Month: February 2005

this evening C’s desk collapsed. nothing special happening, he just put his hand down on it and something snapped….

and the front end tipped forward, very nearly dumping the massive 21″ CRT on his lap, spilling coffee all over the floor (thank goodness there wasn’t much in there, and the plastic floor mat caught it all), and generally destroying his whole desk setup.

the desk — a drafting table — itself is toast…but we’ve had it since at least Lakewood, maybe longer, so we’ve gotten quite a bit of use out of it. the computer equipment is all fine, so is most of the other junk that was on the desk, and (very important!) the paper he was working on all day is fine too.

most importantly, so is C. 🙂

say I wanted to learn something about home audio equipment, and say that all I’ve ever owned, stereo-wise, are clock radios and a long-dead sony boombox.

where would you recommended I start? websites, magazines, books, etc. all welcome!

* move all the titles & pubyears from book into review
* change review_date to read_date
* review_date becomes a timestamp for when the review was added
* change author_id to creator_id — allow it to be null
* delete book table

Sometimes, at the end of a long dragging day, when the weather is nice and my mood is crummy, it’s nice to come home and go for a long evening bike ride. Nothing to brighten my mood like wheeling through dark streets on a crisp winter night, the stars like shimmering points, just enough light from streetlights and my bike’s headlight so I don’t disappear entirely into the dark.

It reminds me of my college days, when I used to go on long night walks.

I wonder, sometimes, what it would’ve been like if I’d had a bike, if I’d learned how to ride a bike, years ago, instead of last summer. But thinking back on last year, I’m glad I had that spike of joy and self-confidence that I got from learning at 29 instead of 8. I needed it last summer, maybe even more than I would’ve when I was a kid.

I went to physical therapy today…I don’t know if I *like* my therapist, but I *trust* her, if that makes any sense. she had me walk up and down, stand on one foot, and then pulled on my right leg, which helped, almost to my surprise. then ice, which I should probably go do again right now. 3-5 minutes…that’s such a long time!

also, I need to ditch my old, and much loved, New Balance sneakers. sigh. and no stairs, at all…I’m sure the vanpool will be thrilled to hear that…. (is that sarcastic? I’m not entirely sure.) actually, I shouldn’t’ve even gone to Kat’s this weekend, stairs are that bad for my current condition.

I have one very simple exercise to do, plus I will be increasing my time on the stationary bike at work. oh, and I need to walk better, as in, heel first, like in marching-band days of yore. seriously: as I was walking away, I started to go back to my usual, and now gimpy, way of walking, and the therapist called out: “heel, heel, heel” — suddenly I was transported back to 1987. I’m not sure if that’s in a good way….

I feel chastened but hopeful.

Kat’s birthday was yesterday (go visit her blog and wish her a happy birthday!), so I went up to Seattle last night after work. We had a fun time, not doing anything unusual…

* lamb, potatoes, and asparagus for dinner (I brought wine for a sauce)
* playing with Sims 2 Body Shop (we made Audrey Hepburn & Rex Harrison!)
* playing Go with a little tiny magnetic board (she kicked my ass)
* playing Go online (we did pretty good, but I wore out half-way through)
* breakfast at CJ’s in Belltown (excellent cheese blintzes and AMAZING service)
* shopping! (I found this gorgeous black skirt, on sale, still more than I’d normally spend, but it was actually just about perfect)

and just generally hanging out and doing the things that we do. I really miss Kat being just shouting distance. (some years back, we lived in apartments that were so close that we prob’ly could’ve met halfway while talking on our cordless phones.)

happy birthday, girl!

I’m still working through a variety of little tweaks to the site, now that I’m all upgraded. Two things in particular are giving me a lot of grief….

# magpie and character entities. yes, still. yes, I upgraded to 0.7.1. sigh. I don’t quite know what I’m doing wrong, or if I *am* doing something wrong.
# design/template for my albums. it seems more cumbersome than the template system in the last version of Photostack. I can’t quite put my finger on why.

I also still want to do a total overhaul of oddbook (which runs media diet), but that’s still in the daydreaming phase.

I’m doing some cleanup and upgrades around here:

* making sure all WP installs are 1.2.2
* cleaning out unused plugins
* cleaning out unused folders
* upgrading lucidCMS to 1.0.11
* upgrading photostack to 2.1b7
* upgrading magpie to 0.7.1

all of which is causing or unearthing little glitches. at the moment, I’m tracking down (sigh) character encoding issues in Magpie…I think.

word is a tool of the devil. that is all.