23 JunThings That Make Me Happy

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I walk past a bicycle shop, a chocolate shop, a circus, and a million bazillion bicyclists on my way to work every morning & all that in reverse on my way back to my car. I’m going to suck up & pay for parking under my building for a variety of reasons (certainly not the least of which I, like the nice HR lady, am apparently a princess) but knowing the proximity to these things makes me happy anyway. My new drive to work, now that I’ve found the back roads I’ll use most of the time, is lovely and not crazy strip mall. I followed someone a good part of the way (until he turned off to head into Ballard) with a “Shut Up and Fish — The Deadliest Catch boat tour” bumper sticker on his car (Muffy Bolding, I thought of you!). He looked like a crusty old crabber too, not all fancy pretty boy. I found a new cemetery that is on my new drive into work. I wave at all the interred people as I drive past. I smile as I walk into work. I smile all the way back to my car after a day of insane information overload. I have landed in a place where there are my people, culturally (erm, and by culturally, I mean they’re library people, and lolcat people, and geeks, and nerds). I like my new team, I like my new manager, I like my new company. They’re all so excited to have me there. I really hope that I can live up to their expectations and that what I bring to the table justifies their excitement. I like M2’s googlemonsters and utter adorableness. I like that M1 is such a lovely 10-year old. I like that P seems to be settling into his new job.

/as you were…

Category(s): Stuff, The World At Large, Work
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10 JunAnd So It Comes to an End

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Well, Friday.  I’m going to miss many of my coworkers something horrible, and there’s about four or five I wish I could just stick in my pocket & bring with me, but… I can’t. It’s a small world though, perhaps we’ll work together again. And hopefully meet up again as friends (and frequently) long before we work together again.

Next week I am free! FREE!! FREEEE!!!! I have to get the front bearings in my car fixed, go to the spa, try to find a home for various things in my house, get new fish for the bedroom tank (and a new right light for the living room one)… and more stuff than anyone should probably pretend to try to cram into a week. Which means I won’t get a bunch of stuff done. Ah well. Maybe at least watch some bewitched… Heh.

So I’m just off the BG Trail at home & 13 miles down BG is where I start work come the 22nd. I want an electric bike. Really badly. It just seems like a good thing to do rather than trying to find parking or bus an hour and a freaking half each way. I know. 13 miles — 1.5 hours. LAME.

Oof. M1 wants to know what the tooth fairy does with all the teeth. We also had the discussion last night about whether or not tooth fairies were like dentists — ie, not a single tooth fairy for the entire world, but a number of tooth fairies serving a local region. This whole fairy thing is starting to get complicated! We’re on our third envelope now, although lately they’ve been leaving notes on the white board we brought home from storage. Crap. I don’t know what the tooth fairy does with all the teeth!

Category(s): The Girls(TM), Work
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23 MayRandom Saturday Update

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Hangin’ out on a Saturday morning watching the first season of the Muppets with the little girls. I think I’ve got everything done from the upgrades, except for one or two forum issues on mamaphonic, but everything else is pretty good. Now to add final touches… when I have time to figure out what those are!

P is out golfing today, leaving me with the girls. It’s a beautiful day, not entirely sure what I’m going to do with them though… not for lack of things to do (clean rooms, fish tanks, parties, etc).M2 came in this morning at 8 — I’m ready for a little nap already. My fault, I suppose, for not going to bed earlier… but really what’s new?

Probably next weekend we bring all our stuff home. I have no idea where it’s all going to go. The books in bookcases, but beyond that… We brought the teapots & teacups back already, and the hats, and a few other various bits of things… So much to go. Such a little house.

Mmmm. Yes. Definitely nap in order. And then everything else…

Category(s): Stuff
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02 MayWhat A Week

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And much of it will be left uncommented on because… because… because I just don’t feel like going into it. Some pretty terrifying, some of it ecstatically good (no, I didn’t get laid off or get a new job, no I’m not at liberty to discuss currently).

So on to the parts I *can* go into. I got a new computer! It’s *SHINY*! And NEW! And [vista aside] NEATO! And *SHINY*! And did I mention NEW! And SHINY!? Yes. The jack in the old one was starting to go & the desktop downstairs is dying a slow and painful death and, it just seemed like time. The one downstairs is more than six years old & the laptop was four, so it was probably time. Now to shift the old laptop downstairs, see if I can convince someone to let me keep the old one & install Ubuntu on it. No, I don’t know why I’m so obsessed with curiosity about that, but I am. So there.

