Well, the hard part of Saturday is drawing to a close. Today Stella woke me up before 8am. I decided not to actually get her out of bed until 8:00. Because I’m mean like that. I got her up. Gave her some cereal and banana and we went running for 6 miles. We went down Dittmar almost to Congress, looped through the neighborhoods, came back up William Cannon, turned right on Manchaca, and zipped on home.

After Julie got up we started work on the bathrooms. We finally got rid of that horrible lavendar in our bathroom. I’m happy Julie got a bathroom that color (apparently something she’s always wanted). I on the other hand, hated it. The rooms seems bigger now. But it took us priming it and then repainting. It was a ton of work. I ended up doing a lot of the painting, because I get involved in a job and just don’t stop. Julie and I have been switching off. She does the low stuff, and I does the high stuff. Today there wasn’t much low stuff, so she cut in the low stuff, I cut in the high stuff, and then I rolled everything.

In between we took turns watching Stella. Today’s theme has been standing. She’s been standing up on her own a lot. For decent periods of time. It’s pretty cool. Now she’s crying randomly. Which is not cool. But it’s the witching hour. And she’s been zooming today. I wouldn’t be suprised if she passes out before 8.

I don’t know what we’re doing tonight. We’ll see I guess. We’ve got some birthday beer from Bill that I haven’t tasted yet. Maybe we’ll tuck into that. I know my life is fascinating.

I didn’t have a sidetrack today. So here’s a bonus one.

Sidetrack Have you looked at this website in firefox? You really should. It looks so much better. It’s worth the time.

Bill and I being manly at my birthday party. I think this picture alone gives our manliness a +10 modifier. The women swoon. That was a damn fine beer from Bill, and a damn fine birthday.

In other news we finished repainting the orange/cat/guest bathroom last night. It looks nice in a boring white room sort of way. We were both happy that it only needed one coat of paint.

Sometime in the middle of that Al came by to drop off some can lights.

Sidetrack Man… weren’t we smart back in the day to build those coffee can lights? I think that had to have been the best money LGT ever spent. People at work were saving me coffee cans. I took some pieces of scrap 2x6, attached little mettle “L“‘s to the side. Drilled some holes in the coffee cans and attached them with wing nuts. We got a bunch of those clip lights with the big metal shades from Home Depot, took off the shades, threaded them through a hole in the bottom of the can. Bent the shade so it would fit inside the can and reflect the light out, and voila! Our own cheap par cans. They don’t throw off an enormous amount of light, but they work well in small spaces. Like the show we originally used them for, “Solid State”.

He also dropped off tickets to see him compete in the “Funniest Person in Austin” semi-finals. We’re stoked. We’re going to a Pappa’s based restaurant (we have a gift certificate) and then to see Al on our 8th wedding anniversary. It’s going to rock. And why are we able to do that?

Because my parents are moving to town this weekend. They’re going to move into an extended stay hotel as they wait for all of their paperwork to go through. They have promised to help us work on the house next week, so hopefully that will enable us to move up our date to get the house on the market. We’ll see. Hopefully there won’t be any patricide or matricide.

I got home yesterday and Julie had to show off the downstairs bathroom. She’d made a trip to Wal*Mart to try to get some ultra-cheap towels. We have no morals when trying to sell our house.

Sidetrack I actually have no problem with Wal*Mart other than the fact that I’m classist. I realize that Target is just as evil (and possibly more so). I try to fight against my bad impulses. But Wal*Mart has a tendency to remind me that I live in a world were 30% of Americans

Just got an email from the Family Research Council (because I like to know what the wackos are up to), and they lead off with this line:

President Bush has courageously sent a letter to both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) vowing to veto any legislation that would force U.S. taxpayers to fund the destruction of human life.

I guess that’s why he vetoed the Defense Spending Bill.

(And just in case you think I’m being unfair, they add the following line at the end of the email “U.S. taxpayers should not be forced to fund the killing of human beings.” Their words. Not mine.)

First off, I’m really excited that Julie has expressed interest in my goofball widgets. I have no clue why I seek validation through coding. Anyway, I’ve created a page with how to put them on your website.

I had a pretty good weekend. I got to play pretty much all of Saturday and Sunday with Stella. Julie had a big honking birthday party for me on Saturday and I got completely soused and received great presents and a Oreo cookie cake. One of my gifts from Ashley and Tarv was a gift certificate to iTunes. Which rocks. I heard they supposedly have DRM free tracks now. Does anyone know how I’d find them? iTunes DRM doesn’t work particularly well with linux. I can always do the whole burn to CD, and then rerip route, but that’s kinda lame, and I want to support a DRM free iTunes.

Stella’s gotten big and silly. She makes all kinds of adult faces now. Plus she’s getting really good at communicating just by pointing. My favor face is when she’s clearly up to mischief and daring you to do something about it.

