I haven’t been making real updates lately. This is a mix of being busy and just not feeling like it. Mostly not feeling like it.

So Ubuntu. In November I finally made the leap, replacing Debian Etch with Xubuntu Edgy on my primary workstation. Of course being so used to the older stuff in Etch and doing everything entirely by myself all the time, I didn’t really dive into Ubuntu head first, I’ve eased my way in.

It’s been pretty fun bumping into things that work in Linux now. Ubuntu comes with very nice default options (and, ok, a pretty heavy default kernel) that make almost everything I plug into my computer work.

Like… my Sansa mp3 player. I hadn’t put anything on it from Linux since last year, and the last time I mounted it in Debian it wasn’t seeing the entire drive, so I just booted into Windows. This week I plugged it in to my spiffy Ubuntu machine. It immediately showed up as an icon on my desktop, which I could right click to mount. My whole drive showed up! I then fired up thunar and transferred the files to it. Very easy.

And burning CDs. I made a pile of coasters last summer trying to convince Debian to use my cd burner. Annoyed, I just booted into Windows when I needed an ISO burned. And mp3 to audio burning? I have given up doing that entirely, just put music on my mp3 player and plugged that into my truck (the only place I listen to real CDs). Recently Michael asked me to pop a blank CDR into my drive and cdrecord(1) an ISO for him – and it worked! Oh my! This week I made the jump to creating an audio cd from mp3s, I installed k3b and libk3b2-mp3 and was on my way – CD burned fine and I listened to it in my car this week. Yay!

These advancements are fantastic, I’m really impressed with how far Ubuntu has come. Hooray for user friendly Linux!

Oh and also about Ubuntu, the Ubuntu-Women project is still chugging along at a nice pace. We’ve been having meetings every other week, we were able to go to the Community Council to get more administrative access to parts of the project – I’m now a website Admin and a Launchpad Admin for the project, woohoo :) It’s been helpful to be able to update things, and doing things like adding more people to the planet has really made for some new people traffic on list. BTW, we need more website admins info here.

Oh and a have a zillion other projects I’m working on too. Some of them are even projects that can help me at work, which is a nice overlap. Just the other weekend I was diving into the possibility of creating RSS feeds for some of my sites, and then my boss presented me with a similar project. It certainly gives me more incentive to finally move along with my personal project, and then be able to bring that knowledge to work.

Computers aside, I have managed to find time to work on other stuff. Last weekend I bought some fabric from a local fabric outlet. Gosh, everyone was right when they said it was expensive, even at $3/yard (cheap outlet pricing, plus a half off sale on all wool) it cost me $24 to get enough fabric for the windows in my office. Granted, that’s much less than I would have paid for these curtains if they were premade, but I also have to consider it took me 3 hours to make the first, and about an hour to make the second – and that’s just one set of curtains, one window! I’ll keep going on this route though, it’s fun to make this stuff, I feel so good when it’s done. Next project is making curtains for the two windows upstairs.

I also finally got to have a meal at the El Sarape in Blue Bell. It’s a mexican place I’ve been wanting to try for quite some time. I called up Jane, a former co-worker from my Accounts Payable job, and we spent Wednesday evening catching up. I missed talking with her, she’s a lot of fun and quite a change from all the computery friends I have. Plus we had a fun time catching up on what has been going on in the office since I left, same old stuff, did I mention I’m so glad I left? I also got to fill her in on how much I’m enjoying my new job. Anyway, the mexican food was good for this area, and I’ll certainly be going back. I also need to give my former co-worker Kris a call, we have some hobbies that overlap and she is into all sorts of cool gardening stuff that I need to learn for the spring. Maybe some weekend sometime soon we can meet up…

This weekend we don’t have any solid plans. Plenty of little things that need to be done around the house that I’ll feel bad about if I neglect them again (like finishing putting together a sewing station in my office and moving all our movies up to the new TV room).

Right now I’m headed off to make some French Toast with the fresh bread Michael made this morning – yum!

