Flashing the Holidays

I stumbled across this little Christmas gift thingee, on the right there, ---->
on another person's blog, and decided I needed one of my own. I'm not really much into Christmas, and generally refuse to decorate my own house in the spirit of the season. But for some reason the fact that people can leave me little fake flash presents makes me want to have this on my blog. So, there it is. You all are welcome to have some fun with it.

Also, we have another opening reception at the gallery on Friday. Everyone is invited, as usual. A proper post on that soon to come.

Mending

This evening while at Walgreens picking up odds and ends, I remembered that the hole I burnt in my robe during a hookah upset many moons ago still gaped because I had hitherto failed to buy any white thread. My old spool of white thread got left somewhere in Arizona after the whole "I'm going to make my own bridesmaid's dress for Autumn's wedding" fiasco. Without white thread, I could not patch the wound in my fuzzy pale blue dressing gown with any degree of grace. So the hole remained. Day after day.

Tonight, I returned home with the white thread and, very excited to mend what had needed mending for a ridiculously long period of time, proceeded to first carefully trim away the charred area around the hole in my robe, then cut a three inch section off the end of the belt (which is made out of the same material as the robe). This I stitched behind the hole and voila, a whole robe is born... again. Due the extreme fuzziness of the material, the patch is very difficult to spot. I am quite pleased.

This exciting domestic scene took place after I spent the past many days in the Chicago area, hanging out in Geneva and participating in a Thanksgiving ritual that is not my own. After I spent an evening with much of Brian's extended family, apparently, the "rumor" is that everyone thinks I'm "lovely." So, that's good.

Other than Thanksgiving, we mostly spent the week relaxing around Brian's parents' house. We watched a movie or two on the massive HD TV with surround sound, and spent some time sitting in the hot tub, playing scrabble and hearts, and wandering around the suburbs on foot only to realize suburbs are not at all designed to be wandered about in on foot.

We drove back here this morning and immediately left again to spectate at a Cyclocross race outside of Iowa City. I had never seen one in person and I have to say, I was amazed at the grace and agility of the riders as they hopped over barriers and jogged their bikes up hills. Although it was a big race and the victor, Todd Wells, is somewhat famous, he came over immediately after winning to where we were standing with a group of boisterous fans and gave us high-fives before he went off to get changed and stand on top of the podium.

Then Brian and I rode our single-speeds home and made dinner.

Pre-Celebrations

Last night, Katherine had a surprise party for Scott, whose birthday happens to be on the same day as Paul's and mine. Also, one day before Erica's. So, in orchestrating a surprise for Scott, she included the rest of us in the celebrations. I was showered with dark chocolate and other sundries in preparation for my birthday today.

Among the more unusual gifts in the bunch were a custom comic decorated composition book from Chad, a Mango Tango Cheeseball mix from Bridgette, and an astoundingly politically incorrect set of cowboys and Indians from Gabe.


They battled all night over the Jelly Bellies from Anna, but by morning, a clear victor had yet to emerge.

Blogger's Block

It keeps happening that during the course of the day I come up with any number of bloggable subjects. They pop into my head while I'm at work, out and about, fiddling with this or that website or project. And then, when I sit down to write a blog, my head is empty. I have nothing to say.

So, I suppose I'll use the old "what I did today" fall-back.

This morning, I couldn't shake off a sense of inertia and exhaustion. Nick, when he dropped into work, was half-convinced I was suffering from serious emotional problems. I had to reassure him twice that I was just sleepy, not suicidal. When I got home, I tried to nap, failed. Tried to read, failed. So, I left. I went and wandered the town on foot, popping into various stores I'd never been inside to usually leave again almost immediately with a vague sense of horror. We all know how much I dislike shopping. Being out in the wasteful retail glut most of my generation wallows in so enthusiastically usually makes me a trifle sick at heart, but something about walking around for hours looking at all the things people are trying to sell me and realizing that (except for almost everything in Blick's art supply store) I don't want any of it makes me feel just a little bit triumphant.

I know. I'm silly.

I Really Am A Nerd At Heart

I have to say, ever since Vitzy's conversion to a mostly commercial website (a morph it's been undergoing slowly for the last couple of years), I've felt my previous happy-go-lucky approach to elaborating and maintaining my own website slowly give up and make way for the things that actually earn me some income. Recently, I made an attempt to inject a little more of my former playful style into the Vitzy's website - but it is hard. When I'm sitting with a client, looking at my own website and trying to explain to them how we're going to start his or hers, it's not useful to try to get side-tracked by anything at all unusual.

This, coupled with the problem that some of my client's are utterly incapable of typing the word "vitzys" without two or three scrambled letters, (causing sometimes time-sensitive emails to go astray) finally prompted my to think about another domain.

I've known for years that robinstephen dot com is owned and relentlessly occupied by a Realtor in Virginia. But robinstephen dot net? Not taken.

It is now.

One little purchase and I simultaneously opened the doors to a world of mundane email addresses that my clients can type, and a whole new playground for my creative efforts. This weekend I beefed up my knowledge of javascript and added it to my semi-new and highly liberating discovery of .png images, and .... well. Go see for yourself.