They’re replacing the roof at work, it started yesterday. We had to park our cars in the back lot, which is not such a bad thing, a little walking never hurt anyone (and honestly, most of the people here need to do a little more walking). The parking inconvenience is nothing compared to the banging that’s been going on for the past two days. Luckily I’ve been able to escape the worst of it by putting on my headphones.

I completed that server install I mentioned on Monday. I encountered the typical difficulties[1] one would encounter on an on-site install, it took much longer than expected and at times was very frustrating. In the end I kept my cool and it was a success, I was happy to have had the experience. Best of all, I felt really good about the completion of it, job satisfaction is good. I’m even more convinced now that going back into IT would be the right move for me.

I’ve been seriously considering joining a gym over the past couple months and finally decided that I will. Michael signed up at LA Fitness a couple weeks ago, and has pushed me in the direction of joining him. Nita has been suggesting I join for months now, and when we got together a couple weeks ago she said she’d be willing to hit the North Wales gym to join me occasionally (regularly?). I’ll be getting a guest pass for the North Wales location next week and a woman I work with said she’d get a guest pass too and accompany me, cool.

I went to Curves the other day as another option, there is one less than 2 miles from my house and one a couple blocks from work so I figured I should at least check it out. I was not impressed. First of all, the woman who runs the location I went to is overweight; not a very good selling point! Then the whole thing is more like an “exercise routine” than a gym, there are workout machines and you go around and spend something like a minute on each for a half hour, then do some stretching. No showers, no classes, $34 per month. Egad! How can these be so popular? I suppose it’s the convenience of them, and people feel good about doing at least SOMETHING when it comes to exercising. But for $34/month I might as well join a real gym.

Tonight I need to hit a store and get some clothes for the gym some sort of gym bag.

I bought some sandals from birkenstockcentral.com last night. I haven’t owned a pair of sandals in a few years, as I generally just wear sneakers all summer and we don’t often go to pool/beach places. But now we attend sweat lodges regularly, so it’s nice to bring something along for my feet so I don’t need to run around barefoot all evening. A shoe-loving woman at work learned of my interest in Birkenstocks and pointed me in the direction of the website, and the bargains area where I was able to find some very nice ones for $40 (originally $109) plus shipping, and I was able to track down a coupon code to get 5% off, yay for getting new Birkenstocks for under $50!

[1] Of course I didn’t know they were “typical” difficulties at the time! It was only after sharing my story with fellow techies that I learned that just about every on-site install has its share of problems.

It’s the first of May. This year is going by too quickly.

I’m already looking forward to the weekend. We’ll be attending the Thomas Dolby concert Friday night. From what we’ve read, this is going to be a really great concert, even if almost everyone I tell either says “Thomas… who?” or “Haha, he’s still around after that one hit in the eights?” Luckily we were able to find a local to enjoy his obscurity with us, is coming up from Philadelphia, I’ll be picking him up at the Lansdale train station at 5 Friday evening.

Saturday I’m going to the last Saturday shaman class, unfortunately Michael got roped into a big server migration at work this weekend so I’ll be going alone. That evening I’ll be meeting up with who will be in the area for a race, hopefully Michael will be done with his work by then to join us. I really need to decide what brewpub or beer bar to go to, I’ll be coming from Malvern, but I haven’t been impressed with any places in that general area. will be coming from Philadelphia, but I really don’t want to drive to the city, especially if I’m going to have a beer with dinner.

Sunday we’re considering going up to Sly Fox in Phoenixville for their Thrilla in Pheonixvilla, which is a day long event with food, beer and a goat race, where the winning goat gets a Maibock named after it. That should be fun, but we’ll have to see how tired we’re feeling after the rest of the weekend stuff.

But for now I plod along at work. This evening I have some contract work to do, heading down to West Chester to do a server install. I’m thinking about going to the PLUG meeting on Wednesday night, I’ll have to ping some people to see if I can find a ride down.

Oh, and there is a Belgian beer and exotic cheeses tasting going on there today that I’m not going to..

Right, like I’m going to resist a Belgian beer an exotic cheese tasting less than 5 miles from my house.

We went, it’s all Michael’s fault, whatever tiny bit of will-power was preventing me from going was pushed to the wayside with his “are you SURE you don’t want to go?” comments.

But I’m glad we went. We always meet intelligent, interesting people when we go to these things, it’s fantastic to meet a couple of fellow hiker, home-brewing, beer lovers! They told us of several beer festivals and things that we are certainly interested in. Somehow we got on the topic of where we’re going for a honeymoon and they had the fantastic idea of going to the Grand Canyon – something I hadn’t really thought of but which would be so perfect. And finally, Linux was mentioned toward the end of the evening, they aren’t techies, but appreciated the idea behind Linux and were happy to learn that it’s become more user friendly in the 5 years since they first tried it, we shared our email addresses and pointed them in the direction of Ubuntu.

