Occasionally coherent ramblings

Linkety Linkety Link Link LINK!

2007-06-27T04:37:18Z

Please redirect yo'self over to da new blog.

Thank you.

The briefest of debriefs. (debrieves?)

2007-04-22T20:17:16Z

1. I'm moving out. As in, Angelo's not. We're not "breaking up", just taking a much-needed giant step back.

2. Where am I moving? Well, I met with a couple guys in an intentional-community-type house yesterday -- 'twas very cool. We'll see.

3. I am a web developing MACHINE! A few of us AmeriCorps kids are preparing for a hostile takeover/redesign of nweec.org. I want to have three designs to propose tomorrow morning, and here are the first two: uno, dos. Sweet, huh?

4. Omg, Homeward Bound's on the tv here at the coffee shop.

5. Speaking of web development, I am starting to seriously consider trying to do it for a living starting in the fall when I go back to school. The catch: I'm somewhat lacking in the experience department. So... if anybody wants a PHP/MySQL/CSS-type website for super-cheap, we should chat.

Up-diggidy-date

2007-04-02T15:22:17Z

I know, I've all but disappeared from the blagospehere. Whatever.

I've been working a lot (well, not more than 40 hours a week, but I see my coworkers every damn day), harassing my kitties and boyfriend, cooking a bit, and (mostly) playing WoW.

Oh yeah. Night elf marksman hunter. Pet's a raptor named Tracer (as in Bullet, as in Calvin & Hobbes).

I've been grinding on scalding whelps to buy my mount (just hit 40!)

Mmmhmm.

Any other WoWers out there, or am I talking to a whole bunch of brick walls?

Ha!

2007-01-23T16:06:13Z

Remus ~~sweater~~ jumper: back on track.

I know I've said it before, but this time I've finally got the sleeves worked out. Last time I picked up my armscye stitches and tried a few different ways of using short rows (kind of like the first part of turning a sock heel, but in the round), and I kept ending up with a horrible combination of puckering and poofing. It seemed this sweater really wanted to be a vest.

But! With the help of an experienced designer and the pythagorean theorem, I've got a sleeve pattern written down that should work.

In other knitting news, I am *this close* to finishing my Goodwill raglan. I have a few inches of the second sleeve to go, and I've decided to make it a Weasley sweater, because apparently everything I knit has to be Harry Potter. And what's happened?

I fucking ran out of yarn.

New Favorites

2007-01-22T16:24:26Z

I did my grocery shopping down at Pike Place Market yesterday. I can't believe I've been going to Safeway all this time. You can't blow buckets of money on Abbaye de Belloc just anywhere.

The kitties are being super cute, all cuddled up on the window sill.

Yes, I am trying to post more frequently.

Fun, fun, fun

2007-01-20T21:50:24Z

Have I mentioned how much I love my job? It's fantastic. It's almost like being a Schoolie -- except that there's no weird teenage angsty drama, and I have yet to flash any of my coworkers.

On Thursday I had my first Earth Club (afterschool teaching goodness) where I was the only "teacher", and it went great. I brought a computer microscope that someone donated years ago, hooked it up to my laptop, and we all took turns looking at honeybee wings, dog hair, and algae, and learning how to change magnification and focus. (Have you ever seen a kid use a microscope for the first time? It's awesome.) I've got 7 kids from grades 1-5, so it's going to be challenging to come up with activities that will be fun for both extremes of the spectrum, but my only 5th grader seems keen on being my helper.

Yesterday a few of us went up to a conference on environmental education in La Conner, and afterwards drove up to Bellingham to enjoy The Boundary Bay Brewery. Chris and Shannon were so excited about it that they brought 5 gallons worth of jugs and growlers to fill up. Their beer is fantastic, but I didn't realize until the first sip of my IPA that it's the same beer I always get at the bar a damn block away from my house.

Man, it's actually sunny and beautiful out today. What the hell am I doing in here?

Apartment Therapy, pt. 1: TV room -- aka BORINGEST POST EVER

2007-01-16T00:01:30Z

Alright Mark, here you go. It's jumbo size, to tide you over for a while.

The last project was the website. I can't even tell you how OVER that I am. I've never been so thrilled to complete something before. (Technically though, it's not *totally* completed -- but I'm working on it only a couple days, rather than 40-50 hours, a week these days.)

