THE GOVERNMENT

ALREADY RUNS

MEDICARE,

AND ALWAYS HAS!

SINCE 1965!

LOOK IT UP!!

Good freakin’ lord.

In helping my sister set up her new website/blog, I’m learning some new stuff to help my own site. Or is it hindering? As you can see, my latest “improvement” is changing the homepage so it shows excerpts of new posts instead of the full content of each. I thought it would make the page more manageable and less like a 12 story building, but I’m not sure the execution works like I pictured it. I don’t know if the images are to small, or the excerpts are too short, but there seems to be too much space everywhere. Unfortunately my PHP skills are still in the baby-steps stage, so I’m not sure I can change it to the way I want. Phoo.

This place definitely needs an overhaul, regardless. The design, the content, the architectural structure (or lack thereof)…. Sadly there are at least three other websites in line for my spare time before this one, and two of them are paying gigs.

Nancy and Paula

I’m back from my fabulous 40th birthday celebratory cruise to the Caribbean. There was much snorkeling (that’s my sis and me in the pic, in Grand Cayman) and swimming and walking and kayaking and shopping and sweating (lordy was it hot and humid!) and drinking and singing (karaoke and piano bar FTW!) and eating and relaxing and reading and laughing and not nearly enough dancing (my knee and ankle just didn’t cooperate) and celebrating in general. And perhaps best of all, I only gained two-tenths of a pound-?!! Woot!

For those so inclined, pics can be found here (that’s the edited-for-quantity set).

I need more kayaking in my life. Good exercise combined with zero strain on my weakened lower extremeties = general awesomeness. More snorkeling would be awesome too, but to be honest, the Pacific scares me a bit. (Sharks!)

ION, I need something new to look forward to. Too soon to start planning for next year’s Disney trip? Hmm…..

I suck, I know. Moving on….

19 days away from my birthday cruise, and I can hardly wait. I’m spending way too much on accessorizing my trip (two new cameras, six new tops, three new bathing suits, two pairs of sandals…), and I’m not finished yet, if my list is any indication. Good thing I have one freelance project in progress and another waiting in the wings. I’ll be travelling with nine others, and yes, in case you were wondering, we’re going to have a BLAST.

I’m going to Drupal Camp L.A. this weekend. I hope. I’m planning on it, but new situations sometimes trigger panic attacks. We’ll see. My two projects are both in Drupal, so it would be very helpful to learn some of the basics, and network with the experts so I’ll have someone to beg for help when I break something.

ION, my department moved from one building to another last month, so that’s been an adjustment. Like any change, there are pros and cons, and one of the pros is getting so many opportunities to wander the campus when there are no museum visitors–in the morning before the museum opens, in the evening when the visitors all leave, all day Monday when we’re closed to the public. This place is so quiet, peaceful, serene, and a dozen other words that all mean the same thing. Walking across the plaza after work and not seeing another soul, hearing only birds and maybe the soft whisper of the wind? It’s a special moment that I cherish every night it happens.

And speaking of, I should get going. It’s supposed to be a gym night, but I’m sooo not in the mood. I’ll go Thursday, and make up for tonight by walking down the hill to the parking garage (another perk, although it’s hell on my bad knee and hip).

I’m thinking of changing the name/focus of this blog. Sadly I’m not longer as obsessed with needlework as I was when I first started Polgara Knits. I still knit and crochet, but not nearly as often, and yarn purchasing is no longer an irresistable force for me.

Right now my focus is more on two other things–JuNoWriMo and learning PHP/MySQL.

The JuNoWriMo is my mid-life crisis, I think. I’m turning 40 in three months, and want to have something tangible to show that I’ve accomplished something. I don’t have a family (and have never really wanted one), I don’t own anything (except debt) and while I have wonderful friends and a wonderful job and two wonderful cats, I feel I’ve lived a life of stasis. A 50,000 word novel, crappy though I promise it’ll be, is at least something I can hold forth and say, I made this. It’ll probably take me longer than the month of June, unfortunately (see next paragraph), but I should be able to do it in three months.

The PHP (and the sudden division of my focus from must JuNoWriMo) is due to two opportunities that look to be headed my way (one more likely than the other) for freelance web development this summer. Both projects will pay well, and both will require back-end database management, so I’m studying up on the PHP so I’ll be ready to hit the ground running when things are more definite.

So yes, knitting and crocheting is no longer all I think about or all I do with my spare time. I’m a little sad about it, but new things are good (and are the opposite of static!), so I’m choosing to think positively. And I haven’t turned my back on the needles and hooks, they’re just no longer the center of my life. It’s all good.

Now if only I had time for a site redesign…

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?

I started a My So-Called Scarf a couple of weeks ago with Patons Merino in the Good Earth variegated colors (and honestly, I think those colors look better wrapped in a skein than knitted out) and got about 12 inches into it before I realized I’d made a mistake about 15 rows earlier, reducing the stitches by two, maybe four stitches (I couldn’t remember what I’d started with). I find the pattern too confusing to reverse knit, so I just frogged the whole thing. I have yet to finish an MSCS–the pattern is so pretty when knitted up, but I’m terribly slow at it. The last time I just got bored and never went back (plus it was super-scratchy Red Heart, which didn’t help).

I frogged it almost a week ago, and haven’t started anything else yet. Nothing’s inspiring me to make me want to pick up the needles. On the other hand, I’ve finished three books this week, two of them just this weekend. My passions really do seem to have cycled back to books, as I’d rather be reading than just about anything else (which is so very welcome, as that’s how I grew up, loving books more than anything else). I’ve purchased 11 new books this week and picked up another two at the library. Instead of trying to get through my TBR list, I just keep adding more titles to it.

My favorite new series, which sadly only has three books so far, is the Vampire Academy series. Despite its ridiculous name and covers ripped off from Buffy Season Two stock photos, the writing is pretty good, the plots are a fun ride, and the characters are so real they practically jump off the page. Sure, there’s the hint of a Buffy influence throughout that swells up and practically conks you on the head like a Quellar demon falling from the sky in book three, but as a fan of the Buffster, I don’t see this as a bad thing. Seriously, so many books use Buffy to try to pull you in–”It’s Buffy in St. Louis!” or “It’s Buffy if she grew up, got married, had kids and became a soccer mom!”–but these books capture more than the kick-ass-ness of Buffy, or the smartass wisecracks. These books are about friendship and relationships, and how they change and grow while the characters deal with their reality. I really love these books.

Lime and Tangerine Fun Fur scarf

Originally uploaded by BronzePolgara

I finally finished (as in, weaved in the ends) the Lime and Tangerine Fun Fur scarf. I finished knitting it over a week ago, but I hate the “finishing” part, so only got to weaving in the ends today. It’s cute and fuzzy and bright, but honestly, I’ve decided I like my pink and orange one better, which I made this week with Bernat Boa in Tweety Bird and Chick (yes, those names are real, but translated means “orange and yellow” and “pink”). (Since I’m posting this directly from Flickr, I can only include one pic at a time, so to see the Boa scarf, go here.)

Mindless scarf knitting, for the win!