Simcoe is a delight to play with and she is so cute when she’s sleeping.

But she’s also quite the kitten monster.

She destroyed Michael’s speakers (which would have been a real bad thing if we weren’t intending to replace them in the near future anyway):

On my monitor (you are not one of my toys!)

Just plain causing trouble in my office (perhaps needless to say, the cats are locked out during most of my working day)

On my lamp!

And now she’s all snuggled on my lap while I type this, giving me that “I’m cute, please don’t tell the world I’m a monster” look. Very sneaky!

Honestly I love this little kitten, but I won’t be sad when we finish training her and she turns into a more calm adult. I do like cats more than kittens.

I’ve been working from home for a week now, which was a welcome break from the usual commuting routine. I can’t begin to describe how great it is to work from home. I think a lot of it has to do with comfort level, I’m more productive when I’m comfortable and sitting at my own computer. Michael also pointed out that we’re both the type of people who prefer to work alone, I’m not going to get lonely without an office full of co-workers. Plus, not driving for 1-2 hours each day frees up that time for much needed R&R – which this week translated into more time playing with the kitties.

Oh and not having to commute in the snow is cool too. Both Michael and I worked from home most of last week, his Civic wasn’t dug out of the snow until Saturday.

For Valentine’s Day we braved the cold and snowy weather to drive the 5 miles into Skippack for dinner at the Parc Bistro. I love that place. Since neither of us had a commute, we had 5:30 reservations so we could get in early and really enjoy the evening. I started out the evening with a a Peach Martini (gosh I’m a sucker for these fruity martinis) and Michael ordered a bottle of Kris Pinot Grigio. We then ordered an appetizer of cheesy risotto with oysters – AMAZING! For an entree Michael went with their Charred 10oz. Filet Mignon – with truffled cognac sauce, foie gras butter, grilled asparagus and whipped yukons, while I went the usual seafood route of Pan Seared Diver Scallops – rolled in porcini powder, with whipped yukons and red wine butter sauce. Yum! After dinner I was pretty full, so we just chilled our for about a while, talked and enjoyed our drinks, it was after 7 by the time we ordered our desserts, Michael went with their Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake – Dark, milk and white chocolates layered over chocolate cake, sauced with raspberry coulis, and I went with a special they had of a heart-shaped truffle cake. It was all quite spectacular.

Now having written all that I want to go back, hah! They serve brunch.. this weekend we can go back and I can check out the Lobster Egg’s Benedict two poached eggs over grilled peasant bread with lobster meat, hollandaise sauce & lyonnaise potatoes… No, I should behave myself.

Throughout the week we were spending evenings doing work with the house. Our new couches were suppose to arrive the Saturday the 10th, so we moved the television and everything last weekend. It didn’t come that Saturday, they had to reschedule for Wednesday since they had a problem with a driver (or a truck, or something). Wednesday rolled around and we had a snow storm, so it was finally rescheduled for this past Saturday. It was Sunday before we had a nice setup worked out upstairs, but I’m quite happy with it now. Right now I’m sitting on one of my new couches with my laptop watching some MST3K. Mmmm comfy. Once we have everything set up and all the wire boxes put away for real I’ll take some pictures.

Saturday I also did some cleaning around the house and then went out to do some errands. Michael wanted a case of Hop Wallop, which sent me on a quest to find a beer store that had it in stock. The store down the street has very limited selection, we have moral qualms with the place next to Sly Fox in Royersford, they only take cash and have a poor selection at the store in Harleysville, and Skippack Beverage looks a little scary from the outside. Skippack Beverage was the only place I’d never been to, so that was my first stop. To my surprise the “scary” warehouse exterior hides a pretty decent beer store! They had a whole bunch of Chimay, a nice selection of Victory and other microbrews, and even a few Belgians I wasn’t familiar with (alas, none of my favorite Belgians). I grabbed myself a case of Hop Wallop and was on my way.

