I decided to make pillows for our wedding rings in our ceremony. I had grand ideas of lace and things, but in the end I came to the realization that I need to be practical with my limited sewing abilities and just went with simple.

Now square pillows are one of the easiest things on the planet to make, so I didn’t have any problems with them, but while cutting out the fabric for them I wondered – should we make even these pillows meaningful somehow by filling them with some sort of herb? Yeah!

So I spoke with Michael, we thought about all sorts of things, and then settled on a meaningful and lovely smelling plant – Cascade Hops.

Don’t laugh! Hops don’t smell like malt or beer, they have a strong smell just like any herb, and are often used in Dream Pillows – “Hops: restful sleep and healing.”

So we headed out to the beer supply store on Sunday (we needed to get some priming sugar and labels for the wedding beer bottles anyway) and picked up some cascade hops. We also swung by Michaels Arts and Crafts store to pick up some fluff to suppliment the hops.

All in all, I am quite pleased with the result:

They really smell like hops. Perhaps 4oz per 8×8 inch pillow was a bit much.

This morning I took my DS to the gym and played Tetris while on the elliptical. I worried that it’d be too much motion, I haven’t had too much luck with reading on the elliptical, but playing the DS on the elliptical was actually not bad. It does require extra balance, but practicing balance is something I probably should be doing anyway. I won’t say that it made and intense 20 minutes on the elliptical easy but it did help pass the time and made it slightly easier to get through.

While on the subject of the gym, I have a new main goal: muscle tone and staying in shape. I seem reached a plateau in where the gym stuff is taking me weight wise. Everyone says I am looking good, but I didn’t get to my super ambitious weight loss goal and I think I just have to let it go. I’d have to a significant change in diet will have to come about to make any more changes and I’m really not into that right now. I feel healthy, I look good[1] and I just need to get it through my head that I just don’t have the body type that lends itself to being super skinny. Besides, my biggest calorie vice right now is beer (and all the food that goes with it), and being a beer connoisseur is a hobby!

And the beer emergency? I was listening to Marketplace this morning and they mentioned a fire at a warehouse in Yakima that ruined 4% of the nation’s hop supply.

AAAHHH!!!

There are several articles around, I just read this one

“The fire, which began midday Monday in a 40,000- square-foot warehouse in Yakima owned by U.S. Steiner Inc., ruined about 4 percent of the nation’s supply of hops, a crop used as flavoring in the brewing of beer and ales”

Poor burninated hops :(

I Google my name yesterday (as everyone should do often!) and BOY that KDE article sure made the rounds, it was even dugg. Good thing I’m changing my name this month and all that will be behind me ;D

Oh and my blog is on the first page of Google hits for “Singer 7444 120 Stitch Function Sewing Machine” – I figured this out after 3 emails in the past month from women who are just getting into sewing and wondering if I’d recommend the machine. I do recommend it and Singer should send me a check for writing about and recommending it.

I’m feeling better this week. Things at work have calmed down significantly, my allergies aren’t nearly as bad, the new season of programming on PBS has started (Nova! Frontline! History Detectives! Secrets of the Dead! Bill Moyers new show!), everyone in the wedding party has finally ordered their clothes (yay we’ll all be clothed at my wedding!) and I’m back in my normal work/gym/home life routine. Now I need to set aside a chunk of time with Michael to finalize the details of our wedding ceremony. Oh and my online projects have been sorely neglected of late, but I’m not going to bother with them right now, I’ll get back to being involved after the wedding.

Michael made chili last night, I’m eating leftovers for lunch today. It’s so good.

[1] This photo is from this past weekend at the brewfest – I look so goofy in this picture! I swear I wasn’t drunk! But I was sitting on a wall that had a 20 foot drop behind me, a wall which bordered the brewfest on the east side which Michael and I decided that this probably wasn’t the best place for a hundred beer drinking fest goers to be sitting.

Some days I hate the news.

Yesterday while driving to work NPR was blabbering all about Mark Foley’s sexual emails to some teenage boys. That’s gross, he resigned, they seem to have proof enough to move on with a case against him as some sort of creepy pedophile. OK, I’m done with this story, next?

But they wouldn’t move on. I heard more about it this morning, now it’s all about a GOP cover-up, the Republican Culture of Corruption, Who Knew What When.

