Welcome to Old Friends and New

The shift from Blogger to Squarespace has taken me longer than anticipated.  I’m trying to work through a few technical issues, including the domain and comments.  Those of you familiar with the blog over at Alert the Pizza will see that all of my old ramblings are here.  I’ve spread out a bit and added some new features as well.  I hope to be around here more often in the hopes that I can get my writing muscles back into shape.  

Coming soon: Our Summer Vacation, Updates on the Sonars, and a Running Rundown

Sonar X4, Sonar X9, and Sonar X6 in the Japanese Garden at the Rio Grande Botanic Garden in Albuquerque, NM, July 2009 (click to embiggen, it’s worth it)

Shake it up, Shake it down

I’ve missed sharing several things the past few weeks for general chaos and too-many-directioning.  Some of these items may get their own posts in the coming days and weeks, but I’m going to splash out a bulleted updated here.

—There was a cool Spring Pageant in which one of the Sonars was the star, as well as a science fair.  And coming up we have a Bike Rodeo, two egg hunts, and Easter mayhem.  

—I’ve done some sewing (a cool tote bag and apron for school auction baskets, and a ridiculous quantity of backlogged mending and hemming and finishing).  I’m in the early planning stages for some full-sized quilts for the Sonars.  They’ve gone and outgrown their baby quilts.  

—In knitting there has been some teaching (third graders, including Sonar X8.  Yay!!), frogging (mystery stole), steaming and winding (the wool/silk from the MS), finishing (flame socks), casting on (checkerboard lace scarf), laughing (did you see the merkins at TheAnticraft??), and dreaming (socks? sweater? frisbees?).

—In other craft, I’ve worked up a prototype crocheted frisbee made from reclaimed medical tubing, electrical tape, and some neon-bright nylon twine I found in the garage.  Flies well and is really flexible.  Just not sure how well the innards will hold up to heavy play.  

—April is Script Frenzy month over at the Office of Letters and Light.  I finished my first script ever back in 2007 during the first Script Frenzy.  Last year I tried, but was derailed by the flu.  This year, I’m trying again, but threatening to be derailed by my own lack of focus.  I have 14 pages written, and three weeks to go.  If I can get my head into it, I can get there.  I’ll try to put a counter widget over there in the sidebar.  Anyone want to join?  

—In other writing news, I have been reading more about the publishing industry, following agent and publishing blogs and tweets and generally trying to get a feel for how the industry works and how I need to plan and prepare to throw myself in there (someday).  My first step involves working my way toward a coherent platform, or as we are calling it around here jokingly, my IMI (integrated media identity).  I’ve selected Squarespace as my playground, and soon will lay down a personal domain onto this baby.  

I hope all of my old friends and visitors will hang with me through the transition.  It could be bumpy, but eventually I’ll get it all smoothed out.  I imagine a space that includes the same blogging style I’ve had over at Alert the Pizza on Blogger (in fact, all of that content is already here), but with new features and content thrown in as well.  

Leave some words behind when you visit and help me build!!

The Digital Home

Not too long ago, there was one computer in my house.  A trusty old Compaq Presario laptop.  It was fresh and new way back in grad school, but has stuck with us through thick and thin.  No longer does it travel, but lives in the center of the living room, shared by the whole family, leaned on to keep our digital lives on track.  

Then we brought home the SNB*, which now sits next to the Compaq here at the big desk.   We have grand plans to tidy up and refresh the trusty old Compaq, to extend its life as the demands for computer time in our family of five become greater.  

Bringing home the SNB, however, seems to have opened a floodgate.  Where we had one computer, suddenly I find myself looking at four.  Yes, FOUR computers sitting around me on two tables.  The Compaq, the iMac, Partner’s work laptop (which he has brought home with him on summer vacation—which started today for him), and a clunky IBM Aptiva (now christened the Grey Ghost), complete with a rolling computer cart/desk thingy.  

Partner adopted the Aptiva and its table last weekend from his folks, in an ambitious, if possibly misguided, adventure in Linux-land.  He plans to “tinker” with it a bit.  To “experiment” with some open-source stuff for a while.  So while penguin-ware loads onto the Grey Ghost, he fiddles with his work computer, trying to catch up on an email backlog (some summer vacation, huh?).

And this does not even count his “old” work laptop, still in his office, which he plans to go retrieve, so that over the summer he can wipe it and rebuild it for some other use when he returns to work in six weeks.  

Now, while I’m not so much the tech-geek myself, I can recognize the allure of tinkering with computers.  There is something very exciting about staring at a computer’s guts and wondering about the way the electrons flow.  Something thrilling about the puzzle of understanding and putting together code.  About compiling a set of software that is a little bit (or a lot) off the beaten track.  But I admit that I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by all of the stuff piled around my workspace.  All of the cables and beeps and hums that we now have crammed into this corner.  

I wonder if anyone would notice if I took the SNB back to my room and shut the door?  

*Sexy New Beast, i.e. this yummy iMac.

Transitions

The bloglessness of Alert the Pizza can be blamed on this Sexy New Beast—I mean, computer (SNB, for short).  It is the biggest, shiniest, fastest computer I have ever had.  It is also my first Mac.  A great deal of attention has been paid to figuring out where things are, how things are set up, how many music cd’s I can rip during one afternoon, and just how many scribbles the Sonars can cram into one KidPix screen.  

Already it has changed our lives.  We may give away the tv.  

We are still poking along on a dial-up connection, but tomorrow we will add a smokin’-fast internet connection worthy of the SNB.

