So I went and added a "mood" field to my site. And have started to back-populate it.

Someone put me outta my misery! XD

I finished adding the CustomFields plugin last night. No database changes needed; it would be interesting to see how it stores this information, unless the first field I added did a silent DB update. Heh... call me anal, or stupid, or whatever, but I spent something like an hour and a half last night filling in that field for all the posts on my site that also exist on LJ that had music filled in. No idea how many posts I had to copy/paste/rebuild but I maded it back through August of '04. Since I only signed up for LJ at the start of '04 that means I only have about 7 months' worth to go back through.

Today was productive, somewhat. I got my plates transferred (almost $1300 in taxes!) plus renewed 'em for 2 more years. I also got the main bathroom cleaned except for the floor, in spite of everything conspiring against me. One should not have to repeatedly reassemble one's tools. I had the idea that since Comet is an awesome cleaner, but comes in powder form, to dump a little of the powder into a spray bottle, fill it with warm water, shake it up, and then spray that on the tub walls, tub, shower curtain, etc. I couldn't find a single working spray bottle in the house save the one I use to wet my hair, which I didn't want to have to make 100% sure didn't still have cleaner in it. So I hit Walgreens and bought 2 large spray bottles (it was 2 for $3, $2 for just 1).
Oh! I almost forgot. I successfully went up to 5 pounds on triceps from 4. I also went to 8 pounds on biceps instead of 7. That was really, really hard. I had to stop about halfway through to rest, then pick it back up again and only barely managed to do the last lift. I definitely need to get back into supplementing with a high-weight low-rep one day a week to get that squared away. But, I'm happy I've finally moved my triceps up again, at least.

I shoulda gotten my money back from Walgreens for this garbage. Whoever designed these should be shot. For one, the housing for the spring should be water tight. Spring's gonna rust otherwise if it gets whatever is sprayed from the bottle into it. For two, all the parts should actually be attached (save unscrewing the sprayer from the bottle, of course) so it doesn't fall apart.

First bottle I got 4 spritzes in and a damn piece fell out. It turns out there are two plastic pieces that are loose. One cups over the spring, the other goes over it and has a groove on the other end where a flat piece inside the finger lever fits into. However, something about the cheap plastic of the piece over the spring and the cylinder they're all in, means it sticks rather easiliy. But the lever comes back out, of course, so the little piece with the groove falls out. Then, if you can get the rest loose, the part over the spring can fall out just fine, nothing stopping it.

I didn't figure any of that out (except the first piece coming loose when it all sticks) until the second bottle. It sprayed fine lots, then stuck and the piece fell out, and I decided to figure out why. One of the times fixing it, I had to push very, very, very hard on the spray mechanism itself to get the last piece in properly. I managed to hurt the hell out of my right thumb. Looking at it later, after I more or less couldn't use it to hold the sponge when scrubbing because it hurt and stung, I'd managed to pull the nail off the bed just a bit, not quite enough to make it bleed. >.< That's going to hurt for a while. Also, the one with the easier to use sprayer (tried to fix the first one; would get stuck every single squeeze so no point) had a crack in the bottom already. Grr. So I switched sprayers to their opposite bottles and just pitched the now-completely-defective one.

Anyway, the hardest bit as usual was getting the shower curtain actually clear again instead of opaque, for the bottom half nearest the shower, but I managed. Everything in there is shiny again, and I won't feel gross taking a bath in the tub so I might actually do so in the near future. I also renew my vow to clean the bathroom much more often; it'd been a few months this time and it was such a big pain in the ass to do it.

So Tuesday I napped instead of working out (desperately needed the sleep, in spite of being pumped about still losing weight) and today I cleaned the bathroom instead of working out. I'll see about getting to the gym tomorrow. Less of the cardio machines seem to be taken up lately because the weather's been so much nicer for people to walk and run in.

This is a rather extensive plugin for MT that will allow for defining new entry, category, and author fields that aren't currently available. I don't have much use at the moment for the category or author fields, but I do like the idea of adding entry fields I didn't have so I don't have to figure out extensive PHP code in order to co-opt the keywords field.

