I haven’t been sleeping so well this week. Getting to sleep in the first place is no problem, but I’ve been waking up a lot. Two nights ago I woke up around 3AM and just wandered around the house, crashed on the couch for a bit, and then went to bed again about an hour later. Last night wasn’t much better.

I guess I’ve just had a lot on my mind. Not really stress or worries, just a lot of reflection that seems to come with the changing of years. 2005 has been a pretty remarkable year.

Our boss took us out for Mexican yesterday afternoon as a holiday gift to our department. It was a place called Tex Mex Connection in North Wales, not a bad place. I chuckled at the 3 Margarita limit on the way in and my boss said, “yeah, I’ve done it, I wouldn’t recommend it.” Hah! Apparently they make them strong.

After work yesterday I drove up to Petsmart and Target in Montgomeryville to grab some presents for Caligula and a few things I needed at Target. Neither place was very busy like I expected, quite a relief.

I ended up getting home around 7:30. Did some cleaning and then cuddled on the couch with Caligula to watch Nova. Michael spent a lot of time checking out Bed & Breakfast websites from West Virginia to Nova Scotia. We’re still not sure where we want to go next week, but I’m sure he’ll find something wonderful.

Tonight we’re having a couple guests over, Kathleen and Barbara from the Shaman class. Barbara is moving to the area in the next couple weeks, and Kathleen is doing some shopping in Skippack, so we thought it would be neat to get together. Michael will be cooking some rosemary chicken yay!

Sunday was nice. Spent the entire day in my pajamas, got some laundry done, did some reading.

I finally got ahold of Henry Umansky, who has been super busy with work, to get info about montcolug.org. Because of all his current obligations we decided it would be best if he just handled DNS and I do the hosting. So I spent some time getting that all set up in apache and then put together a simple website. I might go back and make it pretty sometime, but for now it just has the basics.

In the evening we enjoyed a pot roast that Michael made in the crock pot. Then I wanted to turn off my brain and watch some TV. Unfortuantely nothing was on (big surprise) so I watched a couple Disney movies. Went to bed around 10.

It would be an understatement to say I’m looking forward to my 11 days off coming up. Luckily we’re quite busy at work so I’m sure these last few days before the vacation will fly by %)

I’m looking forward to a snuggly relaxing day today.

People were busy yesterday, so I snagged Michael to come shopping with me in Skippack. It was chilly out, but most of the stores weren’t crowded. We pretty much stuck to buying for a few close friends, I’ll mostly be sending out gift cards and the like to distant family people.

Around 4 we left Skippack and headed up to Peddler’s Village in Lahaska (just outside of New Hope). As we approached the area we were glad we had decided to do our shopping in Skippack rather than New Hope, the traffic was horrible and people were everywhere. Luckily we weren’t there for the shops, we were there for beer! A little brewpub that I mentioned in the last entry called Porterhouse Brew Pub. Again, this was a selection from Lew Bryson’s Pennsylvania Breweries 3rd Edition (have I mentioned that I love this book? We really should pick up our own copy).

Porterhouse sells River Horse beer, whose headquarters is just across the river in Lambertville, NJ (but we won’t hold it against them). I’d never heard of it, but apparently it’s reasonably popular in the area. The place was really nice, and when we met Bob there at 5 we were able to find a seat at the bar easily.

Bring on the beer!

Michael ordered a Hop Hazard Pale Ale, which he claimed was less hoppy than the name would suggest. But it’s good to keep in mind that Michael loves hops, it was plenty hoppy for me. A clean, good brew.

And now for my choice. I almost went with the Hop Hazard, but when I spied the Belgian Frostbite on the menu I decided to give it a shot.

As the days grow shorter and frost becomes snow, our BELGIAN FROSTBITE WINTER ALE is the perfect remedy to loosen the spirits. This deep amber tonic is brewed with lots of roasted caramel malt for body and warmth to bring in the holidays and see you through the spring.

8% A.B.V; Available from September thru March. Deep Amber Belgian Style Ale Fermented with Authentic Belgian Ale Yeast. Moderately Hopped and Lower Sweetness Than Most Belgian Ales.

