I’m not leaving the house today. In fact, I’m going to lock upself up here in the computer room all day and spend some quality time with my computer.

I’m not much of a “do stuff” person, and lately we’ve been doing tons of (great!) stuff. Each month I say “things will calm down by $next_month” and they don’t. It’s been weeks since I was able to sit down with a computer book and hack away at something. And how long have I been saying I was going to overhaul the back end of princessleia.com? Over a YEAR? All my computer time lately has been spent doing community things – email, wallace and gromit stuff, IRC – and even these have not gotten the attention I want to give them. Plus, with so much on my mind I haven’t been sleeping well this week. Wednesday night I was woken up by a nightmare that ruined my night.

This all leaves me feeling very tired and ungrounded. I need to get back to my roots! That’s what the “plan” was for this whole weekend.

Then Michael emailed me friday afternoon and asked if I wanted to see Harold Smith, Steve Turre, and Badal Roy at the Glencairn Museum. How could I pass up seeing a didgeridoo player and a tabla player, being hosted in one of those huge, stone buildings I love so much? I couldn’t of course. I got home from work Friday night and we drove to Willow Grove to have dinner at Natural Village (best chinese and vegan chinese in the area, sucks that it’s so far from home) and then arrived for the concert at 8. It was an amazing concert, the room it was in (picture here, but this picture does it no justice, the room is very much like a cathedral and the design on that arch is all done in little tiles) was specifically designed with having concerts in mind, so the sound is great. I’d never seen a tabla player in person before – besides Michael! – so that was pretty neat. Unfortunately as 10PM crept up I was feeling exhausted and crankie. It was close to 11 when we got home, I immediately went to bed.

Saturday morning I had to get up to take the Rav4 into the shop. The passenger’s side headlight had gone out and the orange light on that same side was acting funny (wouldn’t turn on when I started the car, but would come on eventually). I was hoping it wasn’t some electrical problem, those can be stupidly expensive to diagnose and fix. The appointment was at 8AM, so I got up like I would on a normal work day. It was rainy and dark out, and me with my single headlight decided to just take the main roads that I knew rather than the shortcut that Michael had suggested. I was at the dealership from 8-9:30 – how long does it take to change a lightbulb? I hope nothing is wrong! Luckily nothing was wrong, the blub in the headlight had just gone out and the orange one was loose or something so they replaced the bulb ($2 for that, phew!).

I wanted to go to bed when I got home around 10, but we had things to do. I did some cleaning and Michael went down in the basement to do some concrete work. Then we needed to go grocery shopping and run a few other errands. Grocery shopping was successful, but I was too tired and not in the mood to get my haircut, and I didn’t get to make digital prints for my grandfather’s sweat lodge because some woman was using the digital photo machine to scan and print a pile of 32432 pictures.

We went home and I had a beer.

I was able to get a few minutes to analyze the access logs for princessleia.com. I think the real reason I hate myspace is that 2% of the hits are from people hotlinking my images to display on their pages. I guess it’s because it’s so popular, but saying that the users of myspace are a bunch of evil, bandwidth leeching idiots is more fun (Oh crap, I’m being mean again!). So I started reading up on apache rewrite rules to ban certain sites from linking. I’m pretty sure I got it all sorted out now to display a simple “hotlinking is prohibited” image on myspace, but I need to grab Michael so he can enable rewrite
stuff for my site in the global apache config.

I also did a tree(1) of the princessleia.com root directory. The result?

250 directories, 5104 files

Egads!

A vast majority are images, and most of those are images I want to keep on the site because I use them. But there is a lot of work to be done to sort out how the site is organized and what pages use what CSS sheets, etc etc etc. What I’d like to do is change all .html to .php and use PHP to write includes so every page looks the same and changing the style is easy, but that isn’t going to happen. Too many of my pages (including my mplayer how-to) are .html and they’re linked all over the internet. Breaking those links would suck and redirects to the new site would make more clutter. I haven’t decided if more clutter is worth it. But I can spend the time to redo the CSS. And I know I’ll spend a bunch of time deleting stuff on the site I don’t use anymore.

