randomness

Preparing for the Annual Mom Visit

This is not just a typical Mom Visit I’m preparing for. If it were, I’d just have to figure out what we were doing this weekend besides taking pictures at the Zoo. As it is, we’re road tripping to the Dayton area to visit Grandpa and Grandma Cook in Centerville on Saturday, and Amy in Union on Sunday. The trip was Mom’s idea, even the Amy part, which I think is really cool. Yeah.

Anyway, since we’re visiting the grandparents, I’m sure that the majority of the conversation on Saturday will revolve around genealogy—so I have to get my genealogy hard-copy in order. Now, I would much rather have a laptop or something with my genealogy files on it so I could just show them how I’ve compiled all the census records and death certificates and such into each family’s story, almost… but alas, Grandpa appears to be technophobic and refuses to learn how to use a computer. So, the genealogy research is reduced to the facts and documents I’ve unearthed online and via mail order. Grandpa always reveals some random stories and family info that Mom and I hadn’t known before, though, so I’m sure it’ll be fun, anyway. I’m also planning to bring the digital camera and attempt to photograph some of Grandpa’s family photos, and maybe some headstones if we go cemetery-hopping. We’ll see how that works out.

OK, gotta reorganize all the censuses and shit strewn around the basement, and then go to bed.

randomness 1 Comment

Cat 2, Plants 0

I was sitting downstairs, checking my e-mail and reading my daily blogroll, when I heard the unmistakable sound of something falling onto the floor. Since it’s just me and the cat, it could only have been a.) the cat being a dumbass, or b.) gravity taking hold of some random poorly-placed object. Mentally voting for option a.), I jogged up the stairs to see what the cat did.

Remember that begonia the cat whiffed the top off of a couple weeks back? Yeah. Well, I found the rest of it on the floor of the Media Room / Library, along with a good quarter-pound of freshly-watered Miracle-Gro.

At least she didn’t break the pot.

The good news is that I got to see that the remains of the begonia does in fact have living roots. Hopefully they’ll stay that way in their newly-repotted-after-being-unpotted state. And in further good news, the top of the begonia (living in a vase in the kitchen window) is beginning to sprout feathery little roots.

The best part of all? Storming around the house like a raving lunatic, chasing the cat with a spray bottle.

site-related 6 Comments

Working in a vacuum

I was never very good at working alone without peer feedback. So, I present for your commenting pleasure, the redesign work-in-progress. It still needs lots of detail work, but this is the general layout I’m thinking of starting with. I know I’m violating some cardinal rule of a website redesign by letting you see it way, waaaay before it’s ready for prime-time, but I’d like some comments. And, hell, it’s not like I have a really huge reader base, anyway. We’re all friends here.

FYI, this is a jpeg of a Photoshop comp, originally 1024px wide. The main content area is arranged so that users with 800×600 resolution can still see the entirety of the content. I’m planning to go whole-hog CSS this time, so the partially-opaque backgrounds will actually be DIVs with an opacity setting, not some trickery of background images. The flower background (and likely the color scheme and masthead) will change as the mood strikes me, although whatever image is there will remain fixed as the page scrolls. I’m defenestrating the iFrames. (Look it up.)

I’m not positive I’ll be keeping the TagBoard, as I’m hoping to upgrade web hosting and move to some sort of publishing software that allows comments. However, if I do keep it, you’ll all be glad to know that I’m working on upgrading to TagBoard Advanced. I doubt it’ll be around for the new design, though.

Comments from the peanut gallery are welcome and appreciated.

site-related

Ready for a Redesign

Yep, I think I’m ready to embark on my website redesign. Maybe if I had a real website with real content, I could get recognized in the “blogging community”… or some shit like that. I mean, shit, look at Dooce. She writes about her new baby, and breastfeeding, and getting fired from her job because of her website, and wrapping pasta around her dog’s snout because it’s funny. We’re both intelligent ex-Mormon women with a good sense of humor and a decent amount of web design skill, IMO. If I spent some quality time on my new site, got it to look all spiffy, maybe spent another few minutes actually composing blog articles rather than just being satisfied with my stream-of-consciousness posts?maybe then I could get some new readership. Or at least feel better about myself.

Next weekend: Mom’s visit and our trip to Dayton. Visit Grandpa and Grandma Cook and Amy.
Weekend after: Michigan Ren Fest (maybe)
Labor Day weekend: Taste of Cleveland (maybe)
Following weekend: Saginaires / Northern Aurora alumni picnic & Black Swamp w/ Amy
Weekend after that: Gravity Games in Cleveland Saturday & parade on Sunday

Gotta staff the phones tomorrow. Blech. I don’t mind it so much, except that I have some stuff from last week to wrap up, and new stuff to learn for this week, and it’s just about impossible while answering phone calls all day.