Too Darn Hot!

I always feel guilty complaining about hot weather when I live in an area where it's usually colder than hell. Tomorrow Syracuse is actually going to have a "heat emergency!" The local television meteorologist said tomorrow's high temperature should be somewhere around 98. I also saw a news story on the national news about global warming and how the world's climate is getting warmer. My husband and I have been spending a lot of time recently talking about moving out of the area, but perhaps we should stay put. By the time we're seventy (if we're still around by then) upstate New York's climate might be pretty similar to what North Carolina's climate is now.

Despite the weather I'm already beginning to think about the fall. I e-mailed my professor to check with him regarding the texts for his class. I'm going to shop around and see if I can pick them up used online.

Stuff Always Takes Longer Than You Think

Why is it that I'm so bad at estimating how long a particular job will take, especially if it involves home upkeep? Yesterday, I had to stain two garden fences, each about six feet high an ten feet long. I figured one morning, tops. Well, got up late then realized I had no paint thinner; the stain is oil based. I had to run to the hardware store buy thinner and gloves. According to the warnings on the stain can, this stuff is almost as carcinogenic as radioactive uranium.

After I finally got started, I made good fairly good progress until I reached the part of the fence behind the giant hosta, which is in full bloom. I should have cut that stuff back BEFORE I started. It took a great deal of maneuvering, around them and finally the bumblebees drove me away from the area. I had no idea how popular those plants are with bumblebees. So I now have both fences stained except for the two and a half feet behind the hosta. I'm hoping most of the flowers will be dead by next weekend, so I can cut them down and finish the job. All in all, bumblebees not withstanding, it took me three and a half hours to stain, 17 1/2 feet of fence.

Of course, I was so exhausted from the staining job, I was no good for anything else for the rest of the evening. We had planned to go to the SkyChiefs'game. B had given us his tickets, but it was raining at game time. Hubby tells me they did eventually get the game in, but start time was postponed two hours. We'd already spent 2 hours hanging around the stadium in the rain waiting for the game to start on Tuesday night.

Judy

Wednesday a friend of mine lost her battle with cancer. She was gracious, considerate, selfless and intelligent,and she had a terrific sense of humor as well. We met through the Arts and Crafts Society. Both of our spouses were board members. Judy served for a time as the Membership Secretary, a position I has also held. I know what a thankless detail-oriented and time-consuming volunteer job that is.

I will remember Judy most for her undying optimism. When things got shaky with the Society, she always said we'd get through it, and she was right. Every time I saw her, while she was fighting her cancer, she'd tell me she was doing much better than the day before and, "I'm going to lick this thing." Sadly, this time she wasn't right.

I'll miss you, Judy. You were a great person to work with and even greater person to know

I'm Marge!

Last month Deathlok asked me to post my TV meme. I answered that I was Lisa Simpson, but image my surprise to discover that I'm actually Marge!

You Are Marge Simpson

You're a devoted family member who loves unconditionally. Sometimes, though, you dream about living a wild secret life! You will be remembered for: your good cooking and evading the police Your life philosophy: "You should listen to your heart, and not the voices in your head."

The Simpsons Personality Test

They're sure right about the good cooking and evading the police. (That's for another post.) I'd guess that a lot of the guys will end up as Homer. He seems to personify every bad trait in all the men I've known.

Two Little Stuffed Mushrooms

Alright maybe the stuffed mushrooms I had at Francesca's Cuccina last night weren't that little. It's amazing that something as innocuous as stuffed mushrooms can totally derail your diet. A few days ago I read a comment to one of Wombat-Socho's posts. Willow_one had suggested an online diet journal, fitday.com. I started using it and found it to be very easy to you and informative. They track your recent foods, so you don't have to do searches on foods you eat regularly. I like the custom foods feature. I occasionally buy a mocha flavored milk drink from a deli near my office. I just plugged in all the nutrient information off the drink's label, now it's in my database for the next time I drink it. FitDay will also track my activities (if I ever get around to doing any.) It's raining this morning so no walk at the lake. I like FitDay's graphic reports too. They really can tell you if you're keeping your diet on track. If you're trying to lose weight definitely check it out. If you're not I'd check it out anyway, you might be surprised the impact certain foods, like little stuffed mushrooms may be having on your diet.

