Last night we went to Boulder after the guys got home from work.

First we went to a Mexican restaurant’s bar for the best margueritas I’ve ever had, then we met Jeff and went and saw Farenheit 9/11 at one of those theatres you can drink in.

(So in Boulder it seems you can drink basically anywhere, but you can’t smoke. It’s a pain in the ass, honestly, but I’m sure all the non- and ex-smokers love the clean air and yes I agree they do have a right to it. Just not in bars, for chrissake. Non-smoking bars are stupid.)

Amy couldn’t make it to drinks or the movie because she had to work. When she called Ron to beg off he said, “WHAT?!? Quit that fuckin’ job!” in a way that totally cracked me up – so much so that I was repeating the quote back to him for the rest of the evening. (You can tell he must get stood up pretty frequently by her job. I told Brett that that’s why I don’t make fifty grand a year.) (Sometimes Brett forgets he’s a slob and asks me why I don’t make lots of money. LOL! He asked me the other day how much I could make if we moved here because he’s all horny to buy property and build on it. I admire him because our current debt load daunts him not one iota; he manifests ways to get things done when he wants them done. It’s cool. Anyway, he was like, “I guess Ron’s girlfriend makes really decent money, could you do what she does?” I replied that I didn’t know what she does exactly but that yes, if I was willing to give up my personal life – which I’m not – I could probably make really good money. He had tried to tell me she “doesn’t work that much”, but I’ve only known the girl a week and she’s been woken up in the middle of the night twice and missed a movie because she had to go to work! And Ron was complaining about her getting calls at three in the morning. So there, Brett: the poor woman’s on call 24/7 and that’s why she makes the big bucks! Brett would so make me quit any job that interfered with his schedule more than once or twice; he gave me all kinds of shit the occasional times I was on call for LISCO or had to take support calls when he wanted me to be doing something else! He’s so funny.)

After the movie, Jeff took off. Ron and Brett and I went to a nearby rooftop restaurant for a late dinner. I was offered yet more booze but I settled for a giant glass of water and a half order of nachos. It was breezy and comfy out; no bugs and no humidity, and I enjoyed the conversation. Ron told us about buying his house and about a concert he went to; it was fun.

After eating we drove home. My ears still don’t like the altitude changes and tend to hurt for five minutes every time I drive back up the mountain. They also tend not to pop on the way down, so my entire evening was one of slightly muffled sounds. Maybe I need tubes in my ears, like they give to little kids? Heh.

I made a joke last night, when Ron said he hoped the weather would be nice this weekend, that it would snow. He laughed and told me to fuck off and said that he really wanted to ride his bike this weekend. Today the heat’s kicked on and it’s overcast and chilly out, with a big fat bank of clouds hanging in the sky. I was kidding about the snowing… or so I’d thought! All week it’s been hot in here (Ron’s living room) by this time of day (because the sun shines straight in), but today I’m glad the laptop is hot and I’m thinking about getting my slippers.

Since I’ve been here, I’ve done about an hour of cleaning every day. Not because I love to clean, but because Brett & I brought three dogs with us and if I don’t clean, Ron’s house will be a giant, filthy hairball when we leave. Ron says he generally hires someone to come clean when he can’t stand it any more; the place is actually really tidy but if I wasn’t sweeping every day there’d be hairballs in every corner! I had to scrub Bindu hair off the corner of the sofa where she rubs her little body as she’s going to hide in the corner! Silly dogs.

The cloudbank I’ve been watching is getting bigger and darker. I’m off to check the weather.

Ciao, babies!

We didn’t leave until nine the next day. We slept in.

Half way through Nebraska, the Jeep decided to get weird. It overheated about five times; we were able to travel about 25 miles in each hour for several hours: stop and fill up the radiator and five one-gallon jugs with water. Get on the Interstate. Drive about 25 miles. Watch radiator fluid spray across the windshield. Pull over. Wait for engine to cool down. Fill up radiator. Limp to next gas station. Repeat.

We weren’t running the A/C and the whole ordeal sucked, although we managed to maintain a pretty good mood throughout. After making a couple of calls to find out if people would be willing to rescue us, the Jeep self-healed and the rest of the journey was trouble-free.

We called Ron and asked him to go rent a trailer so he could come get us if necessary. We called Joe and he said he’d be willing to come get us and tow us all the way to Ron’s! (Ya gotta have friends!) After both guys said yea, the Jeep never overheated again. We had to pay for a trailer we never used, but it was better $40 for an unused trailer than the many more expensive alternatives.
Continue reading Welcome to Golden →

Juni has ported Stardock’s weather icons for WeatherPanel. Get ’em here.

