I am at home in Orlando right now, to be with family and relax during the Thanksgiving holidays. Another stated goal of this time is to avoid using the computer as much as possible so I can begin healing from my RSI's. As you can tell from the mere fact of my blogging, such is more difficult for me than it sounds. In fact, I've begun to see computer avoidance as a discipline I should practice for spiritual as well as physical reasons.

At any rate, it is good to be home. One of the tasks my mother has set me for my time here is to go through all my old boxes of saved school projects, mementos, love letters, etc., and to vaguely scrapbook them. (For me, "scrapbooking" involves putting things into a binder).

Near to the end of my trip in Geneva, I remembered that I had a video option on my digital camera, and randomly decided to take a short video at one of our dinners. It's below.

The question of whether or not to post this video was somewhat difficult, mostly due to the sudden rampage of videos hosted on my friends' blog, TrippingOnWords. Claire and Lara recently started adding one or more video spots to most blog entries, and I challenged this decision, for the following reasons:

• Video can be more stimulating, but less evocative, than text
• Video snippets are representative of pop culture at large and therefore should be avoided
• Once you go video, you can never go back--readers will be shocked at text and drop like flies
• Putting up videos of yourselves (especially as two young, attractive, American, globe-trotting females) seems a cheap way to boost a readership

The only problem is, the reasons I really felt bad about their videos were:

• Their blog is more interesting than mine
• They are globe-trotting, and I am not (apart from a week here in Geneva)
• Their blog has many times the readership of mine
• The content of their videos, while not "good" in any technical sense, are the kind of things that people will find cool. They're quirky, funny, and the poor quality and awkward dialogue just makes them that much more endearing

In short: jealousy. I couldn't watch those videos without feeling that somehow it should be me making hilarious comments while sucking coffee from a bag. Alas, the life I have chosen to write about on this weblog, while exciting, is not likely to make me reality TV's next star. While that rankles my underlying and cynically-hidden desire for popularity, I guess I don't need this weblog to be my vehicle to fame. Truly: I'd settle for its covert functioning as a singles ad! (Only that doesn't seem to be going too well either)

So, the decision to post a video was hard, because (a) I wondered if I am just doing it out of jealousy, which seems bad, and (b) I have no intention of posting more videos, so I don't want you to get accustomed to it. Remember, you didn't come here for fancy, flashy visuals! You came here to hear me whine about myself...oh...

But in the end I was bored enough tonight to edit this together, and here it is for your viewing pleasure. Flaming Desserts: (for those using Bloglines, it may not show--click here)

Now a message for those girls over at TrippingOnWords: consider the fine polish of video workmanship (which causes this jewel of cinema to glimmer with the sheen of greatness) to be a gauntlet thrown down to the ground before you, challenging you to come forth with the best you can summon. It's a duel! (And no help from outside experts allowed)