Christmas Eve and missing my Dad...

He was the fun one to buy for, detective novels, the latest Craftsman tool gadget...
We lost him to cancer 7 years ago, a year before his granddaughter was born. I so much regret that he could not be a big part of her life. These are those supposedly magical years for her and it feels so lacking in so many ways. We can hope she doesn't notice I guess...

Everyone else must like this more than I do...

Sending Christmas/holiday cards, that is. It was far easier when I was just the name after the ampersand on my parents' cards. I have been sending my own since, I guess, living on my own before getting married. I think I enjoy it less every year but keep it up because it's expected and seems Scrooge-like not to. Some aunts are more thrilled by getting our child's picture than we are, I think.

Mostly it reminds me how so many people who used to be classmates/friends/drinking buddies are reduced to a yearly piece of paper and no personal contact at all. We mean to call, but everyone gets so wrapped up in their own lives I guess...

It depresses me how it's still just the three of us while everyone else seems to have another rugrat on their card every year. We are still hoping that will change before it's too late, but who can say.

It makes sad how many cards I don't send, but used to, to all the now-departed relatives. And how many of the cards are to just 'Mrs' instead of both now.

"Happy" holidays...?

Alcohol Acquisition Interlude

A bout of Christmas shopping brought to my notice Bundaberg Ginger Beer at Cost Plus. Yes, the non-alcoholic kind, like strong ginger ale. We first had Bundaberg Rum in Australia in '94 and still have a few precious drops from the bottles we brought back. (Mix those two beverages for a Dark and Stormy, yum). I hadn't recalled that they are Australia's biggest sugar producer.

I have wondered on occasion if/when they'd ever export to the U.S.. No rum so far, but anything is a start. That required one of our occasional pitstops at Sam's. No rum yet. But we did find Tooheys Beer, another Aussie product we hadn't had since being there.

And also two newly available offerings from Abita Brewing, just on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans (which merits endless blogging on its own)--Christmas Ale and Jockamo IPA.

And since the spouse dude has a cool Belgian beer glass for our quality tastings, I picked up a gift pack of Tripel Karmeliet, which I really like, with a really cool glass in it. (They have a website registered in with an ISP in Belgium but not active yet. That's ok, you can make beer for a couple centuries and don't have to be on the cutting edge of technology, too. :)) Again, much yum.

Fish First Aid

After the recent bunny crisis, I am even more paranoid than usual about our remaining pets (Rascal the rabbit and Nemo and Donkey th goldfish; yes, you can guess who named the latter two). We are watching the neighbor's two goldfish, also, while they are away and the one was having trouble staying away from the top of the water and swimming hard. I suspected swim bladder problems and reminded myself of the the suggested remedies. That consisted of adding some salt to the water, raising its temperature a little bit and feeding non-flake food. I did all that and went to bed with fingers crossed. This morning Brownie is fine, and trailing a poop as long as his body. Yes, constipation can also cause those problems. Another minor crisis averted. Now back to our regularly scheduled life. No wait, this IS that, I forget...

Life is what happens while you're making other plans, for sure

7.30 Get Up
7.45 Eat cereal standing at kitchen counter
8.00 Do computer work at home
9.30 Surf web for Christmas ideas for child
10.30 Play with child
11.00 Get child ready for school
11.15 Walk child to school
11.3o Go to place of volunteer computer work
2.30 Realize quick hour or two of network silliness isn't so quick
4.00 Drive home
4.15 Snarf roasted red pepper dip and pretzels, realizing there was no lunch
4.30 Drop child off at karate class
4.45 Stop by mother's house with gifts bought for her to give husband.
5.15 Back to karate
6.00 Bring child home
6.15 Make dinner for child, snarf food again
6.30 Check email to find out 8:00 nature group meeting is cancelled.
7.00 Read new work email requiring work on unexpected project that is due Monday. Rant about boss.

8.00 Post this. Surf for more Christmas gift ideas. Debate whether to start on work project or open wine. One guess as to the winner....

So, the child learned to read

Last week she could barely recognize the work 'in' twice in one sentence, and last night she read all of Hop on Pop by herself with a few hints on a handful of words. Pretty wild. Like the bike-riding thing, it seemed like it'd never happen, then just kicked in one day. Potty training was agonizingly like that, too. Have to get some more beginner Dr. Suess books for Christmas I think. She wants to work up to The Cat in the Hat ASAP...

The unexpected bunny tragedy totally threw off my NaBloPoMo attempt, but I've still been posting more than I used to. Nothing new on the Houseblog since we haven't done anything more exciting than strip bathroom wallpaper and paint garage trim. Perhaps we'll work up to some good holiday housepix...

So many books, so little time...

We actually all spent some time in a bookstore this evening. Two, in fact, a nice
independent mystery-themed one and a larger brand-name one. I got Ray Bradbury's sequel to Dandelion Wine at the former; I didn't even know it existed, I am so out of touch. And we found some great Chicago-themed books with lots of old p;hotos for family Christmas gifts.