This post has degenerated into me thinking aloud. I need to just stop typing and get to work.

On Monday evening I started looking for a Halloween costume. I’ve been a witch for halloween for like 6 years, so I figured it was time for a fun change.

I started out at disneystore.com – the costumes there were way discounted and I want to be a princess! ;) I started looking at Sally costumes (Nightmare Before Christmas). They didn’t have my size, so pointed me to buycostumes.com, which had some neat costumes. I contemplated getting a Sally costume, but it just wouldn’t be the same without a Jack, and the Jack costumes are pretty awful. So I browsed the site for a bit and naturally ended up in the Star Wars costume section.

That’s when it hit me.

I’ve never been Leia for Halloween!

BuyCostumes.com didn’t have the Leia costumes in stock, so I googled a bit, was very disappointed with the quality of costume sites. I ended up at starwars.com.

I figured starwars.com would be a good place to buy from, no worries about the site being a fraud or scary forms, that’s worth the extra couple of bucks I’ll pay for it. The normal ground shipping is supposed to ship within 48 hours and from there it takes up to 8 business days if you’re on the east coast. Great! That’s enough time to get it by the 29th. I placed my order for the Leia Costume.

I still hadn’t gotten the shipping confirm by Thursday morning, I started getting worried that they were being lazy and wouldn’t get around to shipping it until too late and then I wouldn’t get it in time! So I emailed them to see if I could change the shipping terms. The first email I got back didn’t answer my question, it was really lame, I was upset. The second email said: “Unfortunately we are unable to make any changes to your order as it is already processing. If you do not want this item please leave a note for Fedex saying that you refuse all items from Lucasfilm.” Damn. Perhaps I should consider alternatives in case it doesn’t arrive on time?

This morning I finally got the FedEx order tracking number, and guess what?

Estimated delivery Oct 26, 2005

Yay!

I love getting myself worked up over nothing.

“I’m skinnier in those pictures.”

“Yeah, you are, why?”

“Because I work in an office now.”

According to statistics, I’m not overweight. I’m within the acceptable range for someone with my body type. I never eat fast food (pizza isn’t fast food!). But in the past year I’ve put on 15 pounds. This gain has not only been a hit to my self-esteem, it’s made my stomach problems worse, and made me more tired than I should be for a healthy person my age.

There are several factors that have contributed to me putting on weight, and a majority have to do with my job.

When you work in a typical American office you have access to donuts, danishes, cookies and other sweet things quite often. Just this morning there were a couple boxes of delicious looking donuts in the kitchen that I managed to avoid (yay me!). When I worked at home, or didn’t work at all, I didn’t have access to the temptation. I didn’t have to walk by a box of donuts every time I went to the bathroom, no need to constantly exercise willpower when avoiding sweets is as easy as skipping that aisle in the grocery store once a week.

For some reason I’m hungrier when I actually go somewhere for work. I’m not entirely sure how this works, but I can get up at the same time on a weekend, spend all morning working on projects, clean the house and not feel hungry until 2PM. Then, if I go to work and don’t eat breakfast my stomach is complaining by 10AM. I suspect that part of the problem is being bored.

And when you work full time away from home the time for exercise is cut. I try to take walks during my lunch break, but any sort of exercising at home is difficult after a hard day at work. I suppose I could try to get into a routine of doing exercise in the morning, but when I’ve tried that in the past it just made me grumpy.

Similarly, when you work full time away from home you don’t have time to spend on creating elaborate, healthy meals. So often I am wiped out from working all day and tell Michael to order a pizza or take me out to dinner where I’ll eat something that’s terrible for me.

Eating when I’m depressed is a problem too. I find excuses to buy goodies, get a bagel loaded with cream cheese on my way to work “because it’s a monday” or buy brownie mix “because work was rough this week.”

What I have to drink might be an issue too. Damn PA only allowing us to buy beer by the case! I love beer… and soda, soda good! Yum!

Over the past month or so I’ve begun to tackle these issues. My stomach issues are calming down again, I’m hoping as I get back into healthy eating patterns that my energy will come back too. Getting into my favorite jeans has been easier too ;) Yay!

