Pardon me? Kaeloo the TV show?

Okay, so, I want to take just a quick second to explain the nicknames that I use for my children on this page. The Murse, one evening, decided to call my son, Archer, Archoo Dee-Two. I thought this was brilliant … I am, after all, a Star Wars fan. It was really cute, and he has embraced it. He has an Archoo Dee-Two YouTube channel and everything. (Go like it. He gets such a kick out of followers.)

Ilkaisha — Like a Ninja!

Recently, I was sent samples of an energy shot called GungHo. It’s review time.

I love love love me some nerdy marketing. GungHo’s marketing strategies tickle my inner nerdsense. Aimed at students, gamers and those with an inner Ninja waiting to explode from the shadows at any moment, their commercial, print and electronic copy is funny and memorable. There’s even a comic on the box. I was all ready to get some NINJA LIKE FOCUS when these arrived.

The product says to avoid other energizing substances for maximum effect, so it really took me a long time to remember not to have a morning coffee or to indulge in a can of soda to really give these a good trial. When I finally did, it was a pretty dire situation. I have a hard time sleeping sometimes when the Murse is away. I had had a long, restless night, and the dawn woke the children way too early. I was fighting sleep at noon, so I went to the fridge and snagged a GungHo.

The Season of Sandwiches

Image courtesy of Apolonia / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Nah, not that kind of sandwich. Every year, when the big tents are rolled out to shelter bottle rockets, snakes and sparklers, I am most fondly reminded of July 2000. I literally cannot believe that this story is now 13 years old, but it goes something like this:

Gathered to join in the family holiday celebration of some of our dearest high school friends, we bemoaned the horrible selection of legal fireworks available for general sale in the state of Pennsylvania. We decided that we could definitely do better than these, so we set up a workshop in the garage. While the adults drank and socialized in the house and on the back patio, we were painstakingly unwrapping fireworks, reserving fuses, shaking powder onto paper plates, and filling everything we could find with new combinations. Empty cherry bombs were filled to the brim and sealed with electrical tape. We harvested a film canister and did the same to it (because we’re old enough to have had cameras that needed film).

What was I thinking? (the blog renaming) I am ilkaisha.

Before I get too far into the whole Sonjariffic thing, I’m going to put a stop to it: My internet alias has been ilkaisha for more than ten years now, and I think I’m sticking to it. If you do a Google search for the term “ilkaisha,” you will find TONS of stuff that relates back to me. My Twitter. My Pinterest. My Facebook page. Pages I don’t remember opening. Products I’ve reviewed. Photos of recipes that I’ve made and rated on Allrecipes.com. Pictures of me and my kids. Images of random people who I’m friends with. But they all come back to me in about three degrees of separation at the maximum.

Some of the things on the Google search are things that I am not particularly proud of, and I think that these things were part of the reason that I wanted to make a new name for myself on this blog. But, even though I’ve been a bit of a jerk at times in my life, and even though you can’t really ever erase anything that’s out there on the intertubes, I’m not parting with my handle. It’s mine, and Sonjariffic is one that actually belongs to a traveling photographer who has a Facebook page, a blog, and some other credentials to back her claim to the name up. I like the name ilkaisha, and before I typed it, no one ever had. So, I’m taking the good with the bad and claiming my rightful WordPress name and address today.