Sounds yummie, huh?

WELL IT IS! It was a bit like Guinness, but had a wonderful Belgian style finish. Guinness+Belgian Ale brewed locally? Yay! It’s now up there in my top 5 favorite beers. Too bad the closest distributor is 48 minutes away. Although, the retailer down the street does accept special orders…

It’s so great to have Bob to visit brewpubs with, these past couple months have been a delight for my tastebuds.

My nails look pretty. I might start getting manicures more often.

The company party last night was a disappointment. The location was nice, but there wasn’t enough seating and the food was served buffet style. Arg! I hate buffet style. The food itself was less than impressive too, nearly-stale rolls (wtf?), lousy crabcakes, super-rare steak, and bad stirfry. We didn’t stay long after finishing our dinner, didn’t even stay for dessert.

I’m now left with the craving I cultivated for good food! So we decided it would be good to head over to Porterhouse Pub this evening to satiate that craving.

Other than that, I don’t have plans for the day. It’d be nice to head down to Skippack and do some shopping. I’ve never been one to give meaningless gifts, so I hope that going to Skippack will be inspiring. But I don’t want to go by myself, so I need to snag someone to come with ;)

Right now I must take a shower. When I got my haircut yesterday they put some “root volumizer” in my hair to make it look nicer when they blowdried it – but it’s awful stuff and makes my hair feel yucky.

There are cookies everywhere in this office! Such a terrible temptation after the week I’ve had.

Tonight is the holiday party for work, we’re going to Normandy Farm in Blue Bell. Quite honestly I’m not in the mood, I’m sorta tired and just feeling lousy. But it’s a very nice place, and I’ve never been one to pass up a free meal %)

In preparation, I’m hopping over to the hair salon a block from where I work in a few minutes for a quick haircut and manicure. I had wanted to go with a woman from work to get my nails done on Wednesday, and then remembered we had our shaman class. The haircut had been planned for last night in Schwenksville, but they closed down early because of the freezing rain. At least this way I’ll be able to get them both done at the same place, even if I am paying a bit more and squeezing it into a lunch break.

*heads off to hair salon*

Remember that post yesterday where I said all that lovely stuff?

The truth is, I’m having a shitty week %(

It’s official, princessleia.com and wallaceandgromit.net have been moved off of our home connection and onto a server over at Phenominet.

I still have shaman.princessleia.com on the home connection because I want Michael to have easy access to it, and 13thHour.net is still at home. But it’ll be a great relief to our connection to have my big sites off of it. Now I won’t have to worry about making my websites slow when I’m using the connection for other things. Michael won’t have to worry about a zillion hits to my sites making his radio show skip. And I won’t have to bug Michael every time I need something changed or fixed in the configuration of my websites.

All good things!

The move went well, only a few typos of mine causing havoc ;) I haven’t found anything completely broken yet. Thanks to everyone (especially and his mad skillz) who helped me out so I can get comfy in the new space, it’s made the move so much easier.

In other good news (yay more good news!), Michael and I decided this past weekend that we needed to get away. We’ve taken time off from work to go out of town 3 times this year, 2 of these were for memorial services. This is no good. We need some time to recharge and not feel weighed down with family obligations and how we “really should be fixing/cleaning $household_thing instead of sitting around the house.”

Since Michael has time off between Christmas and New Years, we figured that’d be the best time to sneak away for a few days, so I put in my request for the entire week between Christmas and New Years off (3 work days, we already get the 26th and 30th off) – and my request was granted! What will our getaway be? A B&B on the seacoast? A snuggly trip to a friend’s farmhouse in Maine? A roadtrip to a mountainous B&B in Maryland? We haven’t decided yet. But whatever it is, I want relaxation time, delicious food, bubble baths, fireplaces and snuggling. No concrete plans. No family.

Today Caligula is 2 years old! *snuggles kitty*

My how he’s grown %D

[lj-cut]10:27:35 <lost1> are you busy today? I’ll take you to philcon if you need to get out/away
10:27:56 <pleia2> hmm, that’s very tempting, what time are you going?