A big help has been Michael helping out with dinners. When I was only working part time or not at all I wouldn’t let him near the kitchen. But now that we’re both working all the time he’s put a lot of effort into cooking and I’m proud to say that his cooking horror stories may be a thing of the past! Since he works from home 2 days a week he’s been able to prepare some nice dinners for us when I’ve just been too tired to attempt it. He even made a loaf of bread yesterday! With yeast and everything!

The eating when depressed one is something I can handle, I have in the past. It is directly related to my general eating habits. If I’m eating healthy in general I won’t need as much sweets to improve my mood. The problem occurs when I’m eating sweets often, so cheer up sweets have to be bigger.

Beer will be a hard one to tackle, I love beer. But soda is not so hard, we haven’t been buying it much, water is what I drink mostly these days. Soda is back to being a treat when we eat out or have pizza.

I’ve also worked on willpower. This is a hard one %\ Damn this office and it’s delicious sugary pastries!

Exercise? Gosh, I don’t know. Maybe I should jump on the bandwagon and get a DDR mat and game for my PS2.

I think the next thing I need to do is work out what I should be eating for breakfast and lunch. I’ve been eating oatmeal at work lately for breakfast, which lasts long enough to get m
y stomach to lunchtime. I’d like to get away with munching on salad for lunch, but I always end up hungry again in the late afternoon, and then the plate of cookies down the hall is that much more tempting. I need to find food that will keep me satisfied and not be bad for me. Turkey sandwiches are probably good, I just need to cut down on the mayo (oh how I love the mayo!).

Any suggestions?

Annette just called me on my cellphone to tell me that Merlynn died. She was 8 years old, chinchillas generally live as long as cats, so while this isn’t “young” it isn’t old either. My sister didn’t give details, but she must have gotten sick.

This is sad %(

I’m so tempted to go into a big ole blurb about my first chinchillas and how important Merlynn was to me and to her mate, but I’ll keep it short.

Merlynn was the first chinchilla we ever bought from a breeder. We bought her after the loss of my first chinchilla, Eve, who I was very close to. I have a whole page about chinchillas and the ones I’ve owned here. They were a big part of my life for a few years in high school. When I left home in 2000 I was not in a position to take her with me, chinchillas don’t travel well and I didn’t have a stable home. It was heartbreaking, I missed her and Dweezle so much.

I’ve only seen them a couple times since moving away, but I still feel a loss…

Rest in Peace Merlynn, you were a dear, may our paths cross again.

It took me a while to realize that I made a connection between writing and immortality. PrincessLeia.com is a monster of randomness. Sorting it’s contents was incredibly difficult because the subjects are so varied. Very often I’ll take up a new thing, even something that seems normal like learning how to cook and keep an orderly house, and make a website about it. Going through the steps I took, spending a great deal of time to design and develop a page that will preserve that knowledge in some form. Why do I have this drive? Who is it for? I wasn’t sure until this past weekend.

The loss of my grandfather is difficult, the world lost a great mind when he died. But I’m comforted in the fact that we did not lose all his knowledge and ideas, he wrote down a great deal of what he thought about and we have much of what he has written. When I want inspiration from him I can still pull out one of the several papers, letters or articles that he’s written and read it. And I have the Heritage Trails project where I’m attempting to bring some of these things to the internet for a whole new audience.

The loss of my father is not comforted by a wealth of writings. He went to college for journalism, and spent some time writing, but not much survived over the years. All I have is a paper he wrote in High School. An aunt collected some papers (mostly fiction) of his that he had and was writing shortly before he died, and should be sending me them soon, but it’s not much. I’m absolutely heartbroken that I have so little to tap in to. The death of my father really hit me when I was cooking something and thought “hey I should call up dad and ask him $method/$tip” – and realized that he was dead and the wealth of information he had about cooking was gone.

And so, while my memory of my father’s ideas may shift and become unclear over time, my grandfather’s ideas are right there on paper. In 30 years the world will still have an accurate snapshot of my grandfather’s mind, but my father’s will be lost in time.