Sunday afternoon Michael set up the Mythbox and so we finally got to enjoy some movies together for the first time in a week. I made some chocolate chip cookies and we spent the afternoon watching Flushed Away (which I thought was pretty cute), not watching Happy Feet (we tried, it’s horrible), and then a few hours of I, Claudius (which I’d seen, but Michael hadn’t yet). It was a great afternoon and evening.

And now I’m going to enjoy a nice delivered dinner from a local pizzeria. I have lost a few pounds in the past 2 weeks since I’m no longer working in an office where I’m tempted for 8 hours a day with candy and other food that’s bad for me. But my craving for bad food hasn’t completely gone away… I was going to make tacos tonight but then had an overwhelming desire for a buffalo chicken cheesesteak, mmm….

Last week was a long week. I’m enjoying my new job but the commute is killer. Friday I worked from home, that was really nice :)

While working from home I discovered that it would be pretty impossible to deal with the sun trying to come in through the blinds, so Michael helped me put a blanket over it until I make curtains.

It looks classy.

Actually it’s horrible, but it’ll get me to make those curtains more quickly. This weekend has proven too busy (family obligations yesterday, needed to move the entertainment center upstairs and other various things today) but perhaps next weekend we’ll get out to grab the curtain rods and fabric I need. By then I should have my sewing area set up too. Wednesday we get our new couches delivered – yay!

The “omfg from Kenny and Kati” in that goofy picture was a card we got in the mail from AmazingClubs.com informing us that Kati and Kenny had bought us a three month membership to that site’s beer of the month club. How cool is that?! And all because they rock and were upset that we picked up the tab when we ate dinner out last week. What revenge. The first beer delivery will be at the end of this month and I’m really looking forward to it. Depending on how it is we might continue the membership ourselves beyond the three months.

Being busy all weekend aside, it was a reasonably nice weekend. Yesterday evening we spent a couple hours with my mother-in-law’s side of the family for a birthday party for one of Michael’s uncles (a great guy who has a company that installs water softeners, and really gave us a deal on installing ours). I don’t know these nearly as well as the Bevilacquas, but most of the people there seemed to no know who many other people were either, that made us feel a bit better. The rest of the evening was spent relaxing at home and watching Arrested Development.

Today I kept busy. I woke up around 7 as I need to keep a semi-normal sleep schedule. This morning I met up with a bunch of women in #Ubuntu-Women for a meeting (I put together notes here). As usual the fantastic directed the conversation to important things that we were working toward. I also spent time getting caught up on a lot of things I’ve let slide in the past few weeks I spent in job transition. Got a lot of email sent, updated WallaceAndGromit.net for the first time in over a month. I did some cleaning too, got the media center all unhooked (about 3243 wires and things) and all ready to be moved upstairs, vacuumed and did some other light cleaning.

Around noon Nita poked me in IRC and asked if I wanted to go out to lunch. I hadn’t seen her in too long and figured I could use a break away from the computer so she came over and met Simcoe and we went out to lunch at a local pizzeria. It was a new place in Harleysville, advertised as “Brick Oven Pizza” but I have a feeling that term is becoming less meaningful, the pizza was pretty mediocre. Food aside, I mostly just wanted to hang out with Nita, and we were able to spend a while catching up and talking about what we’ve been up to. It was great!

Now here I am, after 7PM on a Sunday evening chilling out with… a glass of water. I’m actually pretty tired and I’ll probably be getting to bed by 9PM.

And now I leave you with a picture of Simcoe:

(the caption is a lie, she was no help)

Friday was my last day at the Accounts Payable job. I tried really hard to focus and get a lot of work done, but honestly there wasn’t a whole lot for me to do aside from training my replacement. My replacement knows what she’s doing so there was only $company-specific stuff I needed to teach her.

After work Michael picked me up (he’s the designated driver) and we headed up to Iron Hill Brewery in North Wales for a happy hour with my now-former co-workers to celebrate my new job and say goodbye. It was pretty busy, but a couple of my immediate co-workers in A/P were able to find a table in the bar area that 6 of us could squeeze into and have the other two pull chairs up to.