Shut up! I don’t care!

If this was some sort of issue that influence me in the slightest (like some sort of government corruption) I’d pay attention, but I’m so sick of the media pouncing on stuff like this and harping on it for days. This man is not my representative, I don’t know his victims, and he’s already left the political arena. I expect that there were people around him who ignored the problem, blahblahblah, but I really don’t care enough to get wrapped up in all that, I’m pretty sure it’s not a crime to ignore such things, it just makes you a bad person.

There are real issues out that that deserve attention.

Is there a good non-partisan website out there that details the real issues and views of politicians? I don’t care who they slept with as long as it’s legal and doesn’t conflict with them doing their job. I’m very close to not listening to NPR until this election season is over because I’m so tired of spin, nonsense and scandals that I could be sick. But I want to stay at least moderately informed.

And the bigger story of the day – the Amish school shooting in Lancaster county (about an hour from where I live).

This is a story that deserves attention, it was a terrible thing.

But what news pops up right along side it? Gun control in PA. With the disgusting rise of the murder rate in Philadelphia in these past couple years it’s turned into a big thing here, and many Democrats love to blame violence on insufficient gun laws.

Is there a place where you can get statistics about how many of the guns were in legal possession of their owner (they had the appropriate permits to have the weapon where they had it and obtained the gun in a legal manner) when the crime was committed? I always assumed that with all the gun laws we already have in place that these criminals who kill people with guns wouldn’t have them legally anyway, but I don’t know this for a fact.

Oh and that guy who shot up the school was a married father of three without a violent (or any?) criminal record. Assuming he didn’t have a history of severe mental illness (do we check for that when buying a gun in PA?) he’s the kind of guy who will always be entitled to a gun in this country if we don’t completely toss the Bill of Rights out the window. Gun control shouldn’t even have come up in this situation, it’s not the issue.

And you know what else they made sure they said? “People on both sides of the gun issue have expressed their regret and concern (or whatever) at the shooting” – OF COURSE THEY DID. Only crazy people would not be horrified by this.

OK I’m done.

Yesterday was nice. I spent the morning finally catching up with emails and reading journals. Later in the day I spent time picking fruit to pay off my mortgage… in Animal Crossing: Wild World.

AC:WW is one of my new favorite games, there are so many things about it that I love. All the cuteness aside, it’s quite clever. For instance, I’m sure having it interface with the date and time set up in the DS when I first set it up is trivial, but the fact that it makes the world daytime and nighttime in game during the correct daytime and nighttime is great. They don’t sell certain things on Sundays, the variety shop in town is closed between 11PM and 8AM. This all adds so much to the game, and really forces you to go out and try new things if you want to keep playing. Last night I caught lots of fish and donated them to the museum.

I want to play right now, but I didn’t bring that game to work with me ;)

I did bring the DS and Tetris though, but that’s just because I brought it to the gym this morning to play while on the stationary bike. mentioned the sweat might be an issue – but I guess I don’t sweat a lot in my hands when I work out – in fact, I think my hands sweat more from the activity on the screen than from working out. The DS must have some sweat tolerance built into it, everyone’s palms sweat when they’re playing an intense game.

Yesterday afternoon I went out to the Montgomeryville Toys R Us to spend the gift card I got from my boss. I ended up with Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, which I’ve wanted since I heard it came out, I’m so glad the DS is backwards compatible with the GBA.

I also went grocery shopping yesterday, which I hadn’t done in a while; Michael has been doing almost all the grocery shopping for the past few months.

And now I’m back to work, ah Monday.

It was a soggy day yesterday, but not enough to hinder fun at a brewfest. The drive up to Easton took a little over an hour. We were lucky to get there early enough to park in the parking lot across the street from the little park where the festival was held, woohoo!

We met up with Bob and John, both of whom used to work with Michael.

John, Bob, and Lyz on the PA side of the Delaware River

Michael, who played cameraman for the day

Most of the festival took place inside a big tent they had up – but it wasn’t nearly big enough. The first hour or so was OK and we could get to the beer tables without too much trouble, but then it just got so crowded you could hardly move. I’m not the best with crowds (it’s a good thing we were drinking! Hah!) so I wasn’t too pleased with how crowded it got.

I was a bit disappointed at the food offering too, pretty much everything they had was spicy and overpriced. Who thinks spicy food is good at a beer tasting? Not I! I want to taste the beer, and spicy food just ruins that.