Jaina Bee visited last night and this morning. As always, it was an excellent *FANCY* time. She brought the girls <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Explorer-World-Portable/dp/0399534601″>How to Be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum</a>, so we had to do some things from that book. The little girls ran around like crazed monkeys, because that’s what they do. We had a lovely dinner. Eventually we put the girls to bed & then Jaina & I got to hang out and just talk about all sorts of things & get caught up. It was lovely. This morning we got up & P made pancakes & bacon, we had some tea, did a little coloring, & got kinda sleepy. We decided to get the blood flowing and went geocaching. Couldn’t for the life of us find the first cache. Tried a second cache & broke our not-finding streak! Finally! It’s about time! As fun as just finding the location is, it’s a lot more fun when you actually find the cache. We came home & it was about time for her to head on off to her next adventure.

P & M1 finished installing the new flooring downstairs. It’s SUCH a dramatic improvement & So Very Exciting! Hoorah! And now? Now it’s time to walk M2 to a friend’s house for a fancy dinner play date. She’s ready to go & I guess I’d better get that way too…

Category(s): Friends, Stuff
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22 AprDark & Stormy Night

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The wind is up, the dark has set in & I can hear rain on the roof. After a very difficult week last week… I feel good. Happy even. Tired, mind you, but happy.

I had lunch today with a friend from college & once again, I have the good pleasure to be happy to know the people I know. Easy conversation, good catching up, it was nice. Possibly even nicer than when we were actually in college now that we’re actually, y’know, *grown up*. The people who have come crawling out of dark corners in the last six or so months who have grown up into genuinely nice people has been really lovely. For a long time I was worried about meeting up with people I “used to know” — that it would be weird & awkward. And I guess sometimes it is. But I’m more willing to give it the benefit of the doubt now.

M2 has just told me that her favorite dessert is nutella with ice cream in crepes. That’s my girl! TimTheCat is making bread on my belly, earnestly. Earnestly kneady cat is earnestly kneady.

Life is pretty good. Maybe not as good as this critter has it, but pretty darn good, all the trials & tribulations not withstanding.

Category(s): Stuff
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15 AprRequiescat In Pace, Steve

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I’ve thought of him frequently in the last year. He died last night around 6pm of pneumonia complications. He was a botanist, hardcore pagan, hardcore bicyclist. Around 6pm last night as I was leaving work, I was suddenly enveloped in the most amazing floral scent, then as quickly as it came, it disappeared. I thought maybe it was the flower shop, but no, the shop smelled faintly damp & earthy & not at all sweet and floral last night. I also saw a unicyclist commuting on my way home. I don’t know what that synchronizes to, but it made me happy and very sad all at once.

I remember he had sweet snakes and the most amazing wall of orchids I’ve ever seen, still. It seems like there must have been hundreds of them. I started trying to keep orchids this past year (just the easily available, relatively inexpensive ones), I even got one to start new little buds up the flowering stalk (while the main plant got sadder & sadder), but I’m far from mastering it yet & I keep doing something wrong & they slip through my fingers. I haven’t had the nerve yet to try again & it may be some more time yet before I try again now… or maybe not. I just hate knowing I’m doing something wrong, but not knowing what (probably multiple things on both sides of too wet, too dry, too much attention, too much attempted benign neglect)…

And of course then I remember jumping over bonfires & poking geoducks & full moon walks & so much more. His passion for *being* and loving whole-y left a deep impression on my college self that has really stuck with me all these years. He’s one of my very favorite Greenmen *ever*. I may not be able to keep orchids alive but I had black pansies All Summer Long last year & I intend to again this summer. My first black pansies were from him, of course. OH! And I have a little lemon plant. Because it lives inside right now (winter & all), I’ve been hand pollinating the flowers. Yes! That’s right. I’ve been helping flowers fuck! He always said, “I think it’s really quite appropriate yet strange that we express love by tearing the sexual organs from plants and presenting one another with them.” I have a bunch of sweet little green lemons growing. And of course every time I help the flowers fuck, I think of him too, because how can one not? :) I always think of him when I hear Crazy Man Michael by Fairport Convention, too.

Michael he whistles the simplest of tunes
And asks the wild wolves their pardon
For his true love has flown into every flower grown
And he must be keeper of the garden

And now the keeper of the garden has flown too.

Category(s): Memento Mori
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05 AprIt’s Update Time Again

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Yesterday was a busy but fun day. I chaperoned a Girl Scout hike. It was very beautiful but I am very sore this morning! The girls were all troopers and completed a four mile round trip hike. Also? *I* completed it. There were water falls, a dog named Billy, playing down by the river (but not close enough to fall in, although there were plenty of puddles that got stepped in), falling down in mud (it’s not fun until one is covered in mud, right?), pictures by water falls, games of tag…

The ending game of tag in the parking lot was really entertaining. Towards the end of it, M2 went to my car to get a drink of water & she was rummaging around in the car trunk looking for it, crawling all the way in. I came over to see what she was after, and her Daisy troop leader came over too. She finally found what she was looking for, we goofed around a little bit, then M2 hops out of the trunk, looks up at her Much Loved Leader, gets that devilish, impish look in her eye like she’s up to something, and says, “I’m still IT!”, smacks her leader with tag & runs off giggling hysterically with glee at her sneakiness.