Now we're working on the apartment! I mean, we've been living here for FIVE MONTHS and still just struggle with keeping it clean, let alone pretty. We got this great book, Apartment Therapy, and have spent the last couple weeks trying to take its lessons to heart.

We've been rearranging what little furniture we have, talking about color (a lot), and went to Ikea on Saturday night to spend the remainder of our Christmas money. We even bought a couch! Yay!

It goes in our TV room, which we have some really nerdy ideas for... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

It's comfy. Oh yes. So cushy. Ignore the fact that the throw pillows don't go together at all.

If you're really all that interested, the other photos are here. In that last one, you can catch a glimpse of the new paint in the living room.

We're somewhere between the *before* and *after* states on this one.

Angelo wants to put up a bunch of animation cels or photos from movies over the closet, put mirrors on the doors, and a padded bench sort of thing in the space between the shelves (under the window). Here's why I think his ideas are bad: mine are so much better.

I want to buy this rug, which is super soft and fluffy, but isn't quite shag. The closet doors need some curtains -- not because I like the look (I don't), but because we can't replace or paint the doors themselves, and they're sooooooo big and ugly. I guess we probably need curtains to replace the horrid mini-blinds on the window too, huh?

That's all well and good, but here's where the nerdy part comes in: the walls. I will paint them. With murals. Of our favorite movie/TV stuff. (In this kinda style.) Frodo over the TV, Harry, Hermione, and Ron under the window, cast of Firefly and Cowboy Bebop hanging out together over the couch. Yeah?

Well, I think it's a good idea.

I am totally claiming these bragging rights.

2006-12-15T08:25:31Z

The website's done. In the last three and a half weeks, I've taught myself PHP, MySQL, CSS, and built a semi-professional, totally dynamic website out of it. And I'm so fucking ready to take a break from the code-monkeying. At least for a few days... we still need viable searches, a real calendar, and more include() statements than you can dream of.

Go look at it, please -- but resist your urge to submit the sign up form riddled with obscenities, as the results are emailed to my boss and coworkers.

My favorite part of the site? Meet the Staff. In true AmeriCorps fashion, we decided to draw names and write each others' bios. ("It's teambuilding.") Chris (to whom I am ETERNALLY grateful for taking over all the CSS when it started to eat my brain) wrote mine:

Jenny comes to Seattle and the Portal from San Francisco, via a one year layover in Boston to work at a doggy day care. Her previous stint as an east-coaster involved attending a college without grades. A current and/or recovering nerd, she likes good coffee, knits a mean scarf, and doesn't eat marshmallows.

That's me in a nutshell, alright.

~~ETA: Don't view it in Explorer, s'il vous plait. It makes baby Jesus (not to mention your good friend Jenny) cry.~~

ETA 2: Nevermind, Chris awesomed the CSS up again, and now it is perfect in every browser imaginable. Yes it is.

Can't sleep, the code will eat me.

2006-12-04T09:43:04Z

I suppose this is what I get for spending all of Sunday working.

My brain is fried, and I can't sleep, and it is way too late. I keep glancing over at that stupid page that isn't quite right in Firefox, and looks so very wrong in Explorer. Fuck Explorer. And you know what else? Fuck CSS. Yes, it's better than dealing with nested tables and mountains of markup intermingling with what should be pristine code, but it's got one hell of a learning curve. Trying to implement CSS in a logical way is like writing a novel by taking all your thoughts, writing them out in cryptic code on hundreds of millions of sticky notes, and sticking them up on the Great Wall of China in random order.

This website is supposed to be done by Tuesday. It's a self-assigned, self-enforced sort of deadline, but I've been working my butt off way too hard to miss it. I have a new plan of attack:

First and foremost, FUCK the design. Let someone else in the office try to tackle that one. It is not my strength, and it is certainly not a priority.
Get some goddamn passwords and security up on the backend so that we can take the site live ASAP and --as much as it will break my heart to do it-- remove my database full of LOTR dummy data.
Crack the whip and get the other EP staffers to upload their data, while I make some search and sort functions.
Time permitting, build a dynamic calendar page. Even more time permitting, think about making it pretty.

</geek-out>

Least productive day ever

2006-11-30T07:16:22Z

Today was so ridiculous. I've been working like such a Huffle recently, but today... sheesh. It just wasn't meant to happen, I guess.

