Season's Greetings

To LiggyzDreamz™ readers around the world - I wish you the very best of the season!  Thank you for your continued support this past year!  You guys rock!!!

A special thank you to my readers

I just wanted to take a moment to let my readers and followers know how much I appreciate all your support, comments, and feedback.  THANK YOU so very much!!!  

International Animal Rights Day

Based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), signed by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10th 1948, the UDAR seeks protection of similar rights for animals calling for an end to "exploitation or oppression in the name of science or sport, or for use as food, for commercial profit or for other human ends".

Bloggers Unite is a community of bloggers that unite on a selected topic at least once a month. I try to participate when there is a cause I truly believe in and want to help raise awareness for through my blog.


Tomorrow, December 10th, is International Animal Rights Day. As an animal lover myself, I've always been blessed with the companionship of either a cat or dog, or both. So protecting our furry neighbors means a lot to me. These creatures, domesticated or not, cannot speak out for themselves. If you have ever seen videos of the experiments carried out on them or practices that subject them to harsh or extreme situations/conditions, you can only try to imagine the kind of suffering or amount of pain they experience.

If you've been following my blogs, you may have noticed that I have had a link to the campaign against seal hunting in Canada posted on the side bar of my blog for quite some time now. It's one of the causes I've worked hard to help stop. The practice of beating the beautiful baby seals just to get their fur and sell their meat is just so inhumane and cruel. And it's not like there's an overpopulation of them to need to get rid of them. So far the campaign seems to be effective. Together we've been able to get the European Union to prohibit the trade of seal products earlier this year. The price of sealskin in Canada has also gone down to the point where it wasn't worthwhile for most seal hunters to do any more hunting. (Hurray!)

There are many organizations out there that support the fight for animal rights, especially for the helpless animals subjected to excruciatingly painful experiments to test the effects of chemicals used in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, etc. You can learn more about the fight and what you can do to help by visiting the Uncaged website.

Bloggers Unite for Literacy

If you are reading my blog right now, you are lucky that you learned to read. And I'm glad you could share my passion for arts and music online through this blog. But did you realize that one in five adults in the world today does not know how to read? They may have learning challenges that were not dealt with. They may not have wanted to learn how to read. Or, they simply live in places where literacy is restricted to only certain genders or privileged few. That's sad.

Those who cannot read are missing out on the many wonderful benefits that reading brings. Reading can provide hours of entertainment that does not require electricity to do (except of course if you're wanting to read at night and don't have a lamp or candle). It is also a great way to obtain information that is valuable for making decisions about practically anything. It boosts a person's confidence. It also helps us learn more about others in the world around us, thereby bridging the communication gaps between cultures. There are countless other benefits.

Literacy Foundation: The Gift of Reading - Cinderella
Uploaded by hourigan - Full seasons and entire episodes online.

On September 8, 2009, Bloggers Unite participants like me, want to raise awareness for Literacy efforts being sponsored by UNESCO. UNESCO proclaimed this day (Sept. 8th) as Literacy Day on November 17, 1965 and started celebrating it the following year. Writers get out and promote the value of literature (not just their own works). Librarians and educators dedicate more time on this day to promote literacy awareness in the schools and public libraries. Even musicians donate music and time to raise awareness of this issue, too. There's still so much more we need to do together to help more people become literate. Help others around us learn. Read to a child. Show them that books can be enjoyed just as much as their favorite video game.


Together we can do it!!!

System Admin Appreciation Day

We often take our system administrators for granted until the day our computers cannot connect to the network and we can't get on the Internet to check our emails. No kidding! And I should know...I'm married to one!

The last Friday of July has been designated as System Administrator Appreciation Day and we bloggers who have joined Bloggers Unite want to encourage everyone to participate and show your appreciation for the system admins that keep us connected (wired and wirelessly - if you want to be specific!) as well as for the other IT people that work with the admins.

Being a system administrator is not all that easy, trust me. System Admins have to monitor all the scripts that keep programs running, trouble shoot, and often have to work odd long hours to fix things when the system just doesn't want to work the way it should. And when you get technology-challenged people calling in for assistance and the IT Help Desk can't resolve the issue, then the matter moves up to the next level for assistance. It can get crazy, but it is hard work trying to find the "root" of the issue especially when the computer user is unable to explain or point out specifically where and how the problem started. So the IT person (and system admin) ends up having to do a lot of investigative work on the system and that often takes hours!


On the other side of the picture, being married to a system administrator reminds me of my life as a military spouse (he was in the service when we first met and got married). When duty calls, your spouse is going to be "unavailable" to you for awhile. There was even a time when we were on vacation (on a road trip in fact!) and we had to pull over at the parking lot of a business three hundred miles away from home because of an emergency at work. He had to log on to his work laptop and connect wirelessly to the office and do his stuff. Luckily things like that don't happen too often. And luckily, there's plenty of ice cream available at the convenience stores (LOL!).

But you know, in spite of such a crazy life, I'm proud of my "system admin" because I know he keeps things running smoothly at his workplace and he keeps our home network running great so I can blog all I want or check out my favorite rock stars's pages (hello, Sebastian Bach!). Thank you, system admins around the world for helping keep us all cyber-connected!

April 16th is Blog Reader Appreciation Day

It means a lot to me to know that since I've started this blog, there have been over 7000 views on my blog so far. What's so cool to me is knowing that I've had readers come across my page from all over the world. Even though not everyone likes to leave comments on things they read, I feel glad to know that my thoughts and writings are shared with others. (Thanks!!!)

If you ever noticed the little feedjit map widget I have on my side bar, it shows the countries that my readers have come from. The top four countries to have readers visit LiggyzDreamz™ are:

United States [37%]
France [8%]
United Kingdom [6%]
Canada [6%]

Don't worry, I have no idea who you are. The map doesn't give me any personal information, just a broad look at where my readers come from and which posts are popular. As a matter of fact, in the North American region, these are the top five most read or most visited posts:

LiggyzDreamz™: Seether's "Careless Whisper" remake [23%]
LiggyzDreamz™: Twilight's Bella and Jacob fan art [5%]
LiggyzDreamz™: New Moon - new movie poster [4%]
LiggyzDreamz™: Dora the Explorer Grows Up [2%]
LiggyzDreamz: Criticism on the Twilight Critics [1%]

Anyway, I thought I'd give you a little feedback on this page. Thank you for taking the time to read my posts. I'd love to hear back from more of you sometime. Let me know what you think about my posts, okay? Until then, have a safe rest of the week and as Aerosmith sings, dream on...