we're headed to canton this weekend. it's like the hugest garage sale you've ever seen crossed with an arts and crafts-type fair, plus lots of other things. about the only thing i've not found is hammered dulcimer stuff. they have everything else, i swear.
i'm glad it's friday, i'm kind of tired of work this week. the weather's been beautiful here, though. i sat in my living room and looked out the window while i ate breakfast. i live on the third floor, you see, and it's like being in a treehouse. all i see out the windows are branches and leaves. it was really pretty this morning with the sun shining through and the slight breeze.
on the other hand, it reminds me that i also need to water my plants so my impatiens don't croak in the heat. they're doing well, though - especially the double impatiens which look just like miniature roses, except they're easier to care for. :)
every once in a while, i have a glimpse of some of the things i'd love to do in the future. right now, i'm starting to think it would be fun to own my own business, to open a small shop with my mom and sister and sell furniture that we've painted (or wrapped), handmade cards, nifty and cute little trinkets like picture frames, and other such things. I could see it as a cute little boutique with rosebushes out front - organic ones so that we could take the petals and make things from them. i think this would be fun. of course, it would have a website equivalent. i could do that easily. ah, dreams...
it's great. i come away from it feeling so strong and relaxed.
of course, that might also be because i got popup menus to work in css in both ie and mozilla today. not bad for a week's worth of work. just think - a week ago, i knew nothing about css. now i'm designing a web site in it. oh, the possibilities! (maybe i'll get around to putting the css deeper into this site...someday...)
other than that, i think i'm going to bed early tonight. i'm tired.
i learned today that fireworks' pop-up menus don't seem to play nice with layers. boo! now i've resigned myself to the fact that i'll have to learn a different way to go about things. once i realized that, i decided i'd better take a peek at who's visiting our school's sites, so now css is on hold until i get webtrends reports up and running. whee!
at least the boss and the web developer liked the idea of using movable type for the intranet. the boss likes the idea of searchable archives and the like. the developer likes the idea that he doesn't have to do anything. everyone's happy happy! now if i can just get the stupid menu to work in css, *i'll* be happy happy.
other than that, it looks like i might be driving to my dulcimer lesson tonight by myself. the bf has a painting to finish, so he doesn't want to go. it wouldn't bother me, but with all these late nights recently... i don't know. if i say something, he'll go, but it annoys me that he went and worked out this afternoon instead of spending time on the painting. grr...
mom comes tomorrow, so you might not hear from me for a bit. that and i need to get some web work done. i'm in kind of a "rains, it pours" mode at the moment - not that i'm complaining...
i'm mostly done tweaking with this - maybe a bit more here and there. i'm not sure why ie has decided this main window should sprawl an indeterminant number of pixels off to the right...but it's late and i'll fix that tomorrow.
i guess now i can start playing with css and work web sites now that i've figured out how to get my personal web site to work. talk about a crash course in css design. then again, i guess that's why this web site was originally named 'ground zero' - it really is. i'm sure you've noticed that i haven't had to learn anything new recently, which is why nothing really drastic has changed around here.
ask anyone who knows me well and they'll tell you i'm happiest when i've got some new, complex problem to figure out. i suppose that's my stubborn streak coming out. i refuse to give up. i really do. it's a challenge, and i feel like i must conquer it. perhaps i have a need to prove myself. perhaps in this case, i just noticed that i'm way behind the times and am struggling to catch back up again.
one thing i know - i'm not touching the main mays business school web site anytime soon. nu huh. no way. that site (in all its 495 page glory) took 4 and a half months to be approved. not to mention that the whole thing is a mess of nested tables exported from fireworks with javascript popup menus and the like. nope. not going to touch it. not until i have to.
not only can i blog more easily now...i was also able to export everything from blogger. yay. :)
i'm installing movable type as blogger's been too up and down for my tastes. mt is cool, but i confess i'm a web geek who doesn't know perl. actually, perl isn't the problem, it's using cascading style sheets for positioning. transferring from tables to css is a paradigm shift. it's like someone telling you everything you thought was blue is really yellow. so you spend the rest of your life thinking 'the sky is blue...no, yellow!' - this producing a monty python-esque scream of frustration as your brain rebels and leaps off the bridge of sanity to save itself.
yeah. learning css is like that. on the other hand, i think i'm starting to get the hang of it.
the nickel creek concert last night was just awesome. nick and i got to austin just in time to be at the front of the line, so we were front and center. they played three encores, the last completely unplugged...and it was all very very good.
small world - the family behind me was at the austin city limits music festival last year. we met them when we rode the bus back from the festival. :) they told us about a jam session on friday nights in wimberly - we'll have go. it sounds like my kind of thing. old-timey music and they welcome all kinds of instruments...even my hammered dulcimer! :)
is fun. i'm switching to dulcimer lessons by mail (no more driving 4 hours every other thursday!). the folk music group that bobby and i are trying to start seems like it might actually happen.
there's nothing going on this weekend, which is good. my mom comes into town next friday, so i'll be picking up and doing some last-minute cleaning. hopefully i can keep it up during the next week! next tues, i'm headed to austin for a nickel creek concert. thursday, i'm in houston for another/my last dulcimer lesson, then friday into austin to pick up my mom. aie. my poor little car is going to have lots of miles put on it soon...expecially since we might be going to fredericksburg on saturday, and then to canton the weekend after. oh well. it's worth it!
currently in rotation at home and in the car:
Sean Watkins: 26 miles
Art Garfunkel: Everything Waits to be Noticed (yes! rediscovered - it was in the bf's car)
The Lizzie Mcguire Sountrack (hey, leave me alone - it was a cute movie and the music's happy, poppy, and good for summer)
i got a new cell phone recently - if you've not gotten an email from me with the new number, send me an email. i probably didn't have your address at work or home. the home computer lost a lot of info lately when it got wiped on accident. :p
no, i don't know what it's like, but i imagine it's a lot like how i felt when finishing this project today. hard, tiring, and i'm oh so glad it's over. and to think it was just the may edition of mays e-news. well, and the archive redesign and link changes and the staging site move. bleh.
i'm supposed to meet up with bobby on saturday so we can compare dulcimers and talk about setting up a group. i don't think the celtic group is going to work out as it's more of a group to promote celtic stuff rather than a music group. but who knows - perhaps i can recruit a few of the music players out of it into our group. we can hope. :)
currently in rotation in the car: sean watkins' 26 miles. it kind of took me by surprise at first since it's totally different than his earlier cd or nickel creek's stuff, but i'm glad. i really like every single song on that cd, which is probably why it's practically all i've listened to since tuesday! ;)