It’s official: I have permission to take time off work and everything: We’re going to Colorado for a week and a half. Maybe two!

Brett’s taking a ‘working vacation,’ and will be taking tools with him. I’m not sure exactly what he’ll be doing, but it’ll be construction. I will have the Jeep and time on my hands to check out the Denver/Boulder area.

We’ll be staying at Ron’s house, and apparently there’s a working hot tub there, so you can bet I’ll be soaking my fat Iowa ass in that pretty frequently! Also, while it’s a Mac there’s still a computer I can use, so I’ll be sure to update the ‘box.

Brett was waxing poetic about a German restaurant not too far from our host’s house, but it really doesn’t sound like much of a vegetarian’s scene. What, kielbasa? Kuchen? Lager? Hmm. I don’t even know what German cuisine is, honestly.

We’ll be driving out, to accommodate the tools. So it’ll be me, hubby, three dogs, a miter saw and stand, a tool belt, some buckets, and a suitcase in the Jeep on the way to Colorado this weekend. I expect the drive to suck, but I’m not really from the driving planet.

I’m so excited! A vacation! Brett’ll get up and go to work in the mornings, so I don’t know what I’ll do with myself… drive around and check things out a little, I expect. Brett said there’s a lot to be said for “just kickin’ it on Ron’s porch admirin’ the view,” so I might do a bit of that.

I’m taking my knitting and doubtless there’ll be a LYS I can check out. Knitting a layette for Kris on a porch in Colorado! How’s that sound for relaxing vacation-type fun! And hot tubbing! And maybe a visit to the casino! And coffee, and veggie restaurants, and being away from home long enough to miss it!

Yay! I’m so excited! Whee!
——–

I just bought Calendar Plus because I’ve decided I like it, and my trial version was about to expire anyway. It turns the useless Calendar layout into something robust and useful.

The maker of this plugin, SBSH, also makes something similar called PocketBreeze which apparently does the same stuff Calendar Plus does. I ran a trial of that, but I think it does way more than someone of my relatively open schedule requires. It’s skinnable, though, which does recommend it.

The version I bought has more features than the trial version I had so I’m off to play with it… and maybe make some coffee or something… and maybe eat some brownies and milk for breakfast…

Good Lord but I’m getting tired of waiting on my husband! LOL!

Pamper, my ass! Brett finally decided that the couch – uncomfortable as it is – is not a good place to hang out when your back’s a mess. This means that he’s been hanging out on our bed instead. It also means that I’ve been bringing him stuff all day. Magazines. A TV tray to keep his tons of junk upon. (The man is like Pigpen. Wherever he goes, piles of junk appear. I have no idea how he generates so much garbage just sitting somewhere.) Food. Drink. Pillows. Slippers. A television. The PS2 and related cabling. DVDs. Ibuprofin. Juice. Ice packs.

(The TV is from Joe’s room; Brett called Joe at work and asked if he could borrow it. It’s even bigger than the one we have in our living room, and it’s perched precariously atop a speaker cabinet. I rolled it from Joe’s room to ours, but there was a scary moment trying to coax the ungainly beast – taller than I by several inches – over the lip of our bedroom’s threshhold. I envisioned the telly crashing down the stairs with a mighty noise and lots of little shards of glass I’d have to sweep up. Brett said, “Can I help with that?” and I said, “Yeah, right!“)

The lasagna is finally in the oven; I ended up serving lunch the last time I got off the Internet, and what with all the running up and down the damn stairs all day and trying to get a little housework done, it was 4-something before I started making it. It’ll be out at 5:45, just in time for a proper 6 o’clock supper.

It’s nearly 5:30 now, so I guess I’ll go tend to the garlic bread and Caesar salad. Off I go, domestic goddess that I am.

Snort!
——–

It’s chilly and dreary out. It’s been raining off and on all day.

The four rugs I put on the laundry line last weekend have never dried and at this rate they never will. Sigh.

Brett’s back is still fucked up. It was better Thursday, but he made the mistake of going to work Friday – to do flooring – and now he’s pretty much back where he started. This morning we took him into town to see the chiropractor, but the office was closed. Of course.

I called around for muscle relaxants and couldn’t find any; Reni told me to call Kathy which I did. Kathy said she was busy today, but told me what to do: “Put him on 800 mg of ibuprofin every six hours. That’s four pills every six hours. It’ll bring the swelling down. Muscle relaxants won’t actually do anything while the muscle is inflamed like that. So keep his ass down. Don’t let him get up and move around, even when he feels much better after the second dose. You’ll have to wait on him, pamper him. [I groaned at that, of course.] Don’t let him move around at all. Call me in twenty four hours and we’ll go to the next step if we need to!” She is so awesome!

