I WAS going to post a “Happy Holidays” post and pixel something cute and Christmas-y to to go with it, but I didn’t have time. Then I was going to draw something… or at least make a little sketch. But I didn’t have time for that either. Guess it’s to late now

Me and Markus spent the weekend at my mother’s house and Christmas Eve with my dad. I got to see the relatives again and eat obnoxious amounts of food. It was really nice overall. Even the weather played nice.
There’s been total chaos in the southern half of the country due to the snows and cold, but in the northern end everything was calm. Cold as fuck, but calm.

I”ll post again after New Year, so until then I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend, regardless of what/if you’re celebrating, and that you will have a happy new year!

Today is the annual Qbee Blog Day!
Last year I posted about the club, how much it means to me and why you ALL should join *poke poke*

This year I think I’ll talk about what we actually do in the club.

Trade patches

Trading patches is the main “thing” in the club and the only required activity. But you only have to trade once a month, so it’s not much. I think trading is the thing I do the least of to be honest.

Club activities

Then we have the club activities organized by the staff. It can be pretty much anything. The annual Blog Day is one of them. Right now we also have an Advent calendar (get a patch for your quilt every day!) and a secret Santa project where the participants get assigned a random bee to make a gift for without revealing who they are.

In the spring we often have an Easter egg hunt where we first make a shitload of eggs and then hide them on our websites. So to find them you have to search through EVERY website in the member list. It’s a lot of work but it’s so much fun seeing all those different websites, I think that’s my favourite activity.

And for Halloween we usually have some kind of Trick-or-Treat activity where we all make our own Halloween patch and then go around trading it with other participants. Afterwards we usually vote for our favourites and the winners get award patches for their quilts.

Last month there was a Thanksgiving activity where you had to send in your favourite fall recipes (with little images to illustrate the dish). I’m terrible in the kitchen so I stayed far away from that though

These activities are all very random and you don’t have to participate in any of them if you don’t want to.

The message board and the chatroom

On the club’s website we have our own message board for… well, everything. The staff post about updates and activities, but it’s also for the bees to discuss anything they want to. We talk about books and movies. Post pictures of our pets and our latest artwork or crafts project. We ask each other about html and hosting companies and complain about the weather. It’s a general message board really.
The difference from all the other MB’s out there is that the Qbee board is by far the friendliest and most open-minded of them all

There’s also a chatroom (IRC) where we can talk to each other in real-time, but I haven’t been there much myself. I’m in a weird time zone so when I’m online nobody else is.

If you want to get to know the other members, the board and the chat is the place to be(e)

The rest

There are lots of little things going on in and around the club. We have awards handed out for various things (creative patch award, unique website award, bee of the week etc.) and the “Bee Spotlight” where a bee is interviewed and featured on the site. We have a section where you can upload and donate your own graphics to the club, for members to use on their quilts.

There is a book club called Pages that I’m always planning to get into and always fail miserably. I am registered as a member but I just can’t seem to get my act together and participate in the book reviews and discussions Maybe a goal for next year?

Not to mention the Qbee Facebook page, Twitter and Tumblr.

And sometimes the members come up with their own activities! Like organizing a Christmas card exchange We do that almost every year and it’s so much fun getting cards from all over the world.

Basically, there’s lots to do in the hive But none of it is required other than the trading. If you’re not a bee you’re really missing out!

Do you know what’s irritating? Laying a 2000 pieces jigsaw puzzle and discover that one piece is missing! I’ve been working on the bloody thing for two weeks, and now I’m one(1) piece short of completing it!
I’ve searched everywhere, but I can’t find it. The puzzle is really old so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but still… Gaah!

Puzzle almost finished

I have now completed my first task of the 101 list I decided to go through ALL my accounts for various online sites!

First of all I wrote down every site I could remember or find in my bookmarks/inbox. I decided not to list webshops since you usually get registered by default once you order something and then can’t really unregister.

And you know how many I came up to? 80!! I mean… 80? How the hell? I guess it makes some kind of sense considering I listed everything I’ve ever joined during the past 5 or so years online. It’s game sites, message boards, social networks etc. that I’ve registered with just out of curiosity. But it still caught me off guard.

But that wasn’t the real scary part, the real scary part was realising just how many of these I actually use. After deleting everything unnecessary I still had 42 accounts left!
I may not use all of them often, but it’s still stuff I want/need to keep for various reasons. Like a ticket reservation site that I use once a year to buy festival tickets. Or a money transfer site (kinda like a Swedish Paypal) that I’ve only used once in my life, but it’s still a good thing to have if you ever need it.
Or my Threadless account that I keep for all the pretty t-shirts I never can afford to buy and that print design I’ll never ever make

One very annoying thing I noticed during this was that a lot of sites didn’t allow you to close your accounts. Some sites lets you unregister by simply clicking a button. On some sites you could ask the staff to remove you by sending an email or fill out a form. But a lot of sites stated clearly that “we don’t delete user accounts. Ever”. I know it doesn’t really matter seeing as I could just log out and never log in again. But it kinda irks me that I have several accounts out there just… laying around. With my name and e-mail in them. Like leaving dirty laundry in a corner of the living room.

But still, now I know where I am so to speak. And I even made a document with all my usernames and passwords for future reference. Good girl *pats self on head*