-free part, although the strap through the boobs isn't a good look. Sigh. I found some good alternatives, but ended up back in the backpack section where I might have found some options.

Some I liked, but can't see hubby carrying:








A few good ones that he might be willing to carry:






Cute diaper bags. Struggle to find ones that weren't too big:




Best options I found for me:

Still would rather have something not a messenger bag, but this guy is pretty stylish looking and bonus of a padded strap.

These slings make me think of gun bags, but I can see where they'd be better than your average option in terms of single strap bags. But very on the not-pretty side.

I never realized, but there's a whole collection of backpack bags where the backpack straps zip together to make one strap and get you in the door where backpacks are banned. Downside - straps aren't padded and I worry about the zipper digging in and being uncomfortable. Anyone have any experience with these? Cute too, but I'm not sure my hubby would carry it. :-)

This was by far my favorite (which also means it's not cheap!). Looks like a seriously fashionable bag, but it's a diaper bag, full of compartments and the like. Add the convertable strap and you're good to go with backpack convenience. While still looking better than the average schlub. On sale right now for $96.

(As always with eBags.com, get free shipping using the banner below or $20 off orders of $100 or more using the text links.)

Snuggling up with Sesame Street plush characters

Fall is getting close, so some of us will be snuggling up under blankets, hopefully with loved ones. But ya know, kids get that snuggling can be a year round activity, regardless of weather. All it takes is a lot of love and a snuggly friend.

For my young friends, there isn't much more lovable than a Sesame Street plush character. In fact, one of my friends (who is now a very grown-up 11 and finds it embarrassing to be reminded of this stuff) had a mini Elmo that went everywhere with us, growing smaller over the years through multiple washings and lost stuffing. The other has a Big Bird that still has a hallowed place under the covers.

So my latest Sesame Street lens is a collection of the Sesame Street plush toys, from the mini sizes to jumbo ones more than three feet tall. All your favorites are there, including minis of some of the minor characters like Guy Smiley and Sherlock Hemlock. And of course, pictured here, the Amazing Mumford. Remember his catch-phrase? Do you?

A-la peanut butter sandwiches!

Gotta love Sesame Street.

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Renting the top spot at Squidoo for a while

Yes, it has finally come true. I have finally hit #1 at Squidoo. And for once remembered to take a screenshot so I could remember this moment. :-)

I'm not entirely sure what I thought my Squidoo trajectory would look like when I started up a year ago. There was so much about the internet I didn't know, and it took me a good six months before I even realized what it was I needed to learn. But there have been a lot of good things happen to me by accident in the last few months, including some #1 lenses in three categories and two lens of the days recognitions. And now, probably the hardest prize of all - #1 overall on Squidoo. This is a pretty rare club because, well, there's only one of them and there's a lot of really great competition out there. (As an example, just check out Janet's lens on working from home, which is what I'm renting the spot from.

I'm honored to be part of this club. Will strive to continue to be worthy of it.

Setting records over at Squidoo

Of all the times to take a vacation. I'm sitting on the plane after we landed in New York Friday and we get the new via hubby's iPhone that McCain has actually named Sarah Palin as his VP pick. Now, I had pretty much pegged this as a risky move and thus unlikely, so I hadn't been overly worried about it. As soon as I saw that news, I started to panic. No computer access for four days. No way to update my Sarah Palin lens, which was sitting on page one of Google for a search on the woman. Well, how bad could it be? I mean, just how many people would be dropping by, after all? Won't they all be heading to the major news sites?

Want to know? More than 33,000 were there just on Friday alone. Since then I've been getting 5K-10K people a day for a rolling total of more than 78,000 for the past week. I've been told that I utterly smashed the one-day record for hits to a Squidoo lens and I'm just astounded by the amount of traffic.

Not to mention all the comments! Pages and pages and pages from people on all sides of the aisle/issue/spectrum. And I've given them lots of polls and debates to participate in. It's almost become a full-time job to keep up with them all at this point! It's been fascinating to see how many people are drinking the Kool-Aid the GOP has been serving so far and how many just refuse to take off their Democrat blinders for a minute. We are a truly rigidly divided country in a lot of ways.

If you've been by and had something to say, thanks. If you're still holding out judgment on Palin and your vote, good for you. Things should get really interesting come Oct. 2 when the VP debate rolls around. Think anyone's going to care about the others? (See, this was one of my negatives for putting her on the ticket. No matter what McCain does from this point out, Palin is going to get all the attention.)

(Wow. Three political posts in a row. I promise I'll get back to mascara and kids stuff soon.)