I have always loved bookshops. I worked in one for two years in college and even then, as a teenager, knew the stock better than people bother to now, with all the computers to help them.

There is one in Frankfort, Kentucky, that has an upstairs filled with thousands of old books, many falling to pieces, and has rocking chairs over looking the front windows, where i could easily spend days...Elijah Craig 18 year old bourbon smells just like that place and I like that too.

I have always been filled by an endless sense of wonder at all the intriguing things that can be put on paper between covers and also filled with a little bit of longing and pre-pregret, over all the books I don't have time to read on a daily basis...I think it is part of the midlife crisis thing, too, that the longer I live, the more I know I won't have time to do before I die and that makes me kind of sad, but also inspired at times....at least hang-gliding is still on the list....


Sure, I can try to write eloquent reader-based prose but these days, I am lucky I write at all. The NaBloPoMo went out the window when our younger rabbit died this week after a hellish vet experience. We are looking into that; don't want to talk about it now.

The end is near I fear...

She seemed a bit better this morning, eating some hay and being more active. Tonight, though, they noticed the start of potentially serious adhesions near the incision site. It might be due to the type of sutures the first vet used. Or maybe not, as some rabbits just make such scar tissue far more than others. They might be able to operate again and remove it and replace the sutures. She might survive or might not and it might help or might make things worse. And we have to decide when we don't know which might help her live, or make her die. Even if it didn't cost many many many hundreds of dollars to attempt, I am not sure we could put her through that, when her digestive system is still not back to normal and the added recovery time alone might do her in. The adhesions could get so bad that they screw up her internal organs and kill her in a few days. Or they might be limited and she might still recover. Or not.

Why do things have to be soooo hard and hurt so much?

Freaking over bunny health

Ok, so we got the rabbit spayed Wednesday, so she'd be less nuts, stop mounting our (neutered and confused) male rabbit, not get cancer and so on. Fine. I found a nearby vet with rabbit experience and went through with it and then she would not eat or poop. So not a good thing for bunnies as their delicate digestive systems can shut down and do them in in short order. Took her back in for a fluids/painkiller/gut motility injection yesterday. No help. She's not at all a happy bunny.

Today called the way expensive exotics-specific vet in the area and now she is hospitalized there and they aren't sure how she'll do. Plus it has so far cost about 20 times what we paid for her and may be much more. I bounce between telling myself we have to do everything we can and not upset the child, versus it's a Rabbit. People EAT rabbits. We can't spend more on her than the upcoming property taxes...Why can't anything just go smoothly?

More typical rants

I swear, I had no idea I could be this cynical and thoroughly disgusted with so much in the world by the time I was 40. I thought only really old folks had the 'In MY day...' thing going, about how everything is just useless overpriced crap and no one cares about anything except money. I am ashamed to have to try to explain to my child why so many of the toys people give her break soon after she gets them and can't be easily fixed. I'm sure there will be one of the many held-back Made in China rants unleashed soon...

My daily post is elsewhere

On my HouseBlog that at least a few people read since I have gotten comments. This one, who knows...

At it again for Bananame.com

There is this creative and slightly silly site out there, BananaName.com

For a small fee (currently $24.95), you give them the name of a company, person, etc., and they will write it on a banana and post the picture of it, plus associated text, on their website.

So far it seems to be used by websites wanting promotion, but I can see my child liking something like that as a birthday surprise. Once she learns to read that is. :)

Check it out...

Will blog for money...

Ok, I have a few random comments on child-rearing and then suddenly I am hawking some websites you never heard of, right? Assuming anyone is actually reading this....Well, I am a victim of Mechanical Turk, a nifty relatively new feature run by the folks at Amazon whereby you do on-line tasks that can't be easily done by computers, for small amounts of Amazon credit.
Yes, we humans are still better at some things, like identifying features in aerial photos. They had a huge effort recently whereby people scanned air photos in the search for Steve Fossett's plane for example.

Some tasks pay only a few cents but sometimes they'll pay $1 or more. Why do people bother with such menial things? I don't know, why do I? The amusement or interest, and quick easy Amazon credit perhaps? Some other typical tasks are transcribing podcasts, locating obscure information on the web, writing reviews of websites and so on.

Otherwise, back to our regularly scheduled ranting.

NoBloPoMo Come Lately...

Ok, so this is the second year I have been aware of National Blog Posting Month
. I am deciding to try it this year, but I know I missed the first couple days and I won't be eligible for any prizes, etc, but I think it will be a good motivation to try to write and offload the random floatsom in my brain. My friend at pywacket.org inspired me.

It's so hard to find time to write in between the child things and work and the spouse and house and what not....
The inlaws are downstairs looking at 1.5 years worth of pictures that the spouse-dude just got developed (hasn't entered the digital age. I have but never back 'em up enough and fear the hard drive will crash again....Gotta go, child calls......