Brett bitched about “just taking ibuprofin,” just as she’d said he would, but he’s doing it anyway. He’s lying in bed right now reading the magazines I picked up for him at the store.

Anyway, back to this morning in review: Went to the chiropractor and it was closed. Went to 2nd Street Coffee Shop, bought lattes, sat in the car and talked to Reni and Kathy on the old cell phone. Stopped at Drug Town for Motrin IB. Stopped at Hy-Vee for lasagne ingredients (and a bottle of wine for the cook). Stopped at Casey’s West for gas. Drove home.

Helped Brett out of the car. Carried in all the shit we’d acquired. Put groceries away. Came upstairs and posted a few pics I took this morning (before it started raining) to my knitting blog. Visited the SFBC’s site to refuse next month’s selections.

Now it’s nearly one and I think I’ll go run the oven for awhile to take the chill off my bones. (I suppose I’ll bake a lasagne and some garlic bread while it’s on!)

Ciao, babies. Smootch!
——–

We’ve all had blemishes… pimples, zits, whatever. We all pick at them now and then, and sometimes little scabs form. It’s a normal part of the healing process, right?

Well, this is a story about a blemish and the little embarassments life can dish up.

I was sitting in my car taking a break. (I’m working today because Tim’s out of the office and they asked me to come in.) I had a book propped against the steering wheel and was reading, right there in my car next to the Mi-T-Mart on a fine sunny day.

It was pleasant. Traffic vroomed by on Burlington, breezes flowed through the Jeep’s open windows, and I sipped a Starbucks Doubleshot. All was well. I figured I’d finish the page and wander back in to the old jobby-wobby.

Now if you wear glasses, you’ll happen to know that sometimes you have to push them up and rub the bridge of your nose. For some people, it’s because their glasses pinch or are too heavy. In my case, it’s to wipe away some of my skin’s excess oil – my glasses start to slide down when I’m hot and sweaty, which is pretty much always in Iowa’s August weather. (Having oily skin may keep my skin soft to the touch, but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be in terms of functionality and keeping my glasses on my damn face.) Everyone you know who wears glasses will occasionally be seen absently swiping the bridge of their nose. It’s a fact of glasses-wearing life.
Continue reading One of life's embarassing moments →

I’ve redone the site. I’m going to move many of the old pages into MT as entries so I never, ever have to mess with them again and they’ll be updated automatically whenever I update the MT templates.

Some stuff I’m just going to delete. I have so much crap on my server I can’t even move around any more… temp folders, stuff in the wrong places, orphaned pages with graphics from Christmas two years ago. It’s a mess. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of images in my images dir and tons of them are sliced graphics for tables no one’s seen in years.

I’m serious. This time I’m cleaning up the site! For real! It should take about six months. (Snort!)

Last Friday, Mr. Brett hurt his back. Badly. A group of small muscles in his lower back were so swollen they were pulling his spine out. The man could barely move.

He spent the weekend in pain, stuck on the couch. Joe found him a muscle relaxant that put him out like a light for several hours on Saturday, but other than that he’s been in pretty constant pain.

Monday he called his mom, and she not only recommended a great chiropractor, but she had some muscle relaxants in her medicine cabinet at home! (We should have called her first. When will we learn that moms have special powers?)

Brett saw this guy with the most reasonable charges I’ve ever heard of ($37 for the first visit, $28 afterwards an no appointments and no waiting, ever) and got adjusted Monday. Afterwards we met Barb for lunch and she reminded us again we should have called her right away because her chiropractor is actually open on Saturday mornings. I had half a tuna melt and some slices of hard boiled egg off of Barb’s plate, and Brett and Barb chatted about silly family stories involving drunk young Mooks and grandparents. It was a hoot.

The doc told Brett he’d be in pain for the rest of the week and gave him some stretches to do. He also said to “ice the piss out of it” and to come back in a couple of days if he needed to.

The poor man hasn’t worked all week. He can barely get out of a chair by himself, so it’s not like he could reasonably expect to be laying flooring – kneeling and standing and kneeling and standing all day would kill him.

He asked me this morning if I thought he should try to work today, and I told him, “under no circumstances. You’re not smart enough to go home if it starts to hurt too much!”

So he’s home yet again today, watching satellite TV and bored out of his mind. Hopefully he’ll be better soon!
—–