Now I’m forcing myself to finish this glass of water, because I know I’ll have a miserable morning tomorrow if I don’t – yay for tipsy journal entries after returning from a beer tasting!

Friday was month end at work, what a nightmare. It could have been greatly lessened if my co-workers had properly prepared me for it – “What? You haven’t sent an email to all the locations telling them it’s almost month end?!” …I didn’t know I was supposed to! So I spent the whole week helping everyone else out and was completely slammed on Friday. I stayed at work until 6PM. When I finally got home Michael took me out to Sly Fox where I enjoyed their Newport IPA and a Pastrami Reuben.

Saturday was a beautiful day. As expected I got Michael to haul out the lawn mower and get it started so I could mow the lawn. It’s a lawn mower that we got used after ours died unexpectedly late last season, and this was my first time using it. Our old one was a push mower, the kind I’ve always used, and after mowing our hilly yard I was pretty much useless for any other tasks that day. This new one is a self-propelled one, what a difference! I was able to finish the whole lawn in 2 hours and the only thing that ached were my thumbs from holding the handle that controls the propulsion.

After mowing the lawn Michael brought Caligula outside and we did a bunch of random yard work. I hopped online and learned that you’re supposed to get rid of the daffodil flower stalks once the flower has died, keeping just the green leaves of the plant exposed to feed the bulb all through the season. Similarly, it’s best to remove the heads of tulips when they are done blooming. I went through my garden flowers doing this, the garden looks great. And I was delighted to see my Bleeding Hearts plant in full bloom. Michael spent a bunch of time going through the mulch around the trees, in all I’d say it was a very productive yard day.

Michael made steak for dinner and afterwards I went up to the Magic Room to hide out and do some writing on my laptop. Oh, and tit turns out that wireless works up there.

<@pleia2> oh gosh, I sometimes wonder what color my hair is
<@pleia2> because I didn't have wireless in front of the house, I simply assumed I wouldn't have it all the way out here in the garage
<@pleia2> so I've been sitting here for about a half hour just chilling out and doing some writing on my laptop
<@pleia2> without thinking about it I used dict, got the word I needed spelled correctly, went back to my work HEY WAIT ASECOND I NEED INTERNET TO USE DICT
<@pleia2> wireless works fine up here, heh

Yay me.

Later in the evening Michael came out to the Magic Room and asked if I wanted to go out with him to Ortino’s Northside for a beer. The plan was to check out the Victory HopDevil on the handpump, but then I saw they had Allagash Tripel on tap! Michael got the hand pump HopDevil, so I was able to enjoy some of it’s tiny bubble goodness, but I really was into that Allagash Tripel. We hung out there for a couple hours, I had some very yummie carrot cake that went well with the Allagash Tripel. Oh, and there is a Belgian beer and exotice cheeses tasting going on there today that I’m not going to.. must resist… resisting….

Speaking of beer, the nugget hops have sprouted.

This morning I got up around 7, caught up on email and got some work done on my primary workstation. There have been a lot of little things it’s been doing lately that are not fatal errors, but are annoying. Fixed some bootup errors, installed a new kernel, recompiled nvidia module against the new kernel, got alsa running (this wasn’t in the plan, but sound stopped working when I upgraded the kernel and I figured that fixing OSS again wasn’t worth it).

It’s another nice day, should be topping out in the mid 60s. I was thinking about washing the car today, but it might still be a bit chilly for that. For now I’m going to go find something to eat.

Work has been unusually quiet for month end, I know I’m going to get completely slammed on Friday with stuff to enter before the end of the month; no doubt it’ll be after 6 when I finally leave here tomorrow. And I haven’t been sleeping well this week, which doesn’t help me get through these long days. I hate weeks like this.

We don’t have plans for the weekend but the weather is supposed be very nice and we’ll probably spend most of it doing yard work. The lawn needs its first cutting of the year already and the gardens need attention.

Last night Michael was gone most of the evening, working late and then ate dinner out. I spent the evening doing updates on my computers and doing lots of little tasks that I’ve been meaning to get around to. I also took a break for a bit to do some house cleaning and laundry; it’s so much easier when no one else is around. In the late evening I watched a Nova Evolution special on the conservative Christians who reject evolution entirely and believe in literal six day creation. FSM represent.

Tonight we’re planning on heading down to a sweat in Malvern. I’m really looking forward to it, today is the perfect day for a sweat.