So why do I have this drive? Because I want to live forever, I have the natural want not to be forgotten. And I’m a writer my thoughts will swirl around in my head until I and let them out by writing them down.

And who is it for? Everyone, but mostly me. It’s all a self-preservation exercise that happens to have the side effect of being helpful to other people. If I didn’t have the internet I’m sure I’d have reams of paper with thoughts and ideas, and journals that I just wrote for myself all over the place.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot from several angles.

Is this all very selfish?

Am I too prolific when my journal is taken into account for anyone to ever want to spend the time and access my thoughts?

Is this a bad habit? Should I spend less time cataloging my life and more time living it? recently brought this up, and has since stopped writing so much in his journal.

And so many other questions.

Then, this past weekend, a friend mentioned that I should “Do something” with something that I had written because he thought it was good. And this morning, I received an email from a fellow who thanked me for the cooking section of my site, said the Debian mplayer how-to was very helpful and that he now understand how to use screen(1).

These things quieted my mind a lot.

With all that I have written and put together I’ve created something wonderful and helpful that I enjoy!

That’s what matters.

But I think examining this was important. I may shift my focus back to preserving (on PrincessLeia.com) some of the more important things I write about, lest they get lost on this journal between entries about weekend activities and work.

I had a nice weekend.

Saturday morning I spent getting caught up with email and my website stuff. Around noon I gave my friend Nita a call to see if she wanted to hang out, it had been a while and we’ve both had a rough month.

Nita picked me up around 1 and we planned to go to the flea market in Limerick, but found it closed for renovations when we arrived. Instead we decided to go down to Skippack to just walk around and do some window shopping. I’d been meaning to do this with Michael, but it never worked out. At least this way I could go into all the “cute” stores and weed out the ones Michael won’t be interested when we do manage to get there.

We had a nice time. One of the best stores there is Le Butler’s Pantry: Gourmet Kitchen Shop, the prices are quite reasonable and the quality is high, and they have so much stuff. No more going to Target or emptying my wallet at expensive cookware stores! They even offer a bridal registry, which would be tempting if more of my friends and family were local ;) Nita, the sweetheart she is, even bought a couple things for my house as “housewarming gifts”! One of the items being an ice cube tray that makes ice cubes shaped like penguins (ice cubes? Those are for jello shots!). We also stopped by a “pet bakery” where I got a catnip pizzelle for Caligula, which he enjoyed. There was also a “Southwest Trading Post” store that I didn’t know about previously that carries a lot of native american jewelery, pottery, and carvings, very nice stuff and more reasonably priced than at similar stores in New Hope.

Nita had plans for the evening, so we stopped by my house for a bit and she left around 5.

That evening we had , and over for a Saturday Movie Night. It was great, we hadn’t seen them in a while. I had planned on not drinking, but Michael kept bugging me about getting a case of beer, and then Bae asked if we had vodka, and my resistance to getting booze dropped – Michael and Mike went for a liquor, beer and pizza run.

Most of the evening we spent just talking, which was good, always my favorite part of movie nights. little after 10 we all piled into the TV room and watched History of the World: Part 1, which most of us had never seen. Funny stuff, Mel Brooks is something else. Just before midnight Michael went upstairs to get ready for his radio show and not too long after everyone decided to get going. I managed to get to bed by around 1AM.

Sunday morning I got up reasonably early and spent the morning working on my websites and catching up with more emails. I managed to catch up on a lot of mailing lists I’m on, yay! I should really consider subscribing to fewer, I just don’t have the time for them anymore.

Michael had planned on going to a Ham (Radio) Fest with some friends of his, but wasn’t feeling well. At first he thought it was a hangover, but as the day progressed it was pretty clear it was some sort of stomach bug, complete with upset stomach, fever and aches. Around noon I headed over to and place to check on their cats (they are so cute!). When I came home I made some lunch for Michael, but his stomach was very unhappy and I ended up running up to the grocery store for chicken soup, crackers and ginger ale. Poor myn! We spent the afternoon and most of the evening covered in blankets and watching MST3K.