I'm not beating myself up about last night's dinner. Hubby and I were celebrating sixteen years of wedded bliss. Hugs and smoochies out to the best husband on earth!Looking forward to many more years together.

On the baseball front, Yankees go down in defeat yet again to the Toronto Blue Jays. Kudos to A.J. Burnett for getting ten consecutive outs against the Yanks. This puts the Boston Red Sox 3 1/2 games in first.

Ok I know, I know

I've been remiss at keeping up with my blog. This is my first post in over a week. Sorry. My friends, Token Asian aka 80sGirl and Deathlok have very good reasons for not posting. They are going through some emotional days right now and my thoughts and heart goes out to them. Me, I have no good excuse except for the nice summer weather here and my general laziness. Who was it who wanted to start her own tech blog, anyway? The net has enough tech blogs as it is. I think I'll just try concentrating on this one for the time being.

Who says there's no good news? I read one of the crawls on CNN yesterday that said that Justin Timberlake told a reporter that would never run for President. Now I can sleep nights with one less thing to worry about. (I tried to google this story but couldn't find it. If one of my readers finds it please e-mail me.)

I need to run. I didn't realize it was getting so late. We have an overnight freeloader..umm, I mean guest tonight, he's supposed to show in a few minutes. I'd better go be on the lookout for him.

The Halfway Point

It's that time of the year when some of the world's most overpaid athletes converge in one place to smack little white balls with big wooden sticks. I'm referring to Major League Baseball's All-Star Game that takes place in Pittsburgh tomorrow night. Although it seems to me that the main event is beginning to get eclipsed by the bashfest going on tonight in PNC Park, The Century 21 Home Run Derby. I don't know who thought this up but what a genius! Let's get people to pay to watch batting practice. For those of you like my pal Deathlok who are unfamiliar with the game, in a real game the opposing pitcher tries to throw balls that the batter can't hit. In batting practice they throw balls that should be easy for the batters to hit. Don't get me wrong, watching major league players in batting practice can be pretty thrilling but to turn it into a "event" is pretty damn savvy. I guess the draw is that they take the hottest hitters in all of baseball put them all in and one place then let them all hit home runs all night. While it is fun I rather lose interest after the first hour or so. David "Big Papi" Ortiz hit four balls out into the River. OK the first one was exciting, the fourth one? Well you get the picture. They're going into the second round as I write up this post. David Wright, of the New York Mets is leading with 16 runs. Ortiz is in second with 10 and the Florida Marlins' Miguel Cabrera is in third with nine.

In other baseball news, "The Career That Wouldn't Die" looks like it's finally over. The Minnesota Twins released Ruben Sierra today. Notice I didn't say it WAS OVER. Knowing how desperate the New York Yankees are they just may sign him up...AGAIN.

Blogging and Chatting

Friday night and my husband's already crapped out, but then the guy does get up at 4:30 am on Fridays to get to work so I can't blame him. I usually spend Fridays on my laptop chatting with friends on a sort of an online Happy Hour. We've been doing this for about the past 2 months on and off. K is in online with me now. I'm hoping R will show. She mentioned something about chatting with me to firm up plans for when she visits the east coast in September. I doubt Dlok will make it. I read his blog, it sounds like his father-in-law is gravely ill. My heart really goes out to him and his family.

It's Friday and I need to concentrate on more positive thoughts. Not too much going on this weekend. I need to make a trip to get my hair colored and cut. Then this weekend hubby and I have to start moving stuff out of the living room and dining room since the carpet cleaners are coming this week. Hopefully I'll have time to weed the garden and make it out to the lake for a nice long walk.