I just got it all uploaded (what a big, big pain in the ass; the zip file doesn't have everything in a single folder structure, instead putting it all under a subfolder which means moving everything around after unzipping). I went and added a "Music" field so I can put in what I'm currently listening to. Obviously there's no way of having it detect what my computer's player (Winamp, etc.) is playing and put that in there, and in any case I'm usually using my iRiver anyway, but I can change my templates to show it. Once you see what I'm currently listening to at the bottom of this post, that'll mean I altered my templates to show it. I'm also considering going back through all my posts and looking up what I was listening to at the time via the LJ versions, and put those in there. Just for completeness, not because I'm anal... not at all.

You won't believe what woke me up this morning, at about 3:40. Out of a sound, dreaming sleep. My phone's low battery noise. My phone was nowhere near the bedroom. It was in the kitchen, in my closed purse under other stuff. Between the kitchen and the bedroom is the bathroom; my purse was a good dozen feet down the hallway from our bedroom door, and I sleep on the side of the bed by the opposite wall from the door. Yet, I heard it well enough for it to enter my dream, wake me up all the way, and make me think to figure out what that tiny quiet beeping was. At that point, I couldn't just let it shut itself off and wait while I listened to it, I had to go to the kitchen, dig around in my purse in the dark, find it and unlock it all so I could turn it off.

Weird.

Also weird was my iRiver when I first turned it on. I'd paused it near the end of a song, so it started up at that song, and I hit play. Only... it played it veerrrrryy slooooooowwwlllly and jittery to boot. The pause symbol never changed to the play symbol. I tried turning it off, no dice. It didn't fix itself until it skipped to the next song. Apparently it wasn't all the way awake yet, or something.

I've not done this in about a month, just from being lazy. But, the numbers are still slowly decreasing.

Current weight as of April 25 @ 6:30am: 142.6 pounds.

Still need to work more cardio into my week on a more regular basis.

I was on my way out, with two Kashi granola bars in hand to put in my laptop bag's front pocket. I had my purse, my keys, my badge, all ready to go. Then I remembered I had stuff in the bathroom that needed to go back in my purse, so I went in there and put those things in.

I got to work, opened the front pocket of my laptop bag, and... the two granola bars (one for breakfast, one for an afternoon snack if needed) weren't there. By the time I'd put the stuff from the bathroom in my purse I'd forgotten all about them. Only thing I can think of, is either they're sitting by where I keep my purse, or they're sitting on the bathroom counter.

Fortunately, I had one lonely plastic spoon left at work, so I made myself oatmeal instead.

The right, back side of my throat & back of my tongue all feel like they should be red and raw, to the point where they're tweaking nerves connected to my jaw and inner ear. Argh. I looked the best I could in the bathroom mirror, getting right up to it and opening my jaw as far as I could, and saw absolutely nothing out of the ordinery. Eating seems to make it feel better for a while; swalling itself, with nothing to eat, hurts. And damn, it's persistent. Even though I'm not exactly screaming in pain, I feel like it's going to drive me crazy soon. I feel stupid thinking about going to the doc though, since I can't see anything wrong anywhere in my mouth or what I can see of my throat, and otherwise I feel fine. I even got more sleep than usual for a Sunday night, in spite of waking several times.

Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow.

Only 1 more hour. Must remember that. One more hour, then I can go home. And hurt at home instead of work. Maybe J will be able to see something I can't, or some shit. Or maybe a few aspirin will make it go away.

At least lunch was good and fun and yay. Got to hang w/ kinje which was cool. Talked WoW and tech support and such, and it was good.

I rarely, rarely ever straighten my hair. It involves a lot of heat, so if I did it regularly it'd be damaging to my hair. Plus, it takes longer than goop-n-go: about 20-30 minutes.

I gave J the option for last night, since it was his birthday, of whether he wanted me to do a really nice curly style (actually diffusing it, etc.) or to straighten it. He decided he'd like straight for a change. I have a straight iron, but it sucks. It rips my hair. My stylist had said a good ceramic one is far superior. Of course, she was also talking a $200-300 price range. I went to Beauty Brands to pick one up, and except for the $180 one they had, the rest of them were between $30-70. I grabbed a $45 one and hoped for the best.

Oh, how nice. Two year warranty, 25 heat settings (whoopdedo, I'm only going to use it in one spot since it's just for me), heats up fast, and just glides over my hair as though it were coated in teflon. Between that and blowdrying using a wide paddle brush (no natural bristles; I bought one of those and just ugh), I was able to make a great job of it, with no ripped hair.

