Polgara Knits

Polgara and Gracie, on the occasion
of celebrating Miss Gracie’s 2nd birthday

I just realized I missed my blog’s two year anniversary last month. Oops? That’s what I get for neglecting it so.

Also celebrating her two year anniversary is Miss Gracie (as well as her brother Noah). Unlike my stale and boring blog, Grace grows more adorable and engaging every day. Unfortunately I’ve been neglecting her too, which is even more shameful than ignoring this blog. This is my note to myself to go visit her next weekend.

In related news (related to the blog, that is), I’ve been working on updating JaneEspenson.com this weekend. It’s been languishing in the very outdated Greymatter that it first started in, so yesterday I just up and ported it over to WordPress. (Yes, it was that easy!) Now comes the hard part–the design. Man, I suck at design. I’ve gone through bazillions of free theme templates and downloaded a bunch that I like, but I don’t want a cookie-cutter design for Jane’s site, which means actually doing some work on my part. Yay? I found one template I thought I loved, but really I just love the colors (not the layout or the font), so now I’m looking for the right layout that I can then edit with the pretty colors. Someday I will learn the ins and outs of CSS enough to build one from scratch, but that day is not today.

But because of this quest for improving Jane’s site, I now look at this site and think, Booooor-ing, and yawn in its face, so it’s very likely that this site will be getting a facelift soon. I have to finish JaneEspenson.com first, though, as it’s been stagnant for far longer than this site has.

For future reference, this is a list of all the things I always put off that I want to get done “someday”. Hopefully when I’m bored, I’ll remember this list and maybe actually accomplish something on it so I can finally cross it off!

+ The desktop computer needs all the data backed off it so I can either turn it into a server, or get rid of it. I haven’t even turned it on in months.

+ The desk needs to go. Clean everything off, toss most of it, find new homes for the rest, and get rid of the desk.

+ The many half-burned candles on the many flat surfaces are not “knickknacks”, they are clutter. Box them up and put them away when they’re not being used.

+ Get some large binders with pockets for discs, and de-box all the dvds (starting with television, I think). The packaging is pretty but takes up unnecessary space. Put the packaging in storage boxes under the bed for the someday when I have a bigger place with more space.

+ Be brutal and declutter. The lamp I never use ’cause it doesn’t have a shade; the hideous dog statues that my elderly neighbor gave me “just because”; the beanies from my Disney collecting stage; cabinets and drawers I haven’t opened  in years and couldn’t even tell you what’s in them (obviously I don’t need whatever’s in there).

+ Put half my displayed pictures away in a box, and put it on the calendar to switch them out every four-six months.

+ Clean out the yarn. There’s no way in the world I’m ever going to use all that I have. Some of it, I lost interest in it as soon as I brought it home. DESTASH already!

+ Go through the closet again. I got rid of a lot of stuff last time, but there’s still a lot that I classify as “winter wear” that I never touched this winter. It needs to go.

+ Finish painting the bookshelves.

+ Watch the dvds on the “to be watched” shelf.

+ Learn new skills from the gazillion videos on lynda.com. PHP, Drupal and advanced Javascript top the list, but it wouldn’t hurt to learn more advanced Photoshop skills too.

+ Redesign JaneEspenson.com, it desperately needs it.

+ Redesign my own site, it also desperately needs it.

+ Clean out the storage closet.

+ Clean out the fridge. Say goodbye to the lovely orange container my sister gave me, ’cause there’s no way I’ll ever use it again anyway now that it has what amounts to a science experiment living in it.

+ Scan old photographs.

+ Hang pictures in the bedroom. The walls are depressingly bare.

+ Flip the mattress pad.

+ Finish Haley’s blanket already.

+ Start Chloe’s blanket.

+ Color my hair (waaaay overdue).

+ Wash the bathroom ceiling and walls.

If you think a list this long should insure I’d never get bored, then you underestimate how lazy I really am.

Flash has been my life lately, specifically learning Actionscript 3.0 from a class at Otis. Tomorrow is the last one, and I must say, I wasn’t sure at first that it was a good idea, but now, nine classes later, I’m glad I did it. I’ve learned a lot, not least of which is that a) I’m not stupid, and b) there is usually no magic recipe for my task and I just have to do it on my own.

Two important things I’ve learned that either took much googling, or wasn’t on google at all:

1) .text and .htmlText are two different things. The second one will insure that your text field renders in html. (Learned this from a colleague, as google gave me no joy.)

2) MouseEvent.ROLL_OUT and MouseEvent.MOUSE_OUT are also two different things, and this is very important: The former works on the parent movieclip, while the latter is more likely to work on whatever child object is contained within the movieclip (so!frustrating!).

I have put them here so I will always remember them, and hopefully to make them easier for others to find, should they need them.

Now it’s time to conquer the checkboxes nested in a drop-down menu. Yay?