Accomplishments of the day:
- got coffee
- went to a planning meeting for a grant I'd never heard about before
- attended a (very interesting) forum on the achievement gap in Seattle schools that was redonculously irrelevant to our program
- got back to the office, heated up my lunch
- got a call from Angelo, saying it was snowing and that I should drive home before the freeway turned into an icy clusterfuck again
- ate my food, knit a little, and drove home before 3.

Waste of a day!

I've been making smashing progress on my Remus sweater though. I abandoned it a while ago when I realized the pattern's directions for sleeves would look awful, and couldn't figure out how to alter it (having never made a set-in sleeve sweater before). It's been in a weird unfinished-vest-like state, but last night I picked it up and did the math on some short-row shaping for top-down sleeves. I even went out and bought some beautiful buttons tonight. WILL POST PHOTOS OF THE FO SOON.

I can't wait until I've got this website up and running so I can have a little bit of my life back. I needs gets more knitting time in before Xmas.

Redesign in progress

2006-11-18T23:30:05Z

One of my responsibilities at my new job is to help with a complete overhaul of the website. I'm adding PHP and MySQL functionality, but what I think is most urgent is the design.

Now, I have a totally crap eye for design, as I'm sure Mark can testify. I Photoshopped a mock-up of my idea, and I'm hoping y'all can give feedback. Please?

new design

This shows what the page looks like when you roll over the first image. If you roll over the second, it turns all pretty color-ified, and a similar bar saying either "Members" or "Organizations" shows up. Same with the third, it'll say, "About". The blue, bold text beneath represents links to pages in that category.

The images are stolen from Mark and a google image search, and as such will not be on the real website. We'll have to take our own pictures of happy students and nature scenes.

I also haven't added the bottom bar with our contact information and sponsor images, because I was totally bored with the whole thing by the time I had formatted all that Lorem Ipsum.

Bleh.

Just for reference, this is what the website looks like now at my screen resolution. The menu items turn white on roll-over.

GufFAW

2006-11-07T06:29:03Z

There I was. Minding my business, sitting at my computer and eating curry veggies. iTunes shuffled up Jimi Hendrix's "Fire", so I crank it up and start singing and dancing and clapping like an idiot, like usual. Angelo, who's sitting at his computer next to me, give me this nasty fucking look. Interrupts my, "You don't care for me, I don'-a care about that!" with his ugly mug. Then he announces that he DOESN'T LIKE Jimi Hendrix, and asks that I skip the song.

FTW??

Geez, you think you know someone...

How to make Monday morning suck less, one step at a time

2006-11-06T15:30:24Z

Note to self: Do not stay up until 6:30am playing WoW on a Saturday night. Screwing up your sleep schedule so royally is sure to make Very Bad things happen later in the week.

And another: Do not let Angelo grab the half and half when grocery shopping -- or at the very least, check what he's putting in the cart. He almost always gets "lite", and this time he's gone so far as to unknowingly get a carton of Mocha Peppermint. New Holiday Flavor my ass.

Oh yeah, I got the job

2006-11-02T15:19:15Z

So yesterday was my first day. We did a high school service learning fair from 9 to 2, and let me tell you, I have NEVER gone into a job not knowing what was going on so much as yesterday. I was CLUEless. I think I've got it now (getting the high school program, Environmental Portal, off the ground, and occassional elementary after-school environmental ed for which we make up our own curriculum), but being thrown to the lions like that was an interesting way to start off. And man, high school kids are crazy. I don't remember being that disengaged 5 years ago.

Don't get me wrong, I do like the job. My boss and coworkers are very cool people, and I'm ecstatic to have an *actual* job with my own desk and responsibilities, none of which are cleaning up dog poo. There are going to be some serious challenges though, from working with kids and speaking in front of people to time management and organization. That, and my desk is about two feet from the giant printer, which was running the WHOLE time I was in the office yesterday, and my headache from that still hasn't gone away.

Because temping is le suck

2006-10-23T22:18:16Z

I've applied for two jobs, both of which I'm *actually* really interested in. The first is a retail position (yeah, I know) at a local fabric AND YARN store. The second is an AmeriCorps position with the Northwest Environmental Education Council, doing classroom and outdoors stuff, and godDAMN how cool would that be?