I might do this more than once a year or so. Maybe even 5 or 6 times, heh. Not spending that kind of time in the morning before work though.

I was fooling around with a MovableType plugin that's supposed to be able to pull my AWStats files and show my referrers. I was poking around and looked at my "latest 100 visitors" in cPanel... and I found that someone, in a "Sex Kitten" thread on some apparently Asian forum (dunno, don't have the character encoding so all I get is ?????; for some reason the thread title was in English), hotlinked the two images from this LJ post.

It was amongst a bunch of pictures of hot chicks. I was not satisfied that they were only getting this leech image.

I popped my Goatse cherry via a SafeSearch-off Google Image Search, in order to add a RewriteRule to my htaccess file just for them. I spent long enough with the images to resize it to 3/4 and put "DON'T STEAL, ASSHOLE!" in huge bright bold red letters on it.

Damn I'm feeling smug in my cuntfacedness. I won't know if the guy ever gets banned for it, since I can't read any of it to even see if anyone noticed or got upset. But I don't care, I'll just tell myself he did and giggle evilly at all the people I may have scarred through some jerkwad who doesn't understand hotlinking = bad.

Forumopolis thread about Dogfish Head IPA. Need to see if Dirt Cheap carries it, since the closest distributor is in IL.

I actually got time to play yesterday. I got my new hunter from most of the way through level 17 to a little ways (or half? can't remember) through level 21. I dinged twice on my own, and twice more with J pulling me through quests to get 'em over with. Good lord I am jonesing for a mount in the worst way. At least I can hit Darnassus and get my tasty dual wield now.

So Brennh is now looking at finishing up Darkshore, just the fishing quests and some of the murloc crap. Then she needs to do Deadmines and Blackfathom Deeps to get them out of the way. After that is the suckage that is Stonetalon Peak. Hate that place.

All I know about them is that they have a stupid high interest rate for a plain jane savings account (we're talking whole percentages, not fractions), and that they're online only or something, no brick-n-mortar institutions to go to. Also, I've heard they're very, very stable and trustworthy, FDIC insured and all that jazz. Been around long enough not to be a fly-by-night.

I'm thinking of taking some money out of our regular savings account that earns shit for interest even when we have over 10K in it, and starting up an ING account. I just... have no idea how I'd put money in, or get it back out. I mean, I'm sure with an account I could easily go in and have some of my paycheck electronically deposited, but how would I get money in outside of that? It's ridiculously easy to move money between the checking and savings accounts we have now; they're both with the same bank that has online banking, so I just do a funds transfer.

I've been a "grownup" for a while, I'm married, have a credit card, got a house payment and a couple car payments, all of that. I just feel like a complete n00b thinking about this newfangled online-only banking stuff. Help?

I got to work, and found myself wondering if I'd warped in time. I found myself parking well back from usual, in spite of it being a Monday morning (Mondays and Fridays have slightly less people, and slightly more people running late) and me being a few minutes early. I wondered if there was some function being held by one of the programs first thing in the morning. Walking in, I saw the cause: they've added a couple dozen numbered spots. Weh weh weh. No idea who they're all going to all of a sudden, but I feel all pouty that if I'm running late by more than five minutes I'll have to go wayy over to the next lot and walk at least 50 yards more than normal. Anyone else brought cheese to go with the whine I brought?

Pele gave us a bit of a scare. She's ok, thankfully.

Yesterday evening she started vomiting. At first we just figured she'd managed to work up a big hairball already (she puked one a week or two ago) and couldn't get it to come up yet. After a while though, she was still barfing and not bringing anything up, all watery and stuff. We figured out she wasn't keeping water down. By late last night she'd mostly given up drinking because it'd bounce back in a matter of minutes.

Of course, she also worried us a few times extra; we'd go look for her to check up on her, and a couple times she'd managed to hide well enough that both of us had to search the whole house to find her. We understand that's what cats do instinctually, but we wanted to make sure she wasn't getting worse, like going unconscious, signs of kidneys shutting down due to dehydration, etc. Her nose was definitely dry, so we knew she wasn't getting enough fluids.

At 3:30am I woke from a sound sleep choking on my own spit, apparently having had it go down the wrong pipe while dreaming or something. That sucked. Went looking for Pele, found her downstairs, came back up and asked J why on earth he was still up (in WoW, after 3 attempts on Nefarion he went on a full Baron run also pulling the end boss of the place). Woke up when J came to bed an hour later and couldn't find Pele to check up on her. Turns out she was just sitting in the master bathroom.