In other news, seven pounds of very small tomatoes are currently undergoing transition into canned tomato sauce.  The whole house smells like a ketchup factory.  Heyyyyyy, speaking of ketchup.  That’s what I’ll have to do with the next seven pounds.  And yes, there are at least seven pounds of tomatoes out there.  Quite likely a lot more than that actually. 

Seven quarts of tomatoes went into today’s sauce (funny how it’s about a pound per quart).  They will result in seven pints of finished sauce.  One pint of edible-looking tiny tomatoes is going for at least $3 at our local grocery right now.  That makes today’s seven quarts worth at least $42.   (Does that seem crazy to anyone else?)  We paid just a few dollars for the six tomato plants that produced this seven pounds and at least ten other pounds earlier, and a good many many many pounds to come.

Of course, I could buy seven cans of tomato sauce for a dollar a pop.  So, $42 of fresh food can be turned into $7 worth of canned food.  (Does that seem crazy to anyone else?)

Potpourri

In no meaningful order, I’m throwing a little grab bag at you for today.

~The smaller Sonars and I recently watched Mary Poppins. The movie was so much more dreadfully boring and weird than I remembered, but we all loved the songs. Sonar X5, in particular, has reveled in deploying the tunes with his own new and delightful body (bawdy) lyrics. No, not gonna share those. But I will share that Sonar X3 can’t seem to call the movie by it’s right name. He calls it Harry Poppins every time. No matter what we tell him. Cracks me up every time. It might help to know that we’ve been reading all of the Harry Potter books out loud. Anywhere from a few pages to a chapter each day for the last YEAR. We have six chapters left of book 7. Harry Poppins. Just a spoonful of magic makes the dark lord go doooown, dark lord go down.

~We went to a minor league baseball game last weekend. The Corpus Christi Hooks are part of the Houston Astros farm system. We had a great time, got a little sunburned and ate burgers after. I loved it. The Sonars were less enthusiastic this time, not sure why. But a baseball stadium always makes me a bit nostalgic for high school. I spent four summers during my teens working as an usher and ticket seller for the Albuquerque Dukes. Great, though often peculiar fun was had. My old team is no longer the Dukes, by the way. They’re now the Isotopes. Because of the national lab-space-military industrial complex in New Mexico? Because of the Trinity site out in the eastern part of the state? Because someone in power is a big fan of The Simpsons? Anyway, minor league baseball games are good fun. Free tickets and special deals often abound if you hunt for them. And you get to experience a lot of the pomp and fanfare of the big leagues for a lot less money. We got Craig Biggio commemorative figurines on our visit. No, I don’t really know who he is either.

~It’s new underwear weekend around here. I handle a lot of laundry and decided finally that the state of everyone’s underwear was just really rather sad. So it was comfort waist boxer-briefs for two Sonars (the third Sonar has really lovely underwear, mainly because he never wears any). Soft, stretchy cotton bikinis for me. Partner’s were also ok, because he replenished the underwear stock a few weeks ago—grey and blue boxer-briefs. I also plan to get a couple of bras. I put on one yesterday and the underwire sprung out and punctured my armpit. Ok, not punctured, but you know what I mean. That leaves me with two industrial sports bras, one bra with a poking out underwire, one with a bent underwire, and way way back in the back of my drawer, three nursing bras that, though I’ve not been nursing any babies for some time, still hang out back there. So let’s just say that it’s time for me to do a little drawer-cleaning and that a couple of pretty bras that don’t necessarily have nipple-flaps might be nice. ;)

~Three more days to sexy new computer. Though apologies are in order for this lovely old gal. It wasn’t her fault at all that the computer wasn’t connecting to the internet properly. It was the evil old phone company. Gr.

~We’re in the throes of deciding on our new internet service provider. We can choose between pricey local company with wireless network and cheaper evil cable empire. You might think that the evil epithet means I will choose the local company, but the decision is not that easy. The cost and the contract and the slightly slower connection add up against them, especially the long contract. Against the cable company: we don’t currently have cable service, and if we opt to keep it that way, we pay a $10 surcharge for having only broadband service. Jerks. Pluses for big cable: speed, no service charge, no gigantic equipment to install. Pluses for the two lovable geeks down the street: personal service by actual human beings, supporting the local economy, and not taking the fast food option and joining the evil empire. Tough call.

~The squirrels around our place are going crazy. Our house, yard, trees, and fences are like this gigantic racetrack right now. They chase each other everywhere, up down around over across. Zoom zoom zoom. Spring fever? Mating time? Nut wars?

~I love the end of a bag of tortilla chips, the crunchy bits down in the bottom. I pour them into a bowl and dollop some salsa on top and eat them with a spoon. The very best part are the bits that get just a teensy bit soggy by the time I get to them. Good stuff.

~So, I knew I was sick. Really sick for a while. At least I thought I knew. And then I got better. And was completely shocked to find out just how sick I had been. It didn’t hit me until I really felt better that I had been so horribly, deeply, miserably sick. Breathing in particular is good. Nice, deep, cough-free, wheeze-free breaths. Breathing makes everything else so much easier to do.

~Partner picked a gallon of ripe cherry tomatoes out of the back yard this morning. No exaggeration. A gallon. He thinks that there are at least three or four more gallons of tomatoes out there on the verge of being ripe. Want some tomatoes?

~Sonar X7 has three more weeks of school. And a birthday coming up. This computer is older than he is.

~We’re having a gorgeous, sweaty Saturday. It’s 83.1F/28.4C with 83% humidity right now, according to Weather Underground. We should get another handful of degrees yet. I’ll try not to melt into the pavement on my way to a shady spot under the tree where I plan to knit (Gryffindor socks for Sonar X7) or read (Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris) while the Sonars build a fort under the yard table and throw things out of the tree at each other.

What are you up to?