The Weekend

Abilene:

• Enjoyed seeing my good friend Kat, who is Most Greatly With Child.
• Took a ridiculous amount of photos, as usual.
• Played Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s, and did not totally suck on the medium level.
• Turned 29.
• Enjoyed many phone calls from wonderful family members (in particular the voice-mail from my father-in-law singing "Happy Birthday").
• Had some really incredible steak and shrimp.
• Held my first meetings as Chair of one of the HSU BYA Committees (as did Alex, Chair of another committee in that group).
• Wore a purple shirt.
• Had Ben & Jerry's Irish Delight Ice Cream.
• Did not sleep a wink Friday night.
  
• Enjoyed driving my Awesome New Ride.
• Enjoyed having the fuel efficiency of a car, not a truck.

Yep, I'm still busy as heck. Check out my photos instead of waiting around for text comments (er, the Abilene photos aren't up yet, though):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/geekyartistlibrarian/

Making a Wish

Would you like to see my laundry-list of excuses of why I'm too busy to blog much at the moment? Then click here. And add to that list a list of personal items, such as (but not included to):

• reading my camera manual (again)
• reading Fables vol. 9 (happy birthday me!)
• preparing for the October trip to DC (yes, you have to reserve tours that early)
• editing, processing, and uploading photos
• keeping mi casa clean(ish)
• waiting for Guitar Hero III on the Wii (oh wait, that's on Alex's list)
• working a second job over the summer
• writing creatively twice a week (woohoo!)
• going out of town all the frelling time

So... short and sweet update, then. This past weekend, we bought some stuff at Best Buy, including (finally) the last Farscape DVD volume. We also had my (early) b-day party with the Hoffman clan, at which I received a new flash for my new camera (yay!), some toys, a giftcard, and the above-mentioned Fables vol. 9. This joins my new stash of comics* that the boy bought me a few weeks ago at Recycled Books in Denton (aka Mecca of All Things Bookish). We also had some fantastic mother-in-law baked cake, and two of my three nephews astounded us with the sheer energy that is possible in a body under the age of six. Kind of a cruel reminder, this close to my actual 29th birthday, considering that my body's energy level is about a tenth of that. When I'm lucky.

This was illustrated when I went to blow out all 29 candles. I got about three done before I thought my old lungs would cause me to pass out--luckily those two nephews saved my wish from eternal non-fulfillment. And no, they weren't trick candles, and I'm not a smoker--just a sedentary old librarian. Hmph.

I've worked the past two Saturdays, so "weekend" has been a kind of loose concept, anyway. Hence even less time to get everything done, hence even less time to blog about all the stuff I'm doing. Ah, well.

I am really, really looking forward to spending this weekend in Abilene. Alex and I will be chairing BYA committees, sure, and that will take a bit more effort on our parts than usual--but it's Abilene and HSU and friends and my about-to-pop-she's-so-pregnant pal Kat, and our generous host Jared and staying up late to play games and talk geekery. That sounds very relaxing and fun.

*About those comics... I can't find that I blogged about these yet, dangit. So here was the score:

• Astro City, Vol. 1
• Planetary, Vol. 1 (I've already borrowed and read 2 and 3 since then)
• Marvel 1602 (hardback!!!)
• Mary Jane vol. 1 (okay, so I'm a girl, and this proves it--just deal.)
• Flight, Vols. 1, 2, and 3 (major score!!!)

To date, I've finished Astro City and Planetary (and--ahem--MJ), and am in the middle of Marvel 1602, which I am thoroughly enjoying, despite being less familiar with the Marvel uni than the DC universe. I'm trying to save Flight for a little, since it's short stories and I tend to devour those. So the top item on my wishlist, now that I've finished Fables 9, is the Fables stand-alone Jack book.

Once again, I'm running out of space on my comics shelf. I removed all the manga, and that helped--for about three weeks. And now, back to square one.

Still Tired, But Excited

...And in about a week, I'll tell you why.

In the meantime, I have to move my office in preparation for my new boss (hooray!) arriving soon, migrate content onto our new library website, finish up everything that has been sitting around since before ALA last month, and get my feet wet as ALA GODORT's Web Administrator.

Whew.