Gas prices are getting high again, over $3/gallon. I’ve had to adjust the budget, but it’s not exactly a lifestyle cramp, I think the worst part about it is hearing the constant chatter in the office about where you can get the cheapest gas. I wonder if this search for the cheapest gas around has something to do with our hunting instincts. I mean, paying 3 cents more per gallon when filling up the 12 gallon tank on your car will only cost you 36 cents more, it’s hardly worth waiting in line for gas (been to a Wawa station lately?) or dramatically altering your route home to go to some inconvenient station, let alone all the time you are spending at the water-cooler chatting about it (or time spent blabbering in a journal about it, d’oh). Then again, I tend to think the same thing about pinching pennies when it comes to grocery shopping, pouring over the fliers and going to 3 different grocery stores all over town to get the best deals isn’t exactly the way I like to spend my free time. I guess it’s a hobby.

I would love a nap right now.

The tea thing is going well. I’m still quite taken with Earl Grey, with the occasional green tea mixed in each morning. In the evening I’ve been occasionally enjoying Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime Tea.

My father used to drink Sleepytime Tea, and whenever I smell it I’m brought back to those good memories of my father. Memories of him drinking tea and reading; telling me of his ham radio days or some science fiction book he particularly enjoyed. Of all the things that I still believe built a foundation for my love of all things geeky, and thus shaped the early parts of my life.

I didn’t actually like to drink Sleepytime until just recently, even though I’ve really tried to like it over the years. I guess I always associated drinking it with being smart and interesting like my father was on his best days, and that’s what I always wanted to be.

The weather was delightfully weird yesterday. There was a wonderful thunderstorm in the morning, I got up around 5:30 morning to throw a load of laundry in the drier and spent about an hour reading in the living room and enjoying the thunderstorm. With Michael going to the gym so early each morning I am afforded some much needed alone time to enjoy such things. On my way to work it started to get sunny. Shortly after arriving at work another thunderstorm came through, even in our windowless office we could hear the thunder. It’s went on like this all day.

It’s nice enough out now to start enjoying the Magic Room again. My lousy-in-Linux wireless PCMCIA card for my laptop won’t get signal all the way out in the garage, but perhaps that’s for the best. I can spend a bunch of time out there just doing writing without being interrupted.

I think I’ve finally beaten that winter time funk that was plaguing me this year and have gotten back into being more productive and planning things. Yesterday I mailed both the PhillyChix and MontcoLUG lists to get meetings organized for May.

I’m very much looking forward to something for the PhillyChix, it’s been far too long since we’ve gotten together and Hanna lives near a nice sushi place in Center City that it looks like we’ll plan on meeting at. And in case I haven’t mentioned it here before, we’ve opened up the PhillyChix a bit, men can come if they are accompanied by a woman, I figured this would help get some of the more shy Chix out. So any guys reading this who have a women they want to get into Linux, or knows one who might be too shy to come to a meeting alone – come! I’ll post the date and more details once they’re worked out.

As for MontcoLUG, I took Michael’s suggestion and posted to the list about the possibility of having a meeting at the Royersford Sly Fox. Sly Fox came to mind because they have private rooms for groups (not that we’d need one for such a small group, but it’s an option), they have beer, and they have free Wifi.

In not so good news, our angelfish died yesterday. It was sick for a couple weeks and even though we thought it was getting better we found it swimming upside down Sunday night. Yesterday morning I checked on it and it was hardly breathing :( Michael emailed me yesterday afternoon to tell me that he had buried it. Poor fishie, I’m rather upset about this, he was a big, fun fish who would chase your hand if it got close to the tank. Sigh.

The Robert Rich concert last night was fantastic.

The plan was to head down with Bob, who showed up at our house around 5:30 so we could eat dinner. Unfortunately he got a call from work about 5 minutes before we were leaving and had to go in to work and couldn’t come to the concert with us *pouts*

We arrived in Philly around 7:20, found a parking space reasonably close to St. Mary’s, where the concert was being held. We got great seats right up front, the show started shortly after 8PM. Michael wrote about it here you should read it, he has lots of pictures and some video clips of the show taken with our digital camera.

The show lasted until after 11, but the time flew by, Robert Rich is great in concert, and I’d say was one of the best Gatherings concerts I’ve been to, certainly one of the most well-attended. We were able to pick up a couple of his more recent albums, Bestiary and Electric Ladder.

Today I met Nita at the King of Prussia Mall so I could do some clothes shopping. It was great to get together with her, I haven’t seen her at all since the last PLUG meeting we went to. I don’t much like clothes shopping (read: HATE HATE HATE), but it wasn’t such a bad experience going with her, I’ll have to make a habit of dragging her along on shopping trips. We got to talk a lot, which was great since I haven’t been very social lately. She helped me pick out some nice business casual shirts that I could wear to work, I swung by a music store and grabbed the March of the Penguins Score, which I’ve wanted for months. We also checked out a Sam Goody that was going out of business, everything was 90-95% off so I picked up the Doom movie score, figured if Clint Mansell let me down on this one it was OK, since I only paid $1.79 for it. We had lunch at TGI Fridays, talked about getting together for movie night sometime in the near future – of course she’s busy next weekend and I’m booked the weekend after that, d’oh! I headed home around 2.

