Susie's Meanderings

Rain Rain

Well, for being in the glorious South Pacific, I'm not seeing much sun. We had a perfectly grey and rainy sea day yesterday, followed by an equally miserable day in Raiatea. I still managed to get ashore to get my fresh flower lei, which makes my cabin smell indescribably marvelous, and pretty much the rest of the day has been dedicated to napping. At the moment I'm trying, for the first time, the wireless connection on the ship.
Here's a picture from Rarotonga.

Rarotonga

Well, after a very quiet and uneventful sea day, I find myself once again in Rarotonga at the email place that used to be overrun by feral children. Today finds it very quiet and plastered with signs that no-one under 15 is admitted ever under any circumstances. Sigh, though the guys running it still look just barely over 15 themselves.
So I'm not even in Polynesia 3 days before I've succumbed to the lure of the black pearls (not like I didn't have a collection of them already) but last time I was here I resisted the carved pearl, and have regretted it ever since, and rectified the situation within 20 minutes of coming ashore.
It's so lovely to be back here, and a little, well, unnerving that an island so far away from my life should seem so familiar and homey.

Papeete

Here's the view from yesterday. The view from the ship is about the same. It's stunningly hot here. My body is all confused from being picked up out of the dead of winter and dropped into the height of summer. I am not, however, complaining.

Living Right

Well, after an eight hour flight here (in the bulkhead seat, with a very quiet baby next to me and no-one behind me) I find myself once again, gloriously, deliriously in Tahiti. My hotel last night had a stunning view of the ocean and the palms and the moon, and today finds me walking around in the melting heat and humidity. (Very welcome after a month in the cold). It's too lovely a day to sit in front of the computer, so I"m off to buy flowers.

New Link!!

Just when I was beginning to think our little blog circle was slowly dying... I have a new link. Rick Becker has a brand new and highly entertaining blog.

Getting Acquainted with JavaScript

For a while now it's bothered me that, while I have lovely pop-up windows for my pictures within my blog, (thanks entirely to Movable Type and Image Magic and certainly no skill of my own), I haven't been able to propagate this to the rest of my site. Well, no more. I gritted my teeth and came to terms with just enough JavaScript to get me in trouble, and I have entirely revamped my Louie page. So for all you fans of Louie (and I know there are some besides my mother), here are 16 brand new pictures of Louie's adventures from Mexico to Athens, all of them lovingly hand coded to pop up into a 600px by 600px window when you click on them.

Louie Page

Finally (or Almost)

So, after much sweating of blood and compromising my artistic sense by using Frontpage (with occasional mop-ups of hand coding the HTML), I have managed to post a few (well, quite a few) pictures from this summer in the Med. The first page is sort of a random assortment from different places, but there wasn't room for everything, so look for the links to Italy, Greece and Turkey. Oh, and it's still sort of a work in progress, so let me know if you see anything glaringly awful. A lot of this was done under the influence of a gang of 6 year olds.

Susie's Med Pictures

Fall Colors

Well, I'm home again, so my muscles are too sore to type, what with running every day and weight training, so here are some pictures instead. I love fall.

Best Laid Plans

The storage unit is clean and swept, my boxes carefully tucked, not as I expected, in my mother's closets, but my sister's attic. I have said goodbye to the niece and nephews (after having gone to see The Incredibles with them, which I highly recommend) and after an alternately foggy and sunny drive with my parents in the big station wagon loaded to the ears with suitcases and more boxes, I am once again at home.

Goodbye books

My whole life I've been surrounded by books - shelves upon shelves in the living room, stacks in my bedroom, entire libraries in the basement... so culling my entire book collection to 3 treasured boxes is a bit draining. On the other hand, reduced as I was to getting rid of the really treasured hardbacks, I actually made some decent money off the books at Half Price. Mind you, I spent it all again in the time it took them to price my books, but at least I've reduced the overall total. My sister in law said it best, she keeps the books she liked, not because she's going to read them again, but because she likes to look at them and remember reading them. I'm afraid I won't have any memories next time I have a house with a bookcase.

Wrestling the Storage Unit

I've finally come to the inescapable conclusion that it's costing me more to store my collection of low end Ikea furniture than it would to get rid of it all and buy it fresh again a few months down the line. My long suffering mother has agreed to take the few (24 as it turns out) small boxes that remain, and I have spent the week pawing through my worldly belongings, weighing it all in the balance. I'm ashamed to say that even after ruthless culling, I still seem to to have a disproportionate number of books (5 boxes, plus random empty spaces in the kitchen and junk boxes), that I am completely unwilling to part with.
Also, many thanks to K.B. again, for his help in the never-ending fight against blog spam. I know you're all desperate to comment on my old posts, but from now on you will have to content yourself with the more recent ones, as all comments on posts older than 7 days have been closed.

Halloween Photo Essay

For those of you who are not homestarrunner.com fans, the funny looking pumpkin is Trogdor. Designed by my nephew and carved by my ever patient sister.