The happy hour was fun! I had a few of the Iron Hill American Pale Ales, we ordered a table full of appetizers and all just chatted about life, work and the job I’m leaving. I really am sorry to be leaving such a great group of people. This job was the first office job I’ve had for over a year, the first one where I actually had the time and met the right people I could connect with. Not seeing these people every day sure is going to be a change. Ah how this modern life plays with our relationship brains…

Oh and after ordering all those beers and foods my table-mates picked up the tab! That was really nice of them.

When we arrived at Iron Hill there was freezing rain and some snow, I decided to neglect this fact and just enjoy my evening, but around 7:30 we all decided we should probably get home in case it got worse. Michael expertly drove the 45 minute drive back to our house in the snow uneventfully, in the Civic! With a good driver that little Civic is an impressive vehicle.

Yesterday morning Simcoe went to the vet to make sure the cold was gone and get her first batch of shots. She was very unhappy during the entire visit (especially when they took her temperature) but she’s healthy and I only had a couple scratches when the visit was completed. She has to go back in about a month for the rabies and another vaccination, luckily this syncs up with Caligula’s annual vet visit so I’ll be able to toss them both in the carrier and torture them at the same time!

The rest of yesterday was spent rearranging furniture. The loveseat is now standing on its side in our livingroom waiting to be moved out into the garage (the plan is to put it in the magic room eventually – or give it away, anyone want an old loveseat with a brown suede cover?). My desk came apart pretty easily so we could move it down stairs and we hauled two bookshelves of books downstairs. After moving all that my new office was a bit of a mess:

(Oh geez, I didn’t rearrange the books to make us look smart – those horrible C for Dummies books are at the top of the piles!)

It took me about an hour to sort through all the books and put them on shelves, set up my computer and make the room look more livable:

Spiffy!

It actually turned out much better than I expected, I was worried the desk would be too big and make the room look cramped, but it’s just slightly smaller than the love seat and fits nicely where the loveseat was. Now the only problem I still need to deal with is the sun. All we have on the windows are plain white blinds and they’re not enough to keep out the morning sun (as I write this my poor monitor screen is paled in comparison to the sunlight attempting to come through the blinds). So I’ll be buying a couple curtain rods this week and some fabric to finally embark on my plan to make my own curtains for this room.

…which brings me around to the most annoying feature of this room, the closet. Right now the television (and myth box, and stereo, and PS2…) are in the closet (see here), which worked out fine for having this as a TV room. Now that the TV is going to be moved upstairs that big closet became a useless waste of space again. So after some thought I decided to put my sewing machine in there. I will have a little table for the sewing machine and plenty of space to keep fabrics and all the sewing stuff that I use.

Unfortunately they bumped the delivery date for our new couches to February 14th so the upstairs Michael office/new TV room is looking like a bit of a mess, but it should look great when we’ve completed everything.

After all this furniture moving Michael took me out to Sly Fox for a Reuben and a Black and Tan. Yum.

This morning I made some pancakes and sausage. Unfortunately we were out of eggs for pancakes so I had to improvise by grabbing a vegan recipe and tweaking it. I ended up with this:

* 1 cup wheat flower
* 1T baking powder
* 1/4t salt
* 1 cup prepared instant milk[1]
* 1/2t oil
* 1/2t maple syrup

[1] We stopped buying “real” milk for the time being, neither of us drink it straight and it usually ended up being a waste since we just used it for cooking. Instant powdered milk works fine for cooking.

I must say, they turned out pretty good! Using wheat flour adds a very nice taste to the pancakes.

And now for plans today. In about an hour we’re leaving to make the drive down to West Chester to meet up with a friend of ours at the West Chester Wellness Center so he can give us Shiatsu massages! This friend is one we met through our class in Shamanism and has been studying Shiatsu for quite some time now, but has just now begun really practicing on people. It should be an enjoyable afternoon.

