Friday, September 26, 2008

Present and accounted for

Apparently people have noticed the lack of inane chatter coming from my direction. The always lovely Julie T actually called me yesterday morning to check up on me! Too much quiet broken only by vague tweets and cryptic Facebook updates had her worried.

We then proceeded to natter on about the current financial crisis; concluding with the obvious need to exhume Milton Friedman and beat him about his rotting head and shoulders with copies of the $700 billion dollar bail-out package.

Oh yes, I can paint a pretty picture.

But I don’t want to get into that here. It is affecting my little family in a very direct way and the past couple weeks have been stressful to say the least. So between all that and being busy with school and kids, I just haven’t had much to say. I also wonder if my new medication (trying the preventative thing for the migraines) contributes to the quiet. It hasn’t really stopped the headaches yet but it’s only been 10 days. So we’ll just give it some time.

Still struggling with Kyle and his homework. Is it really that hard to put your name on a paper? Really? But he hit a beautiful double out to right field during his game last Wednesday. That was cool. And Erin is a crazy baby. She started spinning in circles yesterday. Thankfully it was her whole person spinning around and not just her head! I wonder about those 2 sometimes. I’ll try and get a new video up over the weekend.

And my Web Programming class has taken a turn to the hard. No more HTML/CSS here is how to make the given content pretty. Oh no, lets move on to some actually programming! With JavaScript we can make things happen! Like causing my brain to actually have to think. Damn, I remember that unpleasant feeling. And what is that smell?!! Of course, been-there-done-that Chris snickers from the side-lines.

My office building is filled with toxic fumes. I came home from class last night and WaMu was gone. I think that covers everything.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Wiped out

Wow. Didn’t mean to disappear down a black hole on ya. But this has been a strange week and I don’t think I’ve fully recovered yet. And really, I don’t even know what I would be recovering from. Headaches, new medications, stock market woes, JavaScript, being a brunette… wait – that change is good. I think. Hard to tell when no one says anything either way. Kyle is calling me Goth, which is pretty damn funny. Hey, is it too soon to give him the Sandman books? I just added Neil Gaiman as a friend on GoodReads. I’m rubbing bandwidth with the big boys now.

What else. Didn’t see Coleman Barks. Totally ok with that. (I’m not ok with the fact that I can’t find the copy of his CD I made years ago) We went to the circus last Friday. Fun, but exhausting. Erin does not sit still even for lions and tigers and bear oh my. Or the tigers, elephants, and small white horses that we actually saw. I took some pictures –shocking, I know. Look for them around Thanksgiving. Tonight I have to take my Chapter 10 test. JavaScript really gave my brain a workout. Wish me luck. Cause when I do poorly, Chris suffers.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Back-up dancers: Prefer anonymity

Because code isn’t geeky enough, how about some particle physics?

Today was the first test of the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) built by CERN. I haven’t been paying much attention to it because my brain has been focused elsewhere (Cough laissez-faire). But I have been hearing about this video from different sources for days now. It is a rap about the LHC and the comments are all positive and stating that the science really holds up. So this morning I finally watched it, and it is just a good as everyone says. Well, not the actually rapping and dancing (HA!) but the science – this is the kind of stuff I love. In fact, I can see myself spending a bit of time surfing around CERN’s website this morning. Chris is now feverishly praying that I abandon my PolySci kick and start reading about quantum physics again. Never did I spit venom whilst reading science books. Well, there was that one time with Stephen Hawking…

Large Hadron Rap

Friday, September 05, 2008

Dodge this!

I had big plans to write a new post for you today. Tell you all about how Kyle is trying to kill me has his first school dance this afternoon 3-5pm (for the 6th graders. The 7th and 8th grader’s dance starts at 7pm) and then his first baseball game at 6pm. And tomorrow he has a double-header! With the second game in Foresthill. Which is, I don’t know, an hour or so away! Nice. And hey, its gonna be 101° on Saturday.

But I can’t tell you these things because I am too damn tired. Sure, I got out of class 1 ½ hours early last night, but I had caffeinated myself to be up and alert until 10. So the sleeping? Not so much. And when I had finally tired myself out surfing the internet late into the night, I made the mistake of logging into Photophlow instead of logging off. Another hour or so later the laptop battery was dying and today – so am I. Dragging hard. So tired that my eyes are little slits. And red. And it is not helping that my mascara seems extra clumpy today and my eyelashes keep sticking together. Which I am taking as a sign from above to close my damn eyes and get some sleep.

I would take a nap during the 3-5 dance window, but let’s be real. I am not a napper. And I have to have dinner ready by 5 so that I can de-spin and feed Kyle in the 17.5 minutes we have between him coming home from the running around the gym like a maniac with his posse dance and taking him to the baseball field. Fun. Go Dodgerzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Utata Speaks '08

So, did anyone make it through the whole 81 minutes of that Library of Congress webcast? Yeah, me neither. I barely made it through that lady's introduction. Man, she was putting me to sleep. But I'm going to make it up to you right now, with an even better way to spend your valuable time - Utata has published its big annual project!

Utata Speaks '08

Yay! Photo essays from my favorite Flickr group. I submitted a personal essay singing the praises of drive-by shooting in Santa Cruz - and then didn't shoot at all while we were there this past weekend. But that is no reason not to go and check out everyone else's entries. (helpful tip of the day - that banner is a link, click it!) I haven't had a chance to read many of the essays yet (still folding laundry thank you very much) but between kid-wranglin' and homework I might have 5-7 minutes free this evening. Wait... Kyle has baseball practice tonight - did I wash his uniform?

Well, I would love to tell you more about our weekend and the CIA, but I’ve got to call and sing Happy Birthday to the lovely Julie T’s answering machine.