Category: daily tedium

I was going to take today off, but that didn’t happen. There’s too much going on, which in itself is reassuring. I have a full day of stuff to do, things to look into and places to be. I wanted time to reflect on my feelings about today, but with my sinuses being what they are, I probably won’t do much reflecting today either. I didn’t want today to be “just another day”, but it’s turning into that. I guess in way it shows that I’m moving on. I still remember everything about the day, and I still feel as helpless to explain my emotions as I did then.

I thought it would be interesting to look at what I wrote on that day, and afterwards. I don’t normally go back and look at what I write after it’s posted, but I decided to go look and see what I felt then. It’s pretty much what I felt then, only maybe a little less raw than two years, and then one year ago. See for yourself:

• 9/11/2001

• 9/12/2001

• Nostradamus \#1: 9/12/2001

• Nostradamus \#2: 9/13/2001

• My Thoughts on the First Anniversary

• 9/9/2002

• 9/12/2002

Yeah, baby, there it is: my coppertop hair.

This morning I found out that my sinus infection is back, the pain in my neck is most likely caused by stress and my doctor said the word polyp in my presence. This wouldn’t be your normal butt polyp (you know, a ‘roid or a boil). This would be a polyp in my sinuses, you know, near my brain. I get to go get a sinus CAT scan (which is the most uncomfortable posistion I’ve ever been in for a medical test, I swear, my neck doesn’t move that way). I don’t get any more antibiotics because they obviously aren’t working. I get Alleve, a pat on the back and a prescription for a bunch of lab tests.

So, I’m going to listen to the Housemartins, pretend everything fine and that my head doesn’t hurt. I’m going to play with my new toy (DOM hacking in javascript – I hate javascript, but this is kinda fun), and not think about anything else.

Is it just me or is everyone depressed? NetNewsWire is delivering a stream of woeful folks and things that will depress you if you aren’t already. It’s rainy and miserable outside. It’s miserable inside. Is it the back-to-school-end-of-summer bleaghs? Or, is it something deeper?

I admit it, the news today isn’t great. It’s dreary. Listening to Groove Armada isn’t helping. This gigantic headache and neckache I’ve had for the last week isn’t helping (the hypochondriac in me is sure that I have West Nile).

I’m not sure Phish is the cure for the blues, but it’s worth a shot. I’ll come back after The Mango Song and let you know how it goes. And because I feel today is nothing more than a steady stream of asides to a non-existant audience – did you know I have 1.73 gigabytes of Phish MP3’s from probably \$300 worth of CD’s that I own?

Now that things are back up and running, here are the new photos in the gallery:

• The Howard Dean Rally in Falls Church

• Getting Ready for the First Day of School

• Max’s First Day of Pre-School

In other news, I killed the basil plant I bought at the Farmer’s Market. Max and I were doing a really good job of remembering to water it, but I you can’t take a week off from watering… oh well. Maybe we can revive it.

That was no fun, but I’m mostly back online. There are still a bunch of missing photos, and some links may be broken because I changed the permalinks to something a little more managable (having one directory with 1900+ files in it is never a good idea). I know, you’re not supposed to break permalinks, but I don’t care. I did it anyway. It’s my site.

Why did I switch? Well, as you may have seen, my site was down for a while. Why? Well, apparently, my previous web host was hit by a dDOS attack, which explains the site being unreachable. But, why, after it came back, were all my html files 0-length, and every time Movable Type went to recreate them, were they 0-length? I didn’t change anything. Plus, this isn’t the first time my site, or part of the service has gone down. So… I’m gone. Now, I’m with Insider Hosting, and am really impressed so far. The MySQL performance alone is much better than with the old host. Plus, they have a really cool control panel and SpamAssassin!

I’ve got a lot of stuff to talk about, but I’m sick today… again. So, the new pics, and other stuff will probably wait until Tuesday when I can get the rest of them back online.

Aloooooha. I’m off work most of this week and doing stuff with the fam. Don’t expect much until Friday, when I’ll hopefully tell you all about the Dean rally on Saturday, show you the pictures and tell you what I thought. You can read my lovely sister’s account if you wish. I have a much more favorable impression of the event, but I must say that I was so happy that she went with me. It showed a lot of guts and maturity on her part to go to a rally for a candidate she knew she didn’t agree with on issues that are important to her. She went because I asked her, and she knew it was important to me. It meant a lot that she went.

So, pictures coming on Friday (unless I get bored, which I’m not yet), and more stories when I get to it.

I am a naughty blogger. All my offline time is spoken for. I’m trying to get Michelle’s redesign finished (I know, I know). I’ve got the templates mostly configured, and I just need to finish ironing out the bugs and get the main archive page finished. I installed Movable Type for Dawson last night, and have just been too tired to do anything else. This sinus infection just won’t go away. Thankfully, I have the next six days off from work, which will be a much needed respite from insanity.

I did convince my mother, father and little sister to go to the Dean rally on Saturday! Yes, that was my big accomplishment this week. Next week? It will probably be seeing how many hours in a row I can sleep without waking up.

Yes, the roast was fantastic. It was pretty much perfect: fall off the bone, rich, meaty, a flavor to die for and enough leftovers to make either pulled pork barbecue sandwiches or carnitas tacos for dinner tonight. I served it up with roasted garlic taters and zucchini sauted with diced green peppers. It was tasty. To finish up the recipe, I ended up crockpotting it for almost five hours by the time I was all done with the other stuff. I let the roast rest after cooking for about ten minutes and then cut off enough for Jen and I for dinner (it was more a delicate prodding – the meat came off real easily). I realized that the roast tastes almost exactly like the pork used in good carnitas tacos (my one true Arizona addiction), so next time I make it, a more Mexican spice job: cook with some chilis some ground chili power, and cumin and a couple more onions and I may have the perfect carnitas.

In other news, today is Low Impact Monday. The last month or so has sucked. I’ve been sick. Work’s been crazy and rushed, and I’ve been stressed out. Today, the big last-minute project I was scrambling to get done is in QA (on time, a-thank-yew-very-much), and I’m going to take it easy and experiment on some new features for some thing I’m working on. I ready another hundred pages in the orange book this weekend, and am going to play with some of the concepts in the book. I feel the need to decontruct something and put it back together. I haven’t picked my victim yet, but it’ll probably be big… Hell, it might be one of the most highly trafficed sites on the web. If I succeed, I’ll let you know and show you the fruits of de labor.

Also, in stress-related news, I’ve been listening to a lot of downtempo stuff lately. It helped me handle the stress and concentrate through the pain of a sinus infection to get stuff done. Peace Orchestra has been a godsend. I got it because the song Who Am I is on the Memento soundtrack and just grabbed me. I had to hear the rest of the album, and it doesn’t disappoint. Massive Attack’s 110th Window was also in heavy rotation along with Jazzmusique. Now that I’m feeling mostly better and ready to play, it’s A3, A Picture of Nectar and maybe some Soul Coughing. Welcome to a brand new week.

I am really tired of feeling like crap. Since Saturday, I’ve had the world’s most outrageous cold. Here I am at work trying to get things done with a head dulled by snot and a brain unwilling to function at normal speed. It’s taking three times as long to get anything done, and twice as long to answer questions I normally can answer right away. I wish it would go away, or maybe I wish I could go away. Go away and take a nap, a bath, anything to get rid of this feeling.

I’m working on getting the pics up… when they’re done, you should see them on the righthand side. I may not have time or the energy to post a link.