Since we’re so close to DE down there in West Chester we arraged to meet up with and for an early afternoon dinner at Stewart’s Brew Pub. Fun fun. Hopefully we’ll be cleared out of there before too many Superbowl people start pouring in. Besides, I don’t want to stay out late tonight – I’m going to my new job tomorrow!

This past weekend Michael and I did some furniture shopping.

With my new job I’ll be telecommuting 80-90% of the time, which meant that we had to re-arrange the house a bit. Right now Michael and I share an office, he telecommutes 60% of the time and I work in an office, which is fine, but I’ll be the first to admit that we’d probably kill each other if we were both telecommuting and sharing that office. As much as I love him, I don’t think there are many couples who could survive that!

So Michael worked out a plan:

Current setup: Huge upstairs room is office for Michael and me, one downstairs bedroom functions as TV room

Future Setup: Upstairs office for Michael and functions as TV room, I have downstairs bedroom as my office

We figured we’d just haul our current furniture upstairs from the TV room and be done with it. But then Michael got to discussing new furniture. We were planning on buying a nice couch and loveseat – so why not do it now before we start lugging furniture we’re getting rid of anyway all over the house?

The upstairs is a tricky place to get furniture into, the door is non-standard size, on the small side, and the narrow stairway comes to the top at a slanted ceiling (our tall friends routinely bump their heads). Finding furniture that we could get up there would be an adventure.

First we stopped by Stanley’s Furniture in Harleysville. Their location has a warehouse feel to it (no windows, big ceilings, probably is an old warehouse…). Their prices were reasonable but we weren’t impressed with their use of contractors to deliver furniture (or their high delivery prices), plus we quickly came to the conclusion that only a couple of them would actually fit upstairs (Michael didn’t like my idea of using a crane to put the furniture in while we were having our roof replaced this spring – hahaha). Dejected, we got in the car and started going home, which is when Michael thought of Futons.

“We need something that we can assemble upstairs. Maybe a Futon couch?” Michael suggested.
“Turn here, there is a mattress store in this plaza that sells Futons,” I replied.

So we made the turn into the shopping plaza that had Harleysville Mattress. This is where things all came together.

The Futon couch frames they sell these days are quite nice, with prices in the range of traditional couches, and the Futon mattress types are a much more comfortable assortment than their predecessors. Plus, they’re easy to fold down into beds – we’d finally have guest beds! Our house only has three bedrooms, and with two of them being used for offices we don’t just don’t have to room for a dedicated guest room, and these nice looking futons are the perfect answer to the traditional uncomfortable fold out couches.

So we bought two of these, but with a dark cherry stain and a brown “espresso” suede-like cover. They are traditional full size beds and simply fold up into a couch. The tray arm is a nice bonus too everyone would have a place to put their drink!

The salesman was wonderful. When we arrived at the store he didn’t hover and pester us, he was very helpful when we finally asked for his help. When we made our decision he was pleasant and supportive of our decision (it’s always nice to say how smart your customer is for their choices). When all was said and done he even gave us close to 20% off for buying the two of them (no, I’m not that naive, of course the salesmen have the power to do such things to impress customers, the actual sticker prices are probably never paid). It was a wonderful buying experience and when we buy a new bed in the near future you better believe we’ll be shopping there again. Great service, price and supporting a local business; what could be better?

Since it’s a small, local store pretty much everything is special ordered. We are getting everything we wanted delivered to our house in 2 weeks. We set up for a Saturday morning delivery on February 10th. The delivery is free, by people employed by the store (no contractors), and they’ll even bring them to the room you want them in and assemble them!

I’m so excited!

I drive a 2003 Toyota Rav4, as seen here:

It’s a good truck, doesn’t get bad gas mileage for what it is, and with the good tires on it (and the appropriate amount of caution and experience) I don’t have trouble in adverse weather conditions. But it was a lease, set to expire next month.

We’ve gone back and forth about whether we were going to pay it off or give it back.

