Holidailies: it’s live

Holidailies is live and kicking and you should check out all the wonderful posts if you haven’t already. It’s a great way to find new stuff to read.
Meanwhile, lots of Holidailies participants will soon wander over to this site for the first time, possibly not knowing what to expect. I like the idea of a little introduction, which I notice other participants have done.
Hi. I’m Jette. This is my movie blog. I write about movie-related stuff most of the time, except when major hurricanes wipe out portions of my hometown and I feel compelled to write about that. I live in Austin so I write about a lot of Austin movie events. Austin is a wonderful town if you like movies.

I used to keep a more personal Web site, which is how Holidailies got started. Back in 1999, I was hanging out with the online journalling community on mailing lists and Web forums. A thread started on the gifts and cards that various journallers were planning to send to their readers. Homemade gifts, mind you! I responded with, “Hey, I don’t need to make ornaments or send cards. They’re getting The Gift Of My Prose.” Somehow this ended with my promising to post something to my site on every day I could in December, and I was eventually joined by maybe a dozen other writers, tops. I wish I could remember who they all were, but I have no record. As far as I know, I may be the only person who has participated in every single Holidailies, but that’s because I’m in charge.
Over the years, one thing led to another and I stopped writing about secret crushes and writers’ block and the more colorful relatives and decided I would prefer writing about movies. Once in awhile I lapse and tell a family story. They just haven’t been that funny lately. It’s hard to write eye-rolling stories about my grandmother when my grandparents lost their house to post-Katrina levee flooding and spent two months trying to figure out where they would be able to live next. (They have a nice house now, near my parents. That may be a whole other writing opportunity someday, I fear.)
I stopped telling stories about my job situation when I noticed that people get fired for that sort of thing, even though I was careful about what I wrote. However, I quit my job a few months ago and now I work on freelance and contract projects from home. So I can tell all the office stories I want, but they are mostly about the cat curling up on the computer power supply to get warm, or the way I set up my desk area. Or how about a story about how I lost my whole Firefox bookmarks file this morning for no reason we can discover? Now’s a good time to go back up your bookmarks/favorites file.
I like movies a lot, so I like writing about them after I see them, or telling stories about the movie theaters of my childhood, or how my family was bizarrely influenced by Cannonball Run. I’ve seen a couple dozen movies that I haven’t reviewed yet, so I expect some Holidailies entries will be movie reviews. If that’s not your thing … well, there are 165 sites in the Holidailies portal, and dozens more doing Holidailies at Home, so hopefully you’ll find something else you like.
By the way, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang had the best clever dialogue in any movie I’ve seen this year. Hopefully I’ll post the review tomorrow, if I finish it. In the meantime, go see it before it leaves theaters (if it hasn’t already).