So, Friday afternoon/evening, we're having power problems. Stays on for 20 minutes, goes out for an hour to an hour and a half. This continues all evening (twice while I was online. You'd think I'd have gotten the hint the first time....).
Around 11:15 it comes back on again, and something happened to the neighbor's home security system. It starts going off on its own accord. Nice, LOUD annoying "BREEEP BREEEP BREEEP pause BREEEP BREEEP BREEEP..." and so on. I could not get to sleep until about 4:30am because of that damn thing. I even took a walk up the road at 3am to take a look and see if I could disconnect it, because, obviously by now, there was no one home.
Turns out the homeowners had dropped the security service that monitors the alarms, but kept the alarm hooked up. And, naturally, the homeowners were out of town. Friggin' wonderful.
It didn't get shut off until 4pm Sunday afternoon.
I'd better get a nice bottle of beer from them or something.
I had to take Sarah to the doctor's office yesterday for her inoculations. The last time she needed shots, I had to take her as well, and that just killed me. Two nurses had to pin her down, with me holding her shoulders and telling her it would be OK. By the time they were done, I had tears in my eyes. I sure didn't take well to seeing my little girl getting scared and hurt like that. So I told Gail that next time, she had to do it.
Naturally, she scheduled the appointment in the middle of the day when she's at work and can't get off. So I was the lucky one who got to take her in to get shots again. Sarah had told me she was worried, and you could tell during the exam. She was jumping and running and all over the place.
When the nurse came in to give the shots, Sarah was going to sit on my lap. By this time, she'd ceased jumping and laughing and was crying. Hard. And hiding behind me as well. Eventually it took me sitting her in my lap, wrapping both arms around her, with one hand holding both of her hands, and I had one leg wrapped around her legs to pin them down. Poor thing was so scared, and screaming to raise the dead. Two shots in one arm, one in the other.
Gail owes me big time.
For some reason, I got a wild hair and decided to make the site here W3C compliant. I validated both the HTML code as well as the CSS. I had a ton of things wrong in the HTML, mostly stuff I'd neglected to take out in the Greymatter templates, and it probably took me about a half hour to get straightened out. The CSS was error-free, just some warnings that I didn't have certain expected elements in my link classes. Two minutes later, all was fine and dandy.
I was going to change, or was thinking about changing at least, the layout of the site. I think I'll hold off on that however, and instead, go with a different layout under the soon to be opened (I hope) graphics section. Naturally, being a "graphics" section, it is going to be a much more graphical interface, as well as some CSS/PHP eye-candy goodiness. At least, that's the plan. And Lord knows how many plans I've had that have gone astray.
As with many other people, I tend to make New Year's Resolutions every January. Typically, I've forgotten about them by Febuary. This year, I'm actually still focused on a couple of them, which is rather surprising.
Here were my resolutions:
The losing weight is actually going well, though I haven't been doing it the whole time. I've only started dieting in the last week, but at least I'm making a conscious effort to lose weight now. I've also probably worked out more in the past 4 months than I did all of last year. Having a diet buddy helps, someone I can talk to when I need advice or motivation. Although her last journal entry will probably give me an upset stomach. Thong?!? Moi?! icky.
continue >>I've never in my life been on a diet. Well, there was this time when I was in jr. high school ("middle school" they call it now...go figure) where my mom decided I wasn't getting enough protein or something and made me drink these hideous shakes that were just the nastiest things. They tasted like chalk.
Well, now I'm on a real, honest-to-god diet. I've known for some time that I've needed to lose weight. It just never was high on my priority list. For some reason though, the time has come to make it happen. There was nothing earth shaking that prompted this decision. It's just time to do it I guess. I don't want to be fat forever.
I've got some help this time through. I have my diet buddy who I mentioned before. I have Gail helping as well. She's been reading through different books about the low-carb diets (which is what I'm trying) and is helping me to eat better. We had meatloaf (with lean beef), beans and instead of mashed potatoes, we had mashed cauliflower. Gail chopped and whipped it up, put in some sour cream (low-fat of course ;), and some cheese, and wa-la! Mashed Cauliflower! It wasn't bad at all, but the real surprise was how Cody wolfed it down. He LOVED it.
So here's to hoping the diet works, I lose weight, start feeling better about myself and get all the hot young chicks to notice me without sucking in my gut all the time. Makes my head swell up funny when I do that.