Also, I had entirely too much coffee this morning. How is it that I'm still on a caffeine high?

Wish me luck on the jobs. And on calming down so I can go back to my knitting.

A weekend of rare authenticity

2006-10-15T17:17:10Z

Weddings and memorials are such important events, so steeped in emotion and tradition, that all too often they become big fat piles of bullshit.

It was so nice to go to two events last weekend that were the exact opposite of bullshit. Mark and Velma's (or Mark and Velma, if you prefer) hitchin party was beautiful and awesome. Peter brought every ounce of his charm into that ceremony, Velma looked gorgeous and totally made me cry, and the princess-dress-flower-boy was aboodabooadorable. (Oh yeah, and Mark was there too.) It was everything one could hope for in a modern-day hippy-dippy wedding -- redwood branches and all. Smashing.

I'm glad I went to Stacey's (Aaron's mom) memorial too. I can't say I knew her very well, but enough to know she was a genuinely kind and graceful woman -- and the memorial reflected that beautifully. There was dancing, Aaron's step-mom sang a beautifully sad song, and gazillions of people shared stories about Stacey.

Blargh, I did have more to say, but it's escaping me now. As weird as it may sound, the weekend has inspired me to live my life with less bullshit. It's so refreshing.

Spam attack

2006-10-09T00:16:13Z

This feels like the first time I've been able to sit still for the past few days. I just got home from Aaron's mom's memorial, Mark and Velma's ~~wedding~~ hitchin' party was yesterday, Dave and Jensi and Nick (and etc)'s Oktoberfest was the night before, insane mall shopping spree with my mom earlier that day, flying into town the day before, and Aunt Kathy and Uncle Jim were our first houseguests (at the new one, anyways) for 5 days before that. There is much to say about that all, of course, but that isn't the point right now.

The point is this: I am tired.

But really, I am posting because I finally checked my email for the first time in forever, and decided that the amount of spam I'm getting at jec03@hampshire.edu is completely out of control. I haven't received any personal email from that address in the last, oh, couple years -- but I wanted to make it official. So.

PLEASE do not send me anything at jec03@hampshire.edu, as I will never ever be checking it again.

The craving sets in

2006-09-23T07:23:20Z

I have a sudden, unshakable desire to watch "Boy Meets World".

No reason.

Dug my own damn grave

2006-09-21T08:37:04Z

A few days ago, I started thinking about Christmas knitting. Last year I started way too late and planned way too little, and only a few people on my list got hand-knitted gifts.

"But not this year," I told myself.

I even made Angelo install FileMaker on my new lappy so that I could keep all my knitting on track this year. I figured that, if I complete 2 ⅓ projects a week from here on out, I'll be fine. (For the record, I've already done 3 ½ this week.)

But then, earlier tonight, STUPID Angelo had to STUPIDLY remind me that I knit his STUPID brother a STUPID hat for his STUPIDSTUPIDSTUPID birthday in August. I've set a precedent. And the whole damn family was there to see him unwrap it. There's no denying it.

He has three sisters, one brother, two neices, one nephew, not to mention mom, dad, step-dad, aunts, grandmas, and significant others. By my count, there are 15 of them that I've spent enough time with to feel like I ought to give them something. Oh jeez.

32 + 15. We'll see.

fwegan @ 2006-09-19T12:07:00

2006-09-19T19:08:43Z

Yarrrrrrrrrn.

'S'all I got.

Catnip ground into carpet: check.

2006-09-17T19:44:04Z

One

Two

Three

(Yes, that last one is a kitty head-butt.)

New roomies

2006-09-17T08:07:43Z

Angelo and I have been talking about getting a kitten for a while now. Today we rocked on over to the Seattle Animal Shelter and had the hardest time in the world choosing just one cute little kitty. So we got two.

These sweeties were left in a crate outside the shelter about a month ago. They're not the same age or even the same breed, but they're apparently quite taken with each other, and the volunteers referred to them as "husband and wife."

The boy is a gen-yoo-ine Blue Point Siamese, whatever the bloody hell that means. They say he's four years old, and I'm fairly certain he's the prettiest darn pussy I've ever done seen. And he's a bit on the clumsy side, in the falling-off-of-window-sills sort of way. Very cute.

