May 29, 2003
Iowa's not so bad
Iowa's not so bad, so far..... Glorious green and sunny today, nice people, and, miracle of miracles, my library had done all their setup before I got there. Yay. I like Omaha more as I stay here, Kristy Johnson and I took a really nice walk by the river today, lots of fountains and landscaping. It was really very pleasant. We ended with another wander down restaurant row, everything smells sooo fantastic, I don't think I could eat at all the restaurants here even if I stayed two weeks. Sigh.
May 28, 2003
Internet woes
Yay - I have comments again. Once again, thanks to Kris Bell (who's racking up serious web karma). So Omaha. I'm finally here (after a rather long stop in Chicago due to weather - which meant three hours crammed into one of those little planes while we waited for the 30 planes ahead of us to take off). But I'm in the Embassy Suites for a WHOLE week, and the cute Old Town is just across the street. The restaurants there smell really really yummy, but I haven't sampled them yet. I like the Embassy Suites, but unaccountably they have my desk set fat from any visible phone jack, and the high speed internet is set up on a little corner table, where one could not conceivably work on a computer unless one was a contortionist dedicated to painful computing, but then again, how can one argue with free happy hour and hot breakfast?
May 23, 2003
ARgh
ARgh - in a vain attempt to fix my archives, I have destroyed my blog and lost my comments. At least I don't have it running down the page in streaky lines anymore. I hope you all missed that. Anyway, I shall keep struggling with it
May 21, 2003
3 o'clock and Jammies
Home again! 3 o'clock and I'm already in my jammies. Yay. I discovered today that Alaska Airlines still serves real food on its flights. Imagine my surprise, expecting the ever present "Bistro Bag" replete with nutri-grain bar and raisins, when instead I was offered a choice - a CHOICE - between french toast with fruit compote and eggs, or spinach and feta omelette. I didn't know that ANY airline was still serving real food. And I was in coach.... still 6 hours is way too long to sit on a plane. Especially if you're trying to edit the 9 million photos you took on the previous trip, and the person in front of you keeps bouncing their chair into your laptop. Grr. So now I'm home, and I think I have a cold. So back to bed for me, but I'm determined to make up a pot of Kris' famous vegetarian chili first. Which seems to be very good for colds.
May 20, 2003
Boston Logan
If anyone is flying out through Boston in the near future - I have to say, I'm loving the airport Hilton , though their "skyway" to the airport is a bit fictitious as it involves weaving your way through two large parking lots that have no directions, and two skybridges, plus up and down several flights of well concealed stairs, as none of the skybridges are actually on the same level. It felt a little bit like those video games where you have to solve clues before you go on to the next level. Though I have to say, the skybridges, and even the garage stairs, were pretty spectacular. It was nonetheless, a 10 minute walk from the terminal to the hotel after I turned in my rental car, and that was walking briskly with no luggage. Needless to say, I will be taking the hotel van tomorrow morning. So I was all excited, because my room had an ethernet cable all set up on the desk, complete with instructions as to how to use it. So I plug it in - no link light. I call the help number, and eventually am told "high speed internet doesn't come down that far". Apparently, high speed access ends at room 1074, and I am in 1080. So I ask you- why do they provide ethernet cable? I guess I'll just have to content myself with playing with the Bose radio by my bed, or perhaps I'll sit and enjoy my stellar view of the bay and all the happy little sailboats......
May 19, 2003
Two excruciating hours later, I
Two excruciating hours later, I finally have a few little pictures from the weekend up on the photos page. I'm saving the rest for something faster than 22K. I have a ridiculous number of Massachusetts photos to post (not all from this weekend). Hands are tired now from too much computer time. But just one more little picture because I forgot to post it with the others - here are Rachel and Louie enjoying our last morning at the beach house
Katie has inspired me
Katie has inspired me to return to work on my website (even with the painfully slow connection I have here at the hotel). And, due to the many requests for the Crepe recipe from this weekend, I have been inspired to start a recipe of the week page. Again, very much a work in progress. I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to manage it. But you can see my first efforts here. Katie reminded me that I had originally intended to do sort of "hotel food" recipes, and this doesn't qualify, but I'll follow up with some stuff that you can cook with only a microwave and a fridge. Oh, and I'm so pleased, because today I figured out how to create my continuing calendar by tweaking the code I already have. So July is up now, and much to my delight, I seem to be on vacation for most of it. Yipee!