A great design-your-own-website for small businesses

Back to our regularly scheduled rants shortly.



In the mean time, if you have a small business and aren't a total website design guru, check out Homestead. They offer over 2,000 really detailed website templates for a variety of businesses to use with as much or as little of their own changes as they need. They seem to have a really good variety of styles, layouts, colors, etc., so they don't all look like they came out of the same box like, oh, Blogger templates. :) The overall small business website design concept seems pretty usable. I think even my mom, who first tried email after age 70, could manage to put up a site with it.

There are specific sites targeted for many areas such as real estate website design. If the many templates aren't specific enough to your business, they also offer custom website design. That can also be a lot of help for people looking for a web presence but quite lacking in computer saavy. Their prices and services tell you how much help they can provide and for what fees ($600-1000).

For people who need more than just basic text and images, they offer ecommerce website design. You can easily create a storefront and upload your product information plus tax and shipping costs.


Homestead offers a basic website package for $4.99/month though it has pretty limited features such as no included domain name or email, only five web pages, 25 Meg of storage and so on. The more real packages are $19.99 or $49.99 a month which include a far better range of features. These aren't the cheapest nor the fanciest things out there, but they far excel over basic web hosting in the range of templates and help they can provide to anyone looking to create a small business website. There is a free 30-day trial, so anyone can give it a test drive.

Checking out a new website, http://www.wevoke.com

Seems like a cool concept...it lets you pick what sort of emotion you want to feel, and then selects from its vast array of links to provide you with suitable news. I picked "I want to feel 'Most happy' from the last 'day' in category 'Animals'" and got a couple stories on saving animal shelter pets.

The default seems to be "most angering" which I guess has its place, though personally, I find a lot of typical TV news these days to fit that category quite well.

I suppose the site is limited by the range of user-provided links that it has at any moment, but that is not so unusual these days, in the world of wikipedia.org, yelp.com and so on.


The site has some roughness to work out in terms of navigation and overall functionality but I assume that will happen in time. One very minor peeve, when you click to register and it asks for your info to contact them, it says Name, Street, Suburb, State...A person i oh, I don' t know, a major municipality such as Chicago might take offense to the 'suburb' thing....

Still, seems like a cool concept, hope it takes off well.....

Road rant..

Life has me driving way more on the expressway than usual of late. I know this is nothing new, but why are so many drivers so clueless and/or obnoxious or is it just too much caffeine?

It's 10pm and everyone is cruising happily at 70+mph yet I glance up and see two headlights adhered to my rear bumper, even when I am in the middle lane and they could just go around. I happily tap the brake just a speck in case they zoned out and it does no good and they get even closer if that is possible. So of course I wait until a semi is in the next lane and then slow down just enough to block them in next to it. Still fast enough so no one can complain. I stay like that until I think they get even more frustrated, then when they drop back and go around the truck, I speed up just to see them in front of it...and of course they are on their cell phone, no big surprise. Oh, and it is usually a big SUV too.

Three cheers for public transportation and better yet, walking!

I swear...

I won't give up my dreams, goals and ambitions...though sometimes daily life tries so hard to take them away. We are having the worst session of thunderstorms and flooding in 20 years.
It's hard to think about writing, drawing and being a well-rounded person when you have to keep the water from trashing the basement and the child from having nightmares...

Ok, so I got a scooter

A bit behind the curve, sure, but then I was way over 12 when the razor-type things first came out, even over college age I guess. The kiddo wanted a two-wheeled one, too big for her toddler version and they had such good deals at overstock.com, where the Titan claimed to hold up to 350 lbs (way more than anyone I know, for sure, though I'm not sure I believe it), I figured why not.

It was really a lot of fun going scootering w/the child and her friend and they don't seem to think it's too silly. A fun change from the bike.


Most of this blog has been insignificant random rambling so far, but it was originally started in a midlife crisis mode, so I'm sure more of that will need to come out soon, be warned....

It's all relative

Well, she can't ride her bike without training wheels yet, but she Can use a wrench to take them off and on, and the pedals too, and even tighten the axle nuts enough. I think that makes me even more proud.

Things you never thought you'd need to say to your children, Take 1

Today's was: "DON'T throw your shoes onto the garage roof", which followed shortly after "Don't carve your name into the stone of the porch with a gas line marking flag you pulled out of the ground at the construction site near your school...."

The first classic one, when she was 3 or so, was "Don't lick your shoes"...and we had to say it more than once.....eeeeewwwwww......

I'm sure this just gets harder the older they get. I can't wait to see what Take 147 is, and if it involves the police.

Hello, world....

Any other geeks out there appreciate the title?
I have a houseblog ,
but there is too much else in life that I just need to go on about,
so this is for everything else. You have been warned. Pictures later.