I feel like I’ve been shopping a lot! Yesterday i ordered a bunch of clothes for fall/winter, everything was on sale too. What happens to your winter clothes? Where do they go? why do you need more and more every year? Anyway, forced myself to get colorful things, i’m on a lifelong quest to make sure I wear enough color.
My new cell phone came today. If I could get one piece of advice it’s to stay the hell away from Motorolas! I had a Motorola V300 and while it was not an expensive phone to say the least, it was a big piece of shit. It’s key problem was that it would just end a call after 30 minutes. No warning or anything, you would just suddenly be talking to air. After it did this a few times it would lock up and you’d have to reboot it. It also could not hold a signal, admittedly, this was probably due more to the dog eating the antenna (antenna is a word I can;t spell and I must look it up every time). I’m back to a Nokia, the 6101. It’s cute, it’s little, I like the flip phones. It has more features than I need (who needs video on a cell?) but it also has features I wanted. Go me.
I’ve also been buying birthday presents and other presents left and right.
And I went to Target and bought more dog treats than is morally responsible.
and to switch gears…
Yesterday on NPR they did a segment on aging. A man spent years interviewing his grandmother as she progressed into old age and into the fog of alzheimers. In the beginning I was struck by a statement of hers, it was early on in the recording sessions, she was still lucid. She said the thing that was hardest about getting older was forgetting your life, she’d said she had had a wonderful life but was forgetting the details. I don’t want to forget my life. I have had such great happiness, wonderful memories and adventures and friends, I don’t want to forget that. I don’t want to forget Ghengis, or being punch-drunk hysterical with laughter in a rest stop bathroom outside Chattanooga TN, I don’t want to forget 2am chili cheese fries at Ben’s or rollerskating an entire summer away when I was 7. I want to be able to sit around with my friends in 50 years and still be able to recount in great detail the horrors of the Precious Moments Chapel, or that time I went to the State Fair with David and I did all the things I ever wanted to do, including eating cotton candy and watching the fireworks. I want to sit there eating my shitty nursing home gruel and wow people with my descriptions of lunch at Len Bergs in Macon.
I don’t want to forget any of this. I hate the idea that I would know, much like the lady in the segment, that i’d had a good life, I just couldn’t rember it. She knew, she knew she was forgetting so very much and it bothered her a great deal.
Perhaps this is why I vomit so much of my brain onto these ephemeral pages. Perhaps I just want a record, not for you, but for me.
And it has been a good life so far these 32 years. So many people met, so many places visited, and there will be more.
If only we could be as tall as we are happy, I’d wrap myself around this earth twice to smile on such joys that are my days.

Things are chugging along nicely at the new velvet. Tonight I edited the style sheet. Took me considerably longer than it should have because I was not grasping the overwhelming power of Movable Type. Do not go into the ACTUAL style sheet that you have set up on the server! Do not edit that style sheet, you will be painfully disappointed when you go to save something in the MT control center and it overwrites all of your work. Ouch.
I’ve kept essentially the same color scheme that I have here. I’d like something new, but 1) it’s kind of an identity and 2) I am far to functionally retarded to actually put colors together. I end up with atrocious mixes. None of you remembers the first iteration of this site, it was bad, all reds and purples. So, I’ve learned that if someone makes you a site with a good and solid color scheme, you keep that color scheme.
If anybody has any advice regarding exporting and importing MS Access data into MT let me know, otherwise I’m jumping in as soon as I hear from Keith (he has a pc with Access on it, I don’t).
I’ve got nothing good to say. I was supposed to go to Target to pick up sundries and put it off to tomorrow justifying the delay with the promise of doing dishes tonight. Except I ended up not doing dishes. And I ended up spending too much time trying to figure web stuff out. The only real thing I accomplished is purchasing a metric buttload of fall/winter clothes off the web.
So, I’m cranky, I ate no dinner, my dogs are desperate to go out which means I need to get dressed.
grumble grumble

Set up my new domain host, setting up the movable type site, have a headache (but not from frustration, just tired from working on it). I need to figure out how to get my old posts in the new thing and also change the colors so it is not boring blue.
I will keep you updated, hopefully the transition will be smooth.
Also, let me say it again, you CAN get a reasonably priced domain hosting that has 24/7 in house tech support! I love Pavel. Pavel is real and speaks english and answers emails and does NOT use the word “Kindly” over and over again.
Okay, i’m off. I’ll be more interesting later.