The girl is a tiny little gray tabby with a whole lot of spunk. She's a year old, and reeeeeally enjoys growling at doggies from her spot in the window. She's missing part of her right ear.

Okay, obviously we're really excited about getting them. My favorite two things so far:

On the papers that were clipped to the front of their cage in the shelter, each had a hand-written note at the top that said, "Extremely affectionate!"
When they're separated for more than a couple minutes, one of them inevitably starts meowing out for the other. He'll meow, then she meows, and they keep meowing back and forth until they've found each other. And then they nuzzle. It's sickeningly sweet.

So, you've noticed they don't have names yet, yes? We're tentatively calling them James and Lily, but there are other possibilities still in the running:

Bonnie and Clyde
Sam and Rosie
"Mary" and Pippin
Buttercup and Westley
Varda and Aulë
Robin and Marian
Simon and Kaylee
Faramir and Éowyn
Galadriel and Celeborn are automatically disqualified because, if you can believe it, Angelo's last girlfriend was a gal named friggin Galadriel.

We're still trying to brainstorm a bit more before we settle on anything, so please let me know if you have any suggestions -- just keep in mind that we're looking for something truly dorky.

Okay, so we all know the real point of this is to put up some pictures.

They spent the first couple hours hiding out under the bed. I know you're supposed to leave them be if they do that, but it's so hard!

A little closer to James/Clyde/Pippin/Westley/Aulë/Robin/Simon/Faramir...

Lily/Bonnie/Mary/Buttercup/Varda/Mariam/Kaylee/Éowyn in her favorite spot...

He's a might bit easier to photograph than she is, since she moves so fast and he doesn't move much at all.

Bored yet? Sorry, I had to gush. =D

Blah blah blah, just random crap

2006-09-15T22:56:40Z

Résumé is complete! Well, almost. I still need to write that horrible "summary" part, but Angelo's promised to help me with it. You know, because I can't come up with anything better than, "Two-time community college drop-out with little to no experience relevent to office work. Highly knowledgable in areas of holistic dog food and knitting."

Did I mention that I've decided to try to get a job as a temp? Yes, I have my doubts too.

I'm starting to get used to the new computer. Absolutely nothing is as easy as it would be on a Mac. For instance, I'm used to creating the "é" character by doing option-e e. Now it's alt-fn-m-k-l-l. And Trillian fucking SUCKS, though it's by far the best of the four aim clients I've tried. I want my Adium back.

Katie's post last week prompted me to join a CSA. Yesterday we picked up our first box-o-fresh veggies.

Oooooh...

OooooooOOOOOOOoooh!

Aww, Angelo likes 'em too.

(A few weeks ago he went vegetarian, so I'm trying to force him to eat healthy stuff. The last few nights he's had apples for dinner.)

Oh, and here's a really crappy picture of me, just to keep you updated on the crazy hair color.

Now how the heck am I supposed to use a whole damn bulb of fennel?

Craigslist is cocking the fuck-with-me gun.

2006-09-11T23:58:14Z

Pet Food Retail Specialist

Do you have exceptional people skills that you would like to implement into the pet industry? We're looking for a hard working team player for full-time employment. Customer service skills are a must. Also, must be able to routinely lift 30-40lbs bags of food and litter.

Do I dare? Do I have the strength to resist?

Boy owes me BIG.

2006-09-08T18:13:30Z

My boyfriend is holding my new laptop hostage.

There isn't a secure place to leave packages at our building, so I had my brand spanking new HP Pavilion dv1000t (oh yeah) sent directly from Shanghai to Angelo's office. It got there about an hour ago.

Today happens to be the last day of one of the company's older employees, so they're having a pot luck. Did Angelo remember to bring his dish? No. Did he remember to make it? No. Did he remember to brag to everyone about how great his dish would be? Yes.

So now I have less than two hours to go grocery shopping, bake his damn jumbo shells in a way that HOPEFULLY doesn't insult his Italian grandmother's memory, drive them way the hell out to Snohomish, and sit around listening to his co-workers compliment his cooking skills, because he's telling them that he baked it last night and left it at home. I don't know how he's going to explain that it's hot.

But then, I get to drive home with my 5.6 kg bundle of joy. I'm wearing my Mac Chick shirt for the last time today.