At 8PM we watched The West Wing, as usual. It’s one of the only shows we watch, and used to be really good, but since that new guy took over the show it’s only been “decent” and this stupid election has gone on for almost an entire season! Seriously, the last thing I wanted after the 2004 election is to watch a fake one for 10 months. And it’s so drawn out, and so much nothing happens during campaign episodes, I swore I’d stop watching it entirely if last night’s episode was another “nothing” one – but during the last 5 minutes there was “something” and I conceded that I’d keep watching it.

And now I’m b
ack at work on this beautiful October Monday. I wasn’t looking forward to coming back, but as I walked across the parking lot this morning I had to smile at the lovely weather and pretty trees, and somehow it wasn’t so bad afterall.

I can’t believe it’s October 17th already. We should get some pumpkins! When Bae was over she asked if we were planning on having a Halloween party this year, and I had to confess I didn’t have a “plan” for one, but maybe we should. Is there any interest in an October 29th (Saturday) get-together? Perhaps a LAN party? If we want to do this I’ll have to decide soon, Halloween is a big party holiday and I’m sure most people have other plans already or will very soon.

I have far too much fun with Google Adsense.

I began putting ads on certain sections of my sites in the end of January, here are the monthly statistics of monies:

February: $24.05
March: $12.51
April: $20.42
May: $32.64
June: $22.33
July: $21.11
August: $23.69
September: $27.30

So far this month: $40.73

Under the circumstances it was a good trip up to New England.

While on the trip, the subject of this blog came up a few times. How several family members read it and talk about it when they get together. Before we left, someone said “I can’t wait to read what she writes about this trip!” Gosh, that’s a lot of pressure.

So I thought about what I’d write, thinking nothing would give it justice. Surely I would disappoint. I sat quietly for a bit and realized that I just have to do what I always do, write for myself. Don’t try to impress, just be natural. Here goes.

The drive up was nice. It drizzled a lot, but we didn’t encounter any of the killer New England flooding that the news people have been on about. We took the long way up, through PA and NY, avoiding all of New Jersey and NYC. We arrived in Salem, Mass, where my cousins Melissa and Corrine live in an apartment complex around 9pm. We spent the evening talking to Melissa. It is great that she keeps such close touch with my sisters, so we were able to catch up on what they were doing and our thoughts about them. And Melissa is just a cool person all-around, so she’s fun to talk to.

Thursday morning Heather and Annette drove down from Maine and met us at the apartment in Salem, and we drove up to Nashua, NH to meet up with the rest of the family for my grandfather’s memorial service. We met at my Aunt Meg’s condo, she had just been released from the hospital following some major emergency surgery, and I was surprised (and pleased!) to see her up and around. We arrived at the funeral home just before the service started at noon.

The service was small, just close family. It was presided over by the Lutheran family pastor and my Aunt Katy (), who is a Methodist minister. My grandfather was not a practicing Christian, in fact, his more earth-based beliefs and pagan/folk studies were a big part of my relationship with him since my father died last year. But the service was nice, touching upon universal truths that Christianity preaches. A few grandchildren spoke, all of whom had good things to say. It was all very emotional. I cried, and cried again when I walked up and saw the pictures of my grandfather that were arranged at the front of the room. My cousin Barbara () wrote an entry with more details of the service, you can see it here.

Leaving the service I had a lot to think about. No doubt there will be good entries in the near future dealing with my feelings about him and my father after seeing and learning what I did during this visit.

After the service we met up at the retirement community where my grandparents lived, and my grandmother still lives. They had a nice lunch buffet set up for the family, and we all split up and sat at the tables arranged for us to eat. It was great getting to talk to everyone. After eating some people left, most of us went back to my grandmother’s apartment. We were able to just sit around and talk. It was wonderful, I got to spend some time talking to my cousin Audrey () and we had a great conversation about spiritality and relgion. She’s so smart, precisely the kind of Christian I love to talk to, open-minded and asking all the tough questions. I got to spend a little time talking to my grandmother, that was nice, she’s such a wonderful woman. I also got to talk to my cousin Barbara at dinner, which was cool, I don’t know her very well besides what I read in her journal, and it’s nice to physically connect with people.