May 18, 2003
Here's my first
Here's my first in blog photo, with nods of thanks to Katie for her patient teaching.
Weekend in Sippewisset
So, just came off a fantastically relaxing weekend with all my coworkers in an amazing beach house. Where I discovered that Stephanie is my kitchen and food network soulmate And, I return to connectivity to discover Ruth has joined the blogger ranks, Yay! Back at the Hampton Inn in Fairhaven now, which is a small step down from the beach house, but has a remarkable number of large windows for a Hampton Inn, so I won't complain. I have far far too many pictures from this weekend (most of them, oddly, of Kris Bell taking pictures of things). Okay, no more hyperlinks. That's what I get for spending the weekend with all my blogger companions. Pictures soon, perhaps when I can connect at better than 24k.
May 15, 2003
Susie is Lazy
Kris Bell puts me to shame, here he is blogging twice a day, and I can barely get my lazy fingers going every three days. I spent SUCH a lazy day on my Wednesday, I was supposed to go to the Whaling Museum "the biggest whaling museum in the world", but I just couldn't muster up a lot of interest in killing whales, and so went to Walmart instead - which always provides fine on the road entertainment. Except EVERYONE in the the store was grouchy and rude. At one point there were these two ladies gossiping in the aisle, taking up the entire aisle, and so I squeezed past them, murmuring a very polite "excuse me" , and then went to peruse the cling wrap. So as I stand there trying to find the cheapest roll, I hear the one lady say "let's move down there", and they come down and stand RIGHT between me and the cling wrap, and take up their gossiping again. I refrained from shoving them out of the way once I finally made my choice, but it was a close thing. And in a nod to what is apparently exercise week in the bloglists, I'd like to say that I have finally broken my 3 month hiatus from the treadmill, and worked out TWO whole days in a row (I find watching the food network while I work out makes the time go by much faster).
May 12, 2003
Welfleet is Cool...
Ever since I got on the road I have become quite the slacker re my blog. I am loving Massachusetts though. Ross and I spent all weekend walking the Freedom trail (which was great on Saturday, and remarkably cold on Sunday). Actually, on Saturday we got sidetracked in the Quincy market and ended up drinking Sangria all afternoon, and then I went to the Discovery store and got these fabbo inflatable travel speakers for my MP3 player. I have some great new Louie pictures though, because my library was very indulgent, and let him come in and play with their computers and stuffed animals. I fully intend to post them soon, but, well, I'm just too lazy. I want to go lie on the couch and watch Food TV until its time for CSI. Time enough for new pictures some other day. Anyway, Wellfleet is my new favorite town in the US, and definitely has the coolest library I've been to in a really long time.
May 08, 2003
Took the redeye Tuesday, non
Took the redeye Tuesday, non stop to Boston. Which would have been great, because I had three seats to myself, but the angry hands of the sky gods were playing shake the plane for the entire 4 1/2 hours. Near the end of the flight it evened out enough that the hopeful flight attendants warmed up our breakfast scones, filling the cabin with warm cinnamony smells, and then got on the PA and said it was too turbulent for them to serve us, so we could grab them on our way out of the plane.
From there, sleep deprived and hungry, I hit the Sumner tunnel at rush hour (can you say 50 cars all funnelling into one lane in the space of 500 feet?) then wound my way through 3 hours of backroads to BEAUTIFUL Cape cod, (where all the restaurants are closed, because it's off season - and the ocean is angry and filled with cold looking surfers). I am loving Massachusetts, bad weather notwithstanding. This library is fantastic.