Okay, I’m just warning you now, this is going to be long. I am going to try to edit where I can, but it is going to be long. Your reward? Not much, but it feels good to not have much. or something.
Friday
Duplex buddy, katie, brought us a huge plate of tofu spring rolls just out of the blue. They were fantastic. I made sure I did not eat too many as I knew we were going to the Riverview to see a movie.
The Riverview serves the best popcorn in the city with real butter. So good. David and I inhaled a large while watching “Broken Flowers”. Not a bad movie, very Jim Jarmush though a little too slick compared to his previous stuff.
Afterward, David and I threw the dogs in the car and went on a late night drive. So much fun. We ended up in Rochester. The dogs love going in the car, but it they get really disconcerted when we don’t stop at the dog park within a few minutes of leaving the house.
Saturday
Saturday was 12 flavors of chill. David had to go out in the morning, and he napped when he came back. I spent the day reading, watching movies and hanging with the dogs. We took the dogs to the dog park after dark which is a bit odd. You can barely see them, but they had fun.
After was Chipotle, more chilling, some chilling, hanging out, chilling and bed.
Sunday
Up early early early early. John and James were running the Twin Cities Marathon. John, James and their mother, Mrs Lee, came to the house sometime after sunrise but before my brain turned on. David and I drove the guys to the Metrodome where the race began. David, Mrs Lee and I went to Maria’s Colombian Cafe for Cachapas, the best fucking corn pancakes on the entire planet.
Then to the 15 mile mark to cheer the guys on and get pictures, then home to wait…
Then off to the capital to pick them up at the conclusion of the race. They did well, they made good time. This was John’s 3rd and James’ 1st marathon.
The five of us hung out at my place for a while and the dogs were the star attraction, how could they not be. My dogs rule. Actually they’re jackasses, but what are you going to do.
The Lees went home to rest and David and i took a nap. We made plans to meet for dinner at Hong Kong Noodle (honk honk noodle) for dinner before parting. I can not tell you how disconcerting it is to wake up to partial light that looks exactly like morning light and not be sure what time of day it is or if you are late for work or …wait, honk honk noodle!!
God I love this place and it is even better when you go with a group and 3/5 of that group is from china! We had beef with asparagus, tofu and black mushrooms with vegetables, squid with vegetables (spicy), hollow vegetable in bean curd sauce, seafood in curry broth and my all time favorite: crispy sole with crunchy (crunchy crunchy so good) garlic. We ate in the traditional manner where you just have your little rice bowl and you pick from the platters, adding a little at a time to your rice bowl. I was so in heaven with the food that I would occasionally space out. God it was good. So very very good. Who wants to go to honk honk noodle with us??
Monday
On top of everything else today, i also slammed my finger in one of my desk drawers. The pain was so bad i could not make a sound. I put a sushi bandaid on it to make it better.
Yeah, so what made today so fucking irritating? I go to show someone the photo i had up and I find some dick kids have hacked all my subfolders. It was a stupid and inelegant job, you’d expect more these days from these kids, but whatever. Last week i’d decided to move my website to a new host because I was just getting nowhere with my tech guys. Seriously, if you want to spend a weekend fighting circular logic, there’s an office full of wieners in India that would be happy to help you. So, my patience at an end I get to go open a support ticket named “okay, what the hell” which amuses me because it keeps popping up in my mail notifier. Today on the tech support roster we have ‘Gilbert’, ‘James’, ‘Jared’, ‘Rey’ and ‘James’ again. I think I have had all these guys before. of them, I love Rey the best. he seems to be the smartest of the bunch and his answers are not copied and pasted from somewhere else.
At one point they even blamed me and my password for my ftp log in. First of all, the ‘hackers’ didn’t even use my ftp log in, this was some automated process and secondly blaming me is akin to this:
Security guard: Your office got broken into because it has a door and windows
Me: but you left the door unlocked. and open.
So it got fixed, but not after I got emails and calls. and i got pissed.
The time has come, i’m investigating domain hosts. I am entirely willing (and capable) to pay more for a small company with in-house, in the U.S. tech support. I want people who are available, people who know the servers, people who have actual knowledge and not just the knowledge base. I have a short list already, if anyone has anything to offer let me know. At that time I will also be setting up Movable Type as I will be sure to confirm that they can handle it.
Easy ASP Hosting has been fine as long as everything was running smoothly (except for those early days when my database wouldn’t connect and they had some driver issues on their end but they fixed that). They are inexpensive and if you have few needs they’re good to go with. But, seriously, their tech support will make you want to rip your face off and send it postage due to cuba.
long long long day.
I’m going home. I’m going to pour me some Maker’s Mark and maybe do the dishes. Photo will be updated this evening when I get a quick chance.
Coming up….Lily will be here in less than two weeks. I had to send all my contact info for her to give to her mom so she could be sure that i would not hack her daughter to bits. Dear Lily’s mom, I will not hack your daughter to bits. I promise.
Goat farm at the end of the month!!!
Also, when the fuck did Canada suddenly because not part of the US? Seriously, I know we like to pretend they’re all autonomous and such, but for paperwork purposes they’re just part of the US right? Why did I have to pay to call Canada? I’m calling up the president, we need to invade Canada and rectify this situation. It cost me like $15 to call there!