After we got home, there was dinner with M1’s best friend & her family. It’s so nice to live close enough to friends that we can just walk over. We drove over — by EOD, my feet were in no shape for walking even another quarter mile… which means I had to be ok to drive home & C mixes a pitcher of drinks when we go over. :) I mixed up The Blue Drink after that & because it’s all alcohol she & I couldn’t drink it on top of the previous pitcher so I dumped mine, I imagine she dumped hers, and P pounded his after accusing me of alcohol abuse. But I had to drive home & he didn’t. They’re a very sweet family & dinners with them are always so nice. It’s nice that they also have kids that get along with our kids.

I guess I’d better get up & look around & see what needs to get done today that got totally ignored yesterday. I’d rather take a nap. The hike-y thing was tiring! Sounds like the little girls just met the new neighbors next door. They seem to have a four-year old daughter. M2 is very excited.

Category(s): Friends, The Girls(TM)
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29 MarRandom Sunday Update

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Guess it’s that time again. I seem to do a lot of random updates anymore. Oh well.

Been doing good with the exercise stuff lately. Sometimes I even manage to get into That Zone where I can put the book down (don’t laugh! It’s nice to have something to focus on other than the weird little flashing lights on the machine & the seconds as they tick away!) and just “go inside” and think about the interesting body mechanics going on. Funny things like the theory of least effort (for maximum results). I can’t remember exactly what it’s called right now, but sometimes when people are exercising, they over exert for the returns they get on the exertion & it makes them tired & feel like they’re exerting a lot of energy. And they are — more than they need to to get the same results. So, I watched how I was doing that some last week. Sometimes your own worst resistance comes from yourself. There’s probably a lesson in that somewhere. Anyway, when I pay attention to the unnecessary resistance, I find that I can reduce it by around 50%. Interesting. I also have been doing the “random hill setting” or (depending on the machine) interval settings, set to push me to the top of the cardio training & then the bottom of the cardio. Will be waiting until I’m in better shape to push into the above cardio heart rate zones for now… Still puzzling on how to deal with upper body stuff since anytime I do anything with my arms, I end up with carpal/ulnar nerve squickiness. I like being able to use my hands, I really really do!

I’ve been knitting and spinning a lot more lately. I finally finished that fleece — it’s downstairs drying now. Yesterday I pulled out some yarn that had been bagged and threw it away. It was in shreds from casing moths. Dumb things. Dumb house on the market not letting me hang stuff out in the light & air. I wonder what’s going on with the stuff that’s actually in storage. Could be ugly. Ah well. It is what it is. An excuse to spin more! I need to knit a bunch. I think I’m about 600 yards short of sweater from the fleece, so I’m not entirely sure what to do with it. I finished P’s gloves, started a scarf for M2, I’m helping M2 learn to knit. I’m spinning a really soft-like-buttah merino silk blend. It’s spinning up fine, wheeee! I want to make a fulled hat. I want to make a fulled water bottle cover. I suspect I need to figure out some other stuff to do with what I’m spinning up too. Especially since I can’t do a whole sweater. Maybe. When it’s dry, I’ll actually count the yardage. The estimate I’ve got right now is based on weight (X ounces was Y yards, so XxN=Z yards). Yes. I know I probably mangled the math equation there, but y’all will have to forgive me. The prospect of counting out all the five foot loops out of ten hanks of yarn doesn’t inspire me.

It looks as though we’re going to pull the house off the market at the end of this set of months. It’s not going anywhere & the stuff that’s selling is stuff that’s all gussied up. No thanks to the open house where TimTheCat got out, we have the back deck to repair. And it needs rebuilt anyway, so, whatever. And various and sundry other things. It just is what it is. Everyone has an opinion on what it is that they see that they think we can improve on it. And if we did all that, we’d have a new house. Building up/adding on would make us the most expensive house on the block. But then, assuming building up could be done, does it matter, because if we do that, we’d just stay here & maybe after a zillion years when they cart us away to the old folks home or whatever, will we care whether or not we were the most expensive house on the block? I don’t know. We’re going to go talk to our nice money manager fellow tomorrow next week. The alternative is to pull off, do some stuff & try again next spring. Oh, goody.