One more thing, the final totals from Relay for Life are in. We raised over $47,000! There's a wrap up meeting on Monday night.

D'oh!

Yesterday I couldn't log into my cpanel account and then to my horror found an error page where my web site should have been. Several hours after placing a support ticket this e-mail message appeared:

Hello,

We are currently experiencing an issue with the Jefferson server which our technicians are looking at now. We have posted a NEWS item on our website concerning this and will update it as soon as we have more from out technicians.

"Jefferson server"? When the hell did get it moved there? The last time I checked it was on the MacDonald server. Thanks for the big heads up on the move. So I go to their web site and here's the announcement:

Tuesday July 4 2006 - 12:30PM - Jefferson.genwebhost.com - Connectivity Issues

Our datacenter technicians have traced the source of the recent issues to a faulty hard drive in the server. The technicians have reinstalled Cpanel on a brand drive and have begun to copy the backup data to the new drive. The account restoration process has already begun and we will be updating this thread with the progress to ensure clients are updated.

What they're backing it up NOW to another server? You mean it wasn't already backed up on another server? I'll have to remember to place yet another support ticket in order to find out what the name of new mystery server is. And don't ask me to cut them slack because it was the 4th of July. This is a Canadian company and for all I know their datacenter technicians are in Bangalore!

Good thing it's only a portfolio site. God forbid I was dependent on this site for my liveihood. Although all my e-mail accounts on that server are all messed up. I'm not happy at all.

How American am I?

I did take this completely objective quiz How American Are You? Here's my results:

You Are 59% American

Most times you are proud to be an American. Though sometimes the good ole US of A makes you cringe Still, you know there's no place better suited to be your home. You love your freedom and no one's going to take it away from you!

How American Are You?

I'm so relieved. All this time I thought I was an heinous bleeding heart America hating liberal. I'm not so bad after all. Of course, I'm sure would have scored much lower if I had chosen Carter for the best president of the late twentieth century, and fortunately, there weren't any questions concerning Michael Moore.

But then of course, I'm not as bad as these guys!

Happy Fourth of July everyone!

Must Look Away...

Must not watch "Law and Order" marathon, must look away, must read web marketing book, must not watch "Law and Order." Ok, I'll admit I already sat through two episodes before tearing myself away to sit in front of the computer. I did, however, put in almost 5 miles walking by the lake early this morning, before the rains came. I have such good intentions to get things done, and then I get sucked into an episode of "Law and Order" which I've already seen about a half dozen times. Why does that happen?

Zippy's TV Meme

Sorry this post is over two weeks late. Please cut me some slack as I am just getting my life back. I just saw radio gnome's response to Deathlok's original post. There's no question that my TV meme would have to be Lisa Simpson. Although we'd all like to believe that if Lisa grew up she'd become President but more likely she'd end up as a frustrated grad student.

No Joy in Mudville

I know I promised to write more entries in my blog after I quit my other job, but the New York Mets were playing the Boston Red Sox this week. The Mets were swept by the Red Sox and then went on to get beat by the Jankies (also known as the New York Yankees) after a lengthy rain delay at Yankee Stadium last night.

My husband happens to be the biggest Red Sox fan I know. Much to my father's dismay I grew up a Mets fan while my sister, was the big Jankie fan. (That's probably why she was his favorite.) While I can't say I was happy about the Mets four recent losses, all that winning, winning, winning was getting slightly boring. Which brings me to ... "What the heck is WRONG with the National League East?" Mets are in first place by ten games followed by the Florida Marlins? The Florida Marlins? Yes, the same team that ended the Boston Red Sox's 12 game winning streak. What is this a sign of Armegeddon? I don't know, it just feels so wrong.

As I write this the Mets are leading the Jankies 2-0 in the third inning. What the heck am I doing here behind by computer? I know I can follow the game on the internet, but that's for work. (Oops! Is Doug reading this?) If I can't be at the stadium, watching on television is the only way for me to follow the game. so I'm outta here.