May 06, 2003
DHTML
Kris Bell -please don't hate me, but it was irresistible. I have a little moving mouse trail on my photos page, but in deference to the purists, I've also made a link to the nice, quiet, no movement photo page, so Kris...please don't hack my site....Okay, I'm off to pack, so I can take the redeye to Boston this evening. I don't anticipate having much of a connection for the next few days, so there won't be much in the way of changes in the days to come. Which is probably a good thing, since I'm dreaming in HTML these days. I'm so scatterbrained today, I don't feel at all prepared for this trip....Now I can't get this stupid thing to post. It's definitely time to go home.
May 04, 2003
HTML
Well, I made up for my no computer day yesterday, and wrote my first page in HTML from scratch (with a little judicious copying from an existing page, but still....) Wahooo! And I dedicate my work to my little travelling companion - Louie - who is the star of the page. If you can bear to look at pictures of cute little stuffed lambs, here it is... Louie's Page There's lots more to come, as soon as I can get to a scanner. Now I need to move away from the computer and get the blood running back into my lower extremites...
May 03, 2003
Tea and Crumpets
I actually spent time away from the computer today (well, after burning a cd for my sister, creating a little cover art for it, transferring some music to my mp3 player, and making a few more tweaks to the website - but really, that was only in the morning). Saw my niece and nephews, who must have been fair starving for the sight of me, because they rushed me at the door and all started talking at once. My arms are a little stretched from the tug of war, but it's always nice to feel loved. Nonetheless, my sister and I made our escape, and met some other Moms for a MONSTER tea tower (little sandwiches, cake, scones, crumpets, 5 different kinds of cookies) and tea - we closed the place down and left buzzing from sugar and caffiene. On to a movie - "Bend it Like Beckham" which I highly recommend. It was one of those movies where I sat through the credits kind of hoping it wasn't really over. My sister says she found the accents hard to understand, and I have to say, the "Irish" guy sounded suspiciously like he was from Liverpool, but still a great soccer movie.
May 02, 2003
HTML Drama
Is there anything so exciting as figuring stuff out? Again, I have to thank yet another of my colleagues - Ted who pointed out that my blog was STILL cutting off at the edges (despite a good hour devoted to the problem this afternoon) and to Kris, for some chance comment he made while helping me set up comments, about the difference between absolute values and percentages (or something like that, I may have extrapolated from another comment). So, that, and some slogging through HTML (it scares me that it's starting to read like English to me now) and the problem is solved!!! Yay Ted! Yay Kris! So enough about my website - I promise to find something more interesting to talk about soon. Going to high tea with my sister tomorrow - whom I haven't seen since early March. It's a little ironic that I moved here to be close to the family, and now see almost less of them than I did when I lived 2,000 miles away. Such is life.
Betty Newbie
So, I'm spending a productive day at work playing with my new web page. Kris has promised to make me understand Cascading Style Sheets next week (yes Aaron , I know you warned me), so this will all look better soon. In the meantime, I guess it's time to play with thumbnails so I can get my photo page up and running. Any and all advice is welcome.
May 01, 2003
Wahoo!
Wahoo! (In the words, if not the tone, of Ms Frizzell) - I just did my first html editing to my page. Granted, it was only copy and paste, but I'm pleased nonetheless.
Kris Bell is Smart
So, a mighty thanks to Kris Bell, without whom I wouldn't have comments on this page, and it would all still look weird and bad. Kris weaned me away from Front Page extensions today and led me down the primrose path of ftp. Yay. So easy, now that I'm getting the hang of it. Good to be home, it's become one of those fantastic sunny days in Seattle, and because it's spring, it even smells like flowers (at least it did on the walk to Pete's today). I'm feeling all organized, because I made it to the grocery store (Can anyone get out of Larry's Market for under $50, or is it like an entrance fee?), and I'm planning a little roast chicken for dinner tomorrow night. Well, back to my book - I'm rereading one that I read in college - "The Cuckoo's Egg "- by a guy who discovered a spy ring hacking into his computers based on a 75 cent accounting error. It all took place back in the 80's , and it's funny to read now when he talks about high connection speeds, and means 9600 baud. Anyway, it's great to read it now that I understand what he's talking about, when I was 20 it all seemed like hopeless scientific jargon to me.