Category(s): Stuff
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23 MarAda Lovelace Day

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Who’s Ada Lovelace? From http://www.pledgebank.com/AdaLovelaceDay:

Ada Lovelace was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.

Why does she get her own day & what’s this all about?

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.

Until just a few weeks ago, I knew who Ada Lovelace was, or thought I did… and then I found out she’s also Lord Byron’s daughter. Poetry & computers. Code has its own rhyme & reason, poetry like a puzzle to put together, it makes sense, in a funny sort of way.

Wikipedia’s article says of her, “She is today appreciated as the “first programmer” since she was writing programs—that is, manipulating symbols according to rules—for a machine that Babbage had not yet built.” Funny, as a taxonomist, I sometimes feel like I’m manipulating symbols according to rules for machines not yet built too… Or for machines built, but not configured, or for machines that are built, but there’s no code interface to use the work I do. Or for machines built & programs owned… but not by us… But then again, despite the potential missed, my work is used & valued, just not always very efficiently or elegantly. You win some, you lose some, you draw some.

There’s Grace Hopper too. Her wikipedia entry says, “A pioneer in the field, she was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I calculator, and she developed the first compiler for a computer programming language.” Woo, compiling! It’s the moment that always makes me fret while I wait to see if I did the install right… Computers are like knitting though. I can always tear it out & start over if I have to. Well, maybe I can’t always, but I certainly have often enough to know these things are possible.

Then there are the six women who programmed ENIAC in 1943-1945: Frances Elizabeth “Betty” Snyder Holberton, Betty Jean Jennings Bartik, Kathleen “Kay” McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum, & Frances “Fran” Bilas Spence. From the article:

“Because the ENIAC project was classified, the programmers were denied access to the machine they were supposed to tame into usefulness until they received their security clearances. As the first programmers, they had no programming manuals or courses, only the logical diagrams to help them figure out how to make the ENIAC work.

They had none of the programming tools of today. Instead, the programmers had to physically program the ballistics program by using the 3000 switches and dozens of cables and digit trays to physically route the data and program pulses through the machine.”

In 1995, my best friend from college sat me down and showed me the minimal basics of html. Up until then, it was Word, solitaire, & tetris. Then came M1, Bee Lavender & HipMama.com & Mamaphonic. I hand-coded all but the board at Mamaphonic until 2004 when we switched to the Drupal CMS. I did some things here & there on HipMama.com before the CMS, but that was largely coded by Bee and various other people. Not long after I started doing stuff with the mamas, I landed myself pregnant with my second & in library school. Now I know whole bundles of women doing amazing things with technology. Phoebe and her really neato stuff with wikipedia, Darci and her completely amazing stuff with Plone & Plinkit, Lynn to whom we are ever thankful for helping us with Drupal at the HipMama.com sites, and hordes & hordes of other women doing awesome, amazing, excellent work as well.

Ada & Grace & all the rest of you, so many that I missed, thanks for blazing a trail for us!

Category(s): HipMama/Mamaphonic, Work, geekery
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22 MarSunday Morning Misc. Update

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Having kind of a melancholic, nostalgic morning. I dreamt about one of the places I worked in college (Archibald Sisters) & want to go wander around the store. I need some new lotion & they’ve got all kinds of other entertaining things to look at too. Pretty earrings, funny cards, novelty misc.

There’s a showing in 1-2 hours. We’re fourth on a list, the lady said she’d call & give us a 15 minute warning. Depending on the broker, that’s anywhere from “we’re in your driveway” to never. It’s too early to take the little girls to the Y — total pita to have M2 sit by me & try to watch the tv on the machine, assuming one with a tv is available.

We’ve reached the point where we need to talk with our financial advisor about staying on/pulling off the market, but I think it’s just a formality. At this point we’re exhausted & need a break & the house needs work that we just don’t have time to schedule for between our work schedule, open houses, showings, & life. At the end of this three months, I think we’re going to pull off for a year & do stuff like get floors taken care of, downspouts, new doors, fix the back deck that’s part rotted & part pulled up from trying to rescue poor TimTheCatDude last fall… there’s other stuff that needs done too that we just haven’t gotten to…

And here comes M2 in her fairy wings. My sweet toofless wonder singing Oats & Beans & Barley Grow.

Had a lovely time with friends last night. It was the first time they’d met trailofstars & the girls. We had a lot of fun. Friends are good to have.

And now it’s time to get ready to go in case they actually do end up showing up on time. I’d rather go back to bed & back to sleep.

And there they ring. Ten minutes & I’m not dressed or hair brushed. Ah well…

Category(s): Stuff
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