It happens. An story idea I thought was important and I did the work on is blocked by a Force Divine that is yelping at me at a high rate of speed, “You gotta do this, not that.” And I say “I can’t, looky I really worked on this…” and the Force Divine says, “Save it for next week, kid. We got business here.” And I say “Yeah, but…” and I am lost before I pronounced the “t” in but.  So this is free form and we’ll see where it takes us.

Hang on folks 'cause we're about to have a "YouTube President" in the White House.  Yes, it's true he may now have to give up his BlackBerry, but that doesn't mean his administration won't use the media and the internet in ways that have only been imagined in politics before.Last night President-elect Barack Obama did his first televised interview since the election with Steve Kroft of "60 Minutes." And though interviews by new presidents on "60 Minutes" are not new, the way Mr. Obama has used the media to his advantage rivals that of The Great Communicator himself, the late President Ronald Reagan.

I had been blogging for about a year when I was first approached by someone asking if they could send me a book to review. My first thought was "Free books!" My second thought was, "What do they want in return?" I hemmed and hawed and decided to reply by saying while I would be interested in the book I could not promise that I would give a good review and if I didn't like it I'd say as much on my blog. They protested that of course they didn't expect a good review, so I took the plunge and I've been lucky. I've been drama-less. Other bloggers have not been so fortunate in that regard. It seems some authors expect puppies, roses and most importantly a good review in exchange for a free book.

Joss Whedon, writer and creator of awesomeness such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, and most recently Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog has a new show in the pipeline, Dollhouse. The bad news? It doesn't start until February, and many are already predicting Dollhouse's demise. The good news, though, is that it is filming now, and people are already writing about it on the internet!

I've been on a quest to find a few new music blogs to my newsreader, plus reconnect with some of the ones I've been neglecting for far too long. I discovered Power Pop Review through Last.FM. It's penned by one of my friends/contacts (who goes simply by Power Pop Review), and is a joy for those of who still love flipping through bins of musty vinyl.

Try to make a point to read from an inspirational book every now and then. I guess they're not for everyone, but over the years, inspirational books have gotten me through some pretty tough times. I have always thought that a big part of better health is better mental health. When we feel good emotionally, we usually feel better physically. For me, better mental health can be as simple as reading an inspirational quote, aspiration, or meditation.

Sometimes when looking for relevant sites with whom to swap media for our conferences I also find really cool stuff going on outside the conference realm. Silicon Valley Rocks! is one such cool event that BlogHer is happy to support (and that I look forward to attending).

I recently received a review copy of Sharon Harvey Rosenberg’s first book, "The Frugal Duchess: How to Live Well and Save Money". Sharon runs a popular blog by the same name and tells her own personal story in this book.

A long time ago I was a Deputy County Clerk for the County of Los Angeles. Part of my job was to issue marriage licenses. I think that was the best part of the job. There were specific tasks I had to perform, questions to ask and I watched as the couple swore or affirmed what they said was the truth. Sometimes I looked at a couple and thought “For the love of humanity dude, run, do not marry this chick!” or maybe “Hell, they don’t need a license, they are already married in their hearts.”

A post, "The Interview Obama Regrets, But We Love," has hundreds of hits from CNN and Google, telling of the nation's obsession with the Obamas, the nation's next First Family. Some surfers are especially fascinated with President-elect Barack Obama and Michelle Obama's daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7.

Do television shows like "Sex and the City" and "Gossip Girl" encourage teen girls to get pregnant?  Well that's the finding of a Rand Health study published last week in the November issue of Pediatrics.  According to a New York Daily news article by Jane H. Furse about the study: Rand Corp. behavioral scientist Anita Chandra found teens who watched the sexiest shows were twice as likely to become pregnant over the next three years as those who watched few such programs.

I can't talk about what I am reading because that's a whole lot of nothing at the moment. The reasons are varied but can largely be summed to a busy couple of weeks and no pressing library due dates. Most of all, I'm giving myself a break and cutting myself some slack. I've looked back over the past couple of years of reading and I've made some discoveries about my reading patterns and what I can sum it up with this - the more I try to structure my reading the less I will read.