The highlights of the day for me ended up being:

Riverhorse table

River Horse – They aren’t one of those microbreweries like Victory or Sly Fox whose beers are all outstanding, but River Horse does have two that I really like – the HOP hAZARD PALE ALE and one of my favorite Belgian style winter ales, the BELGIAN fROSTBITE WINTER ALE. Guess which two they were serving? THOSE! It was great to introduce John to the Frostbite, and even better that he enjoyed it ;)

Cricket Hill – I had their Hopnotic IPA on tap last week at Ortino’s Northside and wasn’t too impressed, but I tried it again at this festival and both Bob and I were forced to revise our opinion of the brew. I think freshness really matters with this one. Plus, their mascot is a silly cricket and Michael picked me up a pint glass with the logo – woo!

Weyerbacher – I finally got to try their Double Simcoe IPA! Yum!

And of course our favorites were there, Victory, Sly Fox…

We left the festival around 3 and took 611 home, stopping to pick up a pizza to enjoy for a quiet evening in.

Michael has the rest of the photos from the day posted here.

YAY! Thank you Michael!

I actually got the DS earlier this week, but I didn’t open the box from Amazon until I got home from work last night. I’m in love. I’ve never owned a hand held game machine before, and this is a nice one! I was up until past 10 playing with it, Michael played with it for about 20 minutes and was all “oooh this is so addictive” – and we were just playing New Super Mario Brothers!

I don’t know how this gaming machine compares to anything Nintendo put since the NES, but I totally feel like us original NES generation people are the target market for these things. I was so delighted to see old Super Mario Brothers 1, 3 and the original Zelda on the top screen and hear the music for those while playing the marathon version of Tetris on the DS. I feel so comfortable with this Mario and the Tetris already, having games so similar to the ones I grew up with at my fingertips!

I’ll be firing up Animal Crossing: Wild World after I finish this entry.

And my boss, the attentive person she is, bought me a gift certificate to Toys R Us. In passing I had told her that I was getting one (we were talking about how much her son loved video games) and she wanted to get me a game for my birthday but didn’t know which one – so Toys R Us gift card! It was really sweet of her %) The women at work also brought in a bunch of food and a giant carrot cake to celebrate my birthday (no doubt they enjoyed it too, a nice diversion from the insanity that was year end).

Michael also got me a giant chocolate bar, a very cute card, and took me out to Sly Fox (no, he’s not cheap and boring bringing me to the place we always go to – I didn’t get home from work until 7 last night and I was too tired to go anywhere nicer or further from home).

It was a good birthday – and now we’re getting ready to head up to Easton for the Lehigh Valley Brewfest – I’m so excited!

I’m now a quarter century old.

And happy 35th birthday to !

My allergies have calmed down some, but this morning I woke up with a splitting headache. Some Advil solved my problem within an hour, but by then it was too late to make it to the gym, bleh.

The past weekend was spent organizing more wedding things, I got about half the invitations out (waiting to get addresses from the other people). There is still some ceremony stuff to work out, we really should sit down sometime this week and get that formalized.

Michael and I also got the opportunity to review a chapter for an upcoming Linux book, it was nice working together. Between my knack for details and writing things in a very user-friendly manner and his wealth of knowledge in theoretical and real world applications of software I think my dream of writing a book some day is being transformed into writing a book with Michael some day.

Monday night I went out with Nita to meet with a woman in Harleysville who sells Indian dresses out of her home. She had some really nice things, but the colors and price ranges were just not what we were looking for. It was a disappointment, but Nita found an online shop that does custom orders and we picked out a nice one from there that she’s going to order this week. After looking at the dresses we headed into Harleysville, which is a black hole for decent food, and ended up having a couple subs at Quiznos (which is only slightly better than Subway, I don’t really like those big sub chains).

Last night Michael and I went out to grab some food and then came home to watch Scary Movie, which we rented this weekend since neither of us had seen it. It wasn’t worth all the trouble we went through to get the DVD running, I am just not a big fan of stupid spoof humor I guess.