In those moments I can steal to read comics, I'm on Vol. 2 of Planetary--which is only less-than-excellent because each story ends right at the point where I'm wanting more (which I suppose is the point)--and I finished Vol. 6 of Sandman and Vol. 1 of Astro City. Oh, and I started reading Marvel 1602 Monday, but haven't been able to come back to it.

This weekend is my birthday celebration with the Hoffmans (we'll call it my the-last-year-of-your-twenties-is-the-best birthday), and the weekend after that, we hit Abilene for the Board of Young Associates meeting. This time around, Alex and I are each chairs of committees--eek!

And, um, I need to return to my lunch. And my coffee. C ya!

Update: I fixed the previously-non-accessible library website link. Oh, and just to clarify, what I'm hinting at in the first sentence is *so* not about me being pregnant or anything. Just in case you were wondering. (The "tired" and "excited" have nothing to do with each other.)

Monday, Tired Monday

It's late, and my brain definitely is aware that it's Monday, and that it did not get enough sleep last night.

However, Alex and I did have a good time watching one of the best movies of all time last night, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. We nearly went for another best-of-all-time qualifier, Back to the Future, but Alex was feeling slightly more adventure-ish. I also got a lot of housework done Sunday--dishes, cleaning the entire kitchen--a scant week after it had been previously cleaned, gasp!--and folding laundry, which I also put up this morning before work. Amazing what I can get accomplished when I set my mind to it. Or rather, when I realize that being stressed out by the mess is actually more work than getting off my lazy buns and doing the work. Is that... adulthood... I hear creeping in? Maturity added to my character? Aaack, run for the hills!

Other than the chore-performing and the obligatory fat-couch time, we sat around with dazed looks, blinking a little, wondering what people actually do on a free weekend day. I worked Saturday, as I will again this week, and that added to the weeks I've/we've been out of town, or had parties, or seen friends/family, or had other obligations--it was a little disconcerting to have unplanned time. I think we both panicked a little--"Free time, oh no it's not scheduled, what do we do, we can't waste it, ack!" But finally we relaxed a bit--I think the housework helped me in this respect--and allowed ourselves to remember what our former glorious "lazy weekends" were like. Pure, vegetative goofball bliss, primarily involving time on the fat couch. Ahhhh.

I worked this evening, so I had this morning free to put up afore-mentioned laundry and--gasp--clean the interior of My Big Awesome Truck. I throughly vacuumed it and spot-cleaned all the hard surfaces after first removing a huge trash bag's worth of Stuff That Does Not Belong In My Truck. This stuff included a roll of copper wire, no less than five mostly-empty water bottles, six library books, and some craft beads shaped like letters of the alphabet (still in package). I know, I disgust even myself.

Also, I'm getting close to finished uploading party photos to Flickr. I'll link them on this blog when I'm done.

Fresh-Baked Goodness

After everyone left the party (again), I felt lonesome and sweet-tooth-y. So I baked us a strawberry pie. I kind of combined recipes from two different cookbooks I had, as FoodNetwork.com had surprisingly little to offer in this area. It be tasty.

So, Saturday we had our youngest nephew's 3rd birthday party*, and then our own Independence Day party--er, again. This time, we had about twelve or so people (eight the previous weekend), and we successfully set off a ton of fireworks. We caught them on video this time, and if Alex's computer will ever agree to process it, I'll post it on YouTube and link it here.

I have photos from both of our parties to upload, as well as the rest of California and the rest of DC. I'm operating without a SD-card reader right now, and can only get photos off my leaving my camera on and attaching it to the computer with a USB cable, which transfers photos at a remarkably sluggish rate--hence the sluggish rate of posting to Flickr. Sigh.

*Note: all photos of the birthday party are uploaded and accessible through the link above, but all are unedited, as well. This means they are large, and might be blurred or have odd lighting--if you'd like a copy of something cropped/sized/edited, just let me know.

Color Me This

(Apologies for cross-posting this, but it applies equally to all groups.)

Okay, file this under the "sheer genius" category-- the site COLOURlovers.com not only provides ever-changing color palettes that are ranked by users, but you can download palettes in a variety of formats, including CSS. You can browse palettes by newest, top, or search by specific color combinations.

So, so pretty. Good for adventures in interior design, graphic design brainstorming, or a CSS recharge for your website.