Ah well, back to the grind. And the repainting of the house so that we can sell it.

about a bike. I got some cash for my birthday and I want to get a bike. I’d prefer to pay less than $100 so I could buy one of those fancy bicycle trailers to tow Stella and groceries around in. Used would be cool, because goodness knows there are a lot of underused bikes out there for sale on craigslist. Anyone have any ideas of what type of bike I should buy?

I’m not good at free association. Maybe chronological?

So what do you think of the new look? I think it’s kind of bland, but it’s pretty easy to read. I’ve also added the Netflix widget over there on the left, so you can see what we’re watching. And comment on it and stuff… I also added twitter. Which I initially thought was completely stupid, but now I think is kind of interesting and indearing. So think about signing up for an account at twitter.com and adding me as a friend. Maybe we’ll figure out the point of it together.

Yesterday was a bit dreary, and Julie wasn’t having a great day so we decided to break our eating out rule and go out to lunch together. We ended up at Sandy’s, which was awesome. We both had burgers and fries, and then we had chocolate dipped cones. And the chocolate was totally that plasticy tasting chocolate. It was brilliant. The rest of the day was kind of blah. I ended up running over to Garrison with Stella, and by the time I got back it was about 8:10. So I fed her and had to put her directly to bed without a bath. That was her third day running without a bath so I had to promise Julie I’d give her one this morning. Ok, I didn’t have to promise her. I just felt guilty and did so.

This morning Stella woke us up crying randomly at 6. I worked my sleep-fu on her and sent her back to the land of dreams. Of course it monkeyed with my sleep schedule, and I’d had a bit of a headache all night. Probably dehydration from the run. I wasn’t feeling great this morning so I decided to work from home. Which was great. I got to spend a lot of time playing with Stella, and we had a really fun day. Let me just interject that I really like kids. And I really don’t like babies. Babies are boring. Kids rock. They’re smart and stuff. Babies are dumb. Down with babies! Up with kids who do wacky fun things!

Anyway, I ended up doing some work, I added that twitter capsule up in the top right, and then we went to Home Depot and Kohls. Wherein I decided that I hate shopping for mens clothing. It’s all 100% cotton and right now everything looks like they bought their stock from goodwill. It has a slightly used feeling to it, and everything’s faded. And I’m not talking about the distressed look. I’m talking about golf and polo shirts that just look like they’ve been washed too many times.

So my 30th birthday is tomorrow, and I’ve already gotten some cool presents. I got Jacque Pepin’s Complete Techniques and 7th Generations guide to natural cleaning. I’m sure I’ll get into the cleaning book, and I do really want to read it, but Jacque is so amazing that I’m completely in awe. I already used one of his knife techniques to do a fantastic dice of some mushrooms last night. And he’s got everything in there. From making chicken stock, to hollendaise, to fashioning a rabbit out of an olive. And it has pictures. Truly amazing. Then we’ll use the seventh generation book to clea

Anyway, got to actually eat dinner. It was ready about 5 minutes ago, and I’m just letting it get cool on the stove while I write this.

Oh, if you want to use the Netflix or Twitter widgets on your own website let me know and I’ll get you the code.

A meme from Travis. Btw, part of Julie’s problem with meme is related to her name for Stella’s maternal grandmother. She calls her MeMe. Which is pronounced Me Me. We went to Fredericksberg, though and they had shirts for what I consider the proper spelling of that pronunciation - MiMi. So um… no point there. Just rambling.

Magazines I have subscribed to:

3-2-1 Contact Magazine - That one rocked when I was a kid. I dunno who’s subscription it was, but we all read it. I especially liked the episode and magazine article on how they did the makeup for the Thriller video.

National Geographic - Ah, the memories.

Smithsonian - We always had this vaguely interesting magazine around if you were bored.

Boy’s Life - Much like Travis I also got Boy’s Life. I really didn’t find the magazine that interesting, but I loved the ads in the back for secret decoder rings and wood burning kits. Also it had lots of good jokes.

Wired - I had Wired magazine back when all this computer stuff was new. It was awesome. Except that all the articles are the length of short novellas.

Gourmet - Julie’s been getting a subscription to this since we got married. I love it. Each month I go through and dog-ear and rip out recipies. The number one source of recipes� for what I cook.

Spin - technically Julie’s subscription, but I read it because it’s there. You know technically the only subscription I have is that damn Smithsonian magazine. How lame. I love Spin.

Rolling Stone - Julie got this free. It sucks. I especially hate their political coverage. They are left wing jack’n’apes. It’s like reading the left leaning version of the emails I get from the Family Research Council (motto: “We can make roads a religious issue).

I got many other science magazines throughout my life. I’ve forgotten their names though.

I tag you. You reading this. Write your own!

I am watching the immigrants rally outside my office window. Listening to Devotchka. No matter how cynical I can be, this is a wonderful country.

_I don’t know if I’m going to make my bus though.

_Now they’re chanting U-S-A and I’m trying not to cry.

I need to leave to catch my bus, but I’m afraid if I go down to the street I’ll just sob like a baby.