Oh and I hate DVDs. We have 3 players capable of playing DVDs in our house, the Playstation 2, the MythTV DVD-ROM and Michael’s laptop DVD-ROM. The Playstation 2 is a lousy DVD player, it’ll play most movies at least half the way through before it starts skipping and gives a horrible “unable to read disk” error – it got about 10 minutes into Scary Movie. The DVD-ROM on the MythTV box is crankie and I’ve almost given up on it, Michael has it working with a few movies, but if anything on the DVD is abnormal ogle and mplayer just won’t play it. Finally Michael has his laptop, which actually did play the movie, but playing it from the laptop to the TV screen is not an optimal situation since we need to unplug a bunch of stuff from the Myth box to plug it in to the laptop, and Michael can’t use his laptop at all while the movie is on. So the solution? We ripped it and dropped onto the MythTV – worked great! All that lovely encoding and protection they put on the DVD forced me to make a copy I never would have if it would just play. Is it legal to make a copy of a movie you rent if you delete the copy when you return the movie? Probably not.

Now the real solution to this DVD trouble is probably just dropping $100 on a decent DVD player whose only job is to play DVDs, it just makes me crazy that we already have 3 players that should be capable of doing this.

My 25th birthday is on Friday, I’ll finally be able to rent SUVs and luxury cars – woo! And age 25 is one of those landmarks where your car insurance goes down, that will be nice. A quarter century on this planet here I come!

Fiscal year end at work falls on my birthday, which is not funny at all. We’re working overtime all week and we’ll all be working late that night, which is not exactly how I wanted to spend my birthday. Still, my boss is always good about organizing little things for our birthdays, so there will probably be food and some decorations around on Friday.

Michael and I are actually celebrating my birthday on Saturday by going to the Lehigh Valley Brewfest in Exton with Bob. I’m so excited! But this will be our only brewfest of this season, with the wedding coming up we just have too much other stuff going on to devote a day to some delicious Octoberfest goodness, sigh %)

I’d say that KDE article went well, everyone whose opinion I care about said very nice things. I received one email about it, and it was from a software developer who wanted to let me know about his project and how much they needed artwork, documentation, usability and internationalization skills – cool!

It’s funny that my first full interview somewhere was on a KDE website, the closest I’ve ever come to KDE is enjoying an evening and fine glass of wine with a local KDE developer and his wife. I’ve never really used it on my desktop.

All the usual flames came. I’d say it was a nice little representation of all the typical views whenever this is brought up:

• support from fellow Linuxchix, friends and others who live and understand my views
• a comment about hot linux babes
• a couple rants about how sexist I am for promoting an outreach to women
• a comment from a woman who feels insulted and believes the experiences of others are invalid because she hasn’t had them (I imagine this is a difficult way to live your life)
• a comment from someone who thinks that we should all deal with assholes at shops to futher our cause (sorry, I’m all for this cause but sometimes I just want to buy a harddrive without being hassled)
• comments from people who might be well-meaning but don’t understand the issue
• a comment meant to be funny by taking my words out of context
• …and my favorite – translating my comment “more women work in documentation, translations and artwork” into “I don’t believe women are technical and they should just do art.”

I only bothered replying to one comment in the article.

The same arguments come up again and again with this women and F/OSS thing, but that just makes them much easier they are to take after a while. I really have gotten to know what is worth replying to (who will listen) and what is better just left alone.

Honestly? I sometimes wish I was one of these fellows who simply didn’t understand the issue. I sometimes wish I could be like the guy who replied and said “Everyone feels they need to prove themselves at LUG meetings.” Somehow I doubt he understands that I’ve actually been asked IF I USE LINUX at a LUG meeting, or better yet, had the guy I happened to catch a ride with be asked “Does your girlfriend use Linux too?” while I’m STANDING RIGHT THERE (Why not ask me directly? Does he think I wouldn’t know if I used Linux or not? Does he just want an “AWESOME YOUR GIRL USES LINUX! SCORE!” moment? Maybe I’m being too harsh and he’s just scared of women).

As if my role as an activist for Women in F/OSS was not already solidified, I guess this article does it. I never would have classified myself as this until recently, which may seem surprising since I’ve coordinated the PhillyChix for a few years now. I think there is just too much bad press about feminists and I didn’t want to be put into the category with all that, so I didn’t put myself into that category in my head.

I guess “Feminist” should be put with “Atheist” and “Liberal” in that pile of words I’m Taking Back ;)

I’ve been interviewed :)