This week Michael met with a representative from Toyota and we decided to keep it. It came down to a few factors:

1. We’ve kept up on the pricey scheduled maintenance so the truck is running great, Toyotas can last well over 100K miles and it is at only 65K right now.

2. I’m comfortable with the truck, I won’t have to worry about getting used to a new car AND a new, more challenging commute in the same month

3. The payoff balance was low relative to investing in another vehicle

4. Mileage overage charges (for 17K miles – oops!) and a small cosmetic dent in the back panel (of unknown origin, we just noticed it one day and were like “…HEY WTF!”) were really going to cost us if we turned it in.

In all, I’m not particularly happy with the whole lease thing, they really rake you over the coals if you go over your mileage and their “normal wear and tear” rules are pretty unforgiving, even on a truck that we’ve kept clean and meticulously cared for since purchase – we rarely even have passengers in the back seat! We won’t be doing a lease again.

But we could have made out worse, some car leases require that you pay off your mileage overage and any cosmetic repairs even when you decide to buy the car following the lease. Plus we don’t have to deal with the dealership that sold us the truck anymore, which is a good thing since I haven’t been terribly pleased with them over the past couple years.

Yay I get to keep my truck :)

Last night Michael made pizzas.

As I’ve said before, it’s tough to get good pizza here in PA. There are a few decent places to go, but none of them are close to my house. I’ve tolerated the local pizza but complained often.

I was all supportive when Michael began to test his own dough recipes for pizza. He’s now to the point where he’s got a nice recipe for the dough and with the pizza stone we got around Christmas he’s been successfully making pizzas that I’ve really been enjoying. These pizzas? I had pepperoni, mushrooms, and hot red peppers. Mmmm pizza.

In other food related news, we had a few friends over Saturday night for a fondue party!

See, the best man in our wedding got us a fondue set for a gift. His reasoning was quite thoughtful, when going out to eat we’ve regularly ordered crab dip, which is technically a type of fondue. But gosh, actually making fondue is quite a chore, and one we didn’t want to do without guests to enjoy it with!

So Michael picked up three bottles of red wine, chopped up some farm cheese, chimay cheese and a swiss to munch on with some fresh bread and we got ready for our fondue party. He wrote about it here, including specifics about what cheeses were used and what wines he purchased.

was the first one to show up. He’s been quite busy lately and we really haven’t been able to see him as much as we’d like. It was really great to have him drop by for a couple hours so we could catch up.

Bob arrived shortly after MJ, bringing along a loaf of dark rye and two more bottles of red wine (woohoo!).

We mostly just chilled out and talked for the next couple hours while Michael tended the melting cheese. There are some things we’ll do differently next time with the whole fondue thing – apparently fondue isn’t just melted cheese, there are other components that make it less likely to separate and resolidify too quickly (the bottom the pan we melted it in was caked with cheese that took Michael a good 20 minutes to remove). Even so, I sure had a fun time with it, and the melty cheese was delicious!

Later in the evening MJ had to head out and our friends David and Constance came over. David and Constance missed out on the fondue, but Michael made up a batch of french fries (and some cheese fries!) that we could all enjoy. We then spent the rest of the evening, until after midnight, just chilling out and watching Penn & Teller’s Bullshit.

OK, you’re probably getting sick of these entries now ;) But I just have one more before getting back to regularly scheduled blogging.

Caligula and Simcoe are starting to get along, last night they even sat near each other on the couch and fell asleep while we had some friends over.

Yesterday Michael updated the DNS so that Simcoe now has her own subdomain. I spent a couple hours this morning updating it – so we now present:

Simcoe.Bevilacqua.us

Finally, Simcoe also has a catster page.

EDIT: Oh, if you add Caligula or Simcoe as a friend on Catster, please let me know who you are in the little friend request note – I don’t like to add complete strangers and apparently you get a lot of friend requests there now when you add a new cat. If I declined your request and you do know me it is just because I didn’t realize who you were :)