Dinner was attended by about a dozen of us, it was nice, further connecting with cousins, we were even more mixed up between tables than we were at lunch. It just happened that way. After dinner we went back to my grandmother’s apartment again to talk more. There was a lot of laughing, no tears. Stories of Granddad, we got to see the wedding pictures of him and my grandmother 58 years ago, they were absolutely beautiful. We also got to share stories about our own lives, jo
ked around a lot and in general had a wonderful time together.

When we finally managed to leave around 9pm I couldn’t help feeling that this is precisely what granddad would have wanted. We’re a family of very intelligent, successful people (not to mention good-looking!). He had a great influence on all of us, and we got together and had a fantastic time in remembrance of him. All but one of the grandchildren attended the service, a great feat for any family when plans are pulled together so quickly and considering all the important obligations we have.

My Aunt Katy took pictures, which I’m sure I’ll get eventually. My cousin Melissa took a few between lunch and dinner when just a few of us stayed with my grandmother at her place for a bit.

Annette, me, Grandmother, Heather

Heather, me, Michael, Annette

We drove back to Salem and arrived there a little after 10. The plan had been to walk around historic Salem for a bit to see all the people dressed up, but my feet were killing me from the dress shoes I’d worn all day, and the very emotional day in general left me tired. Heather, Annette, Michael, Melissa and I spent the evening talking, watched some TV and went to bed around midnight.

Friday morning I got up a little after 7, showered and dressed before anyone else was out of bed. I took the opportunity to leave the room where Michael and I were staying and wake up Annette to talk. Just talk. We don’t see each other often, and over the phone just isn’t the same. We had a nice talk about life, soon Heather woke up too and all three of us got to talk. Talking with sisters is good. I left the conversation feeling much better about Annette, she’s an intelligent person, even if she keeps getting into trouble and is doing poorly in school. During part of the conversation she successfully analyzed the relationships where she lives, and explained what was wrong and what she needed, I was impressed, she could have quite a future in some sociological field if she’s that good now. She just needs someone to encourage her and help her realize and nurture her talents.

A little before 9 my cousin Corinne came by, and we were all running around getting ready to leave. I got to talk to her for a bit, and after proclaiming that I was going to steal all her books (she’s got lots of great ones) she mentioned that she was moving away and trying to get rid of most of them so I could take some if I wanted. We sat in her room while I picked out a few, it was great, I hadn’t had much time to talk to Corinne during the visit.

We didn’t manage to leave until after 9. Stopped at Dunkin Donuts and then were on our way home. We further extended our long trip home by taking route 2 through northern Mass rather than the turnpike. It was a beautiful drive, the trees were all changing, and there is nothing like seeing the clouds hang around small mountain tops and down in the valleys while driving through them.

Around 4 we stopped at The Farmhouse Restaurant in Oneonta, New York for dinner. It was good, they had a salad bar with seafood! Yum! And by 8pm we were home with Caligula, who wouldn’t let us out of his sight all evening.

We got home this evening around 8pm. All is well, but Caligula missed us a lot (thanks again for checking on him while we were gone!).

But I’m exhausted and it’s time for bed. I will do a real update this weekend, I have a lot to think about.

I also want to get out of the house this weekend, so if anyone just wants to hang out feel free to email, hook up with me in IRC or call my cellphone, I’ll be around.

Trip plans are finalized (it’s about time!).

Tomorrow we’re leaving around 9AM for Salem, Mass. We’re taking the longer, scenic way to avoid New Jersey and NYC (it’s worth the extra ~$10 in gas). If all goes according to plan we should arrive there around 5 or 6 pm.

Salem is where my cousin lives. We’ll be staying with her, joined by my sisters on Thursday when we attend the memorial service.

Thursay the service is being held around noon. We’ll attend that and then we’re having a big family lunch, so many people I haven’t seen in years will be there. It should be nice.

We’ll be going home Friday morning.