I hadn’t really put any thought into going. On Wednesday waltman and mentioned it, but I mostly filtered it out because my hobby focus lately has been more on spirituality and computers than scifi and gaming. In fact, I’ve put the latter two on the back burner and turned that burner off, so much time lately has been consumed with the former.

So I headed over to ‘s place and then she drove us down to Philly for Philcon 2005.

And now I have a confession to make: I’d never been to a Scifi Convention.

So today was my first experience. was my guide through the booths and rooms where all the stuff was going on, but we pretty much split up when it came to the panels/talks we wanted to hear.

First I went to Imagine No Religion, which was described as “Will we ever live in a truly post-religious future or will people continually come up with something new?” That sounded interesting, and one of tne of the panelists was David Silverman of NoGodBlog.com. The talk seemed to be more an evaluation of current belief systems and disagreements between the various panelists than a discussion of the future. Slightly disappointing since I’ve already gone through the “journey to find god” or whatever and I’m quite familiar with everything they talked about. On the bright side it was nice to see David Silverman.

Next I went to Attack of the Superbugs, which was described as “No, not the six-legged or even eight-legged kind, but the even nastier ones you can’t see: viruses, megapathogens, flesh-eating bacteria… We feel we’ve stomped out many of the old, terrible plagues, but could they be back in a new and improved form? Is the overuse of antibiotics just leading to our own eventual downfall?” This sounded interesting too. Unfortunately it turns out I knew too much about this too! The talk was not at all enlightening, simply confirming stuff I already knew. I enjoyed it though.

Then I went down to SETI on the Web: Two Alternative Strategies, which is described as “Paul “Dr. SETI” Shuch will update us on the latest developments and possibilities in the ongoing Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.” – Neat! This was fun! Dr. H. Paul Shuch is the Executive Director of SETI, and his talk outlined the history of SETI (some of which I actually didn’t know). Then he discussed Invitation to ETI and told some amusing stories about that. He even got out his guitar and played some songs about SETI (more info about songs here). Ah, good times. The audience was pretty small and I got to meet him briefly after the talk *glee*

After this I met up with in a wrap up meeting for the con, then we went to dinner.

I had a great day %D[/lj-cut]

After the utter laziness that characterized Friday, Michael and I got around to doing some cleaning yesterday.

Later in the day, Michael made reservations at General Lafayette Inn & Brewery – another brewery that we found in Lew Bryson’s Pennsylvania Breweries: 3rd Edition.

I looked up the website on Friday and was very excited to go, they brew a lambic!

Lafayette’s Bière de Framboises
Our most anticipated specialty brew is back. Sour, dry, wine-like Belgian-style Ale made with 460 pounds of whole raspberries and a lactic fermentation. Six months in the making, this bright red brew has a quenching finish. $6.00, served in a wine glass only. 7.0% ABV, 12 IBU

I was surprised at the high alcohol content, the Lindemans is only around 4%. We also thought that the IBU was sort of high, but apparently 11-23 is the standard range for a lambic.

We met up with Bob and Julie (a friend of Michael’s from work) around 6.

The lambic was great. Quite bitter compared to the raspberry lambic from Lindemans, but that’s great for me, since I think the Lindemans is too sweet ;) Gosh I love lambics, I need to talk Michael into helping me brew one this winter, there are some lambic recipes online, but not many people make them. I can become the Lambic Master!

Oh, the food at General Lafayette Inn & Brewery was great too. We enjoyed a nice cheese plate appetizer (cheese, meats, fruit…), then Michael got a steak and I got the salmon – amazing salmon, cooked perfectly. For dessert I enjoyed some of their chocolate mousse cake – yum yum! Couldn’t finish it all.

After dinner I was exhausted, I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep Friday night and it was really catching up to me. Michael wanted to try another beer after dinner, so we all headed to the bar for some drinks. I didn’t have more drinks, I kept my nose in a copy of the latest Ale Street News and tried not to fall asleep.

Today I don’t have plans, yay!

Oh, and it is somewhat exciting to note that a new irssi version was released today – along with a new website! Of course I won’t be upgrading until etch does, but the new website is nice to look at.