An amusingly side note, she went to the Trenton Computer Festival yesterday, a festival that I just learned about Friday night when a friend I know from the irc-security list and subsequent channel on NightStar. While she was there she met some of the Princeton, NJ LUG people, and when she told them she was from the Philly LUG they asked if she knew me – I’M GEEK FAMOUS! Oh geez. Apparently it was the Debian mplayer How-To again. It’d be amusing to know someday how many people have used it over the years, several thousand certainly since I keep running into them. I’ll have to go to this TCF next year, I have discovered that several Philly people I know attend, and so I’d probably be able to hitch a ride with someone.

Tonight we’re headed over to Michael’s brother’s house for dinner, I should go get ready

I wasn’t in the best mood yesterday. It was the culmination of a lot of things, including working some things out with Michael before the wedding, working overtime for an audit at work, feeling like I’m getting nowhere with my healthier eating/exercise/diet thing, never seeing my tulips open.

So when Michael called me last night to tell me he’d be home late, I decided to run some errands and pick up some things I needed at Kohl’s before going home. Kohl’s is on my way home from work, I am not one to care a great deal about stores and this is really no exception, but they seem to have pretty nice stuff and decent prices.

I went into the store knowing I needed a bathroom scale, to cure/aid my feeling of getting nowhere with my diet. There were lots of scales, mostly digital ones that require batteries, all pretty much doing the same things like calculating BMI and keeping track of changes in weight. I picked up the most basic scale I could find – no batteries, no spiffy digital display, just a basic dial scale. I was happy to discover that the price tag of $29.99 was not accurate due to their giant store-wide sale, and I ended up getting the thing for $16.99. While I was there I decided to browse the store a little, and left with some new socks (which I needed) and a couple pairs of earrings. In all, I spent about $30, and it improved my mood slightly.

I came home and frowned at my tulips again. I’ve been going into work each morning an hour or more early, and getting home around 6 all week, so while we’ve had BEAUTIFUL weather all week and I’ve been seeing plenty of other tulips blooming on my walks at lunch, but I haven’t been able to enjoy my own blooming tulips. Knowing that it’d be a generally rainy and miserable weekend and I probably wouldn’t see them now either I decided to pick some flowers. I went out back and picked some of the wild purple flowers growing all over the place, they’re probably weeds, but they’re pretty anyway. I then grabbed one of the last pretty daffodils and one of my several yellow tulips. I put them together in a vase and put them on the kitchen table – pretty!

This morning I woke up and Michael wasn’t here, apparently he went to the gym. I’ve just been chilling out this morning, will probably tackle my bedroom closet this afternoon to do some much needed spring cleaning. Tonight we’re heading down to the city for a Robert Rich concert, which should be a lot of fun, he’s fantastic in concert we haven’t seen him since 2003.

Tomorrow the plan is to hang out with Nita for a bit. I’ll be nice, I haven’t seen her in far too long and I need to get out of the house for a while without Michael, I think we’re starting to drive each other crazy ;)

Michael emailed me earlier today to tell me he’d be home late and not to wait for him for dinner. I’m sitting here eating some fish sticks and french fries.

On Easter things went pretty much as planned, we had Michael’s mother over and Michael roasted a whole chicken, made stuffing and broiled potatoes. He also prepared some cheese, crackers, bread and hummus for an appetizer. I ate too much and drank wine.

Over the weekend Michael learned of a Thomas Dolby concert coming up in the area and we got tickets. It’s being held in Sellersville on Friday May 5th. The location struck me as slightly odd as I didn’t think there was anything in Sellersville ;) but it’s great because it’s not far from where we live. Oh and I’m not allowed to tell weirdedsel because he was so excited about the same tour but then he learned it was at a 21+ venue. Poor boy.

Last night I attended a PLUG West meeting. I drove to Collegeville after work to meet at the townhouse of a guy I know from MontcoLUG who offered to give me a ride down. It turns out that he lives about 5 doors down from where smolas used to live.

The PLUG West meeting was held at Unisys in Malvern. The topic was on “Mission-Critical Enterprise Linux” presented by the Unisys guys, and mostly focused on Xen development work they’ve been doing. They also went into benchmarks they did on their crazy huge servers. In all it was a very interesting talk and we met in a very posh meeting room, they even fed us soda and cookies and we got printed nametags. After the presentation we got a tour of the Linux development segment of their giant server room which was quite a treat.

Today was a day.

Tomorrow evening we’re having our second to last Wednesday night Shaman class.