I set my alarm for 8am so I could check on her, and did so. She was just sitting downstairs. Of course, there's not usually water downstairs for them. So I took their "magic kitty water" dish (it's identical to the dish upstairs, but even when we were keeping it full most of the time they would still get excited over that one, specifically) and filled it. She got all excited, went over and sat right in front of it. And didn't drink.

I checked on her again when I woke back up at 10:30... and couldn't find her. I had to wake J so he'd help me look. Turns out she was behind the chair downstairs. I'd looked under it and the couches, but not behind them. He pulled the chair out a bit, picked her up and held her and noticed her breathing was rather shallow.

I called the vet, and they could see her at 11:30. So we got dressed and ready to go and took her in, J holding onto her in the front room so she couldn't go hide again. She was fighting him a little (she never gets fighty enough to claw or bite) and meowed all the way in the car, which we thought was a good thing. The extra excitement had her breathing a little bit better at the office, hehe. They ended up doing an x-ray, because he thought he could feel something hardish in her intestines. Both when J poked around her tummy and when the vet did, she didn't react as though it were painful, another plus. The x-ray told that she had air throughout stomach and intestines and colon, which means no flat-out blockage (a blockage would have air up to that point, then nothing after). Also, no bunching up of the intestines that occurs with a string. He said they call what she appeared to have illias (no clue if I spelled it right; never heard of it before, but that's how he pronounced it). Basically, the peristolic waves that are in charge of keeping things moving through the system weren't moving at all. So anything she ate or drank, since it couldn't continue through the low bend in the stomach and up into the intestines, was going to come right back up. She also had a slight fever, and the colon where the intestines connected was a little enlarged, though still just filled with air and a slight bit of stool. He said probably something irritated her digestive tract, so if all that was irritated or inflamed that would cause both the fever and the waves stopping. No telling whether we'll ever know what it was that caused it either.

He gave her both sub-Q fluids so she'd start to rehydrate, and an injection of something that starts with an "m" with a brand name of Reglan. It basically starts those waves up again. He also gave us a few pills for her of the same, to give her a quarter pill 2-3 times a day (every 8-12 hours or so). He said keep feeling her tummy; if it starts to be painful stop giving her the drug, because that probably means there is some string or something in there that was causing the irritation that made the waves stop, and the waves would be causing the intestines to bunch up around that which would cause the string to be sawing on 'em. If we have to stop the meds we need to get her back in, and even if we don't have to, if she's not getting noticably better by Monday we need to get her in. He thinks she should be OK though, and it couldn't hurt to keep a close eye on the poop in the litterbox for a few days to see if we can find out what caused the irritation.

She's already looking like she's feeling better. She's more alert, actually twitching her tail when we talk to her, twitching her ears a lot more when we pet her head, actually opening her eyes all the way and generally looking more alert. We'll see what fun it is to pill her in an hour or two. I don't expect we'll get clawed or any of that, but one never knows how hard it'll be to get a cat not to be able to spit a pill back out until one tries.

After all that, we grabbed some Taco Bell, watched the end of a movie on TV, then had a nice long nap, followed by dinner. I have a few spots of cat barf to go over again 'cause they didn't come up all the way the first time I cleaned 'em.

Updating a really old phpBB to the latest version was less difficult than I thought. It helps that I hadn't modded it heavily, just a little, but... once I got the files deleted (need need need an FTP program that will cascade deletes through folders, which WS FTP won't do) and got new ones uploaded, it was 2 minutes until it was ready to go. Running the upgrade script took milliseconds, with no failures (which the docs say are usually OK) let alone errors. A quick delete of the install and contrib folders and one re-auth later, and everything was back to normal. I had to add a couple variables back into the page header file that reference images so they'd show back up, and I need to do a small mod to the edit profile view to get custom titles back in place, but it went very smoothly. Custom template seems fine. I guess I should go ahead and update my forum then, since the only snag will be finding all the mods in that one (there are a few more) and checking that the custom templates I didn't write, have updates to them (and modding those).

Someone in a cube nearby really likes Evanescence. I often hear it coming faintly from someone's headphones, and was just reminded of it because I heard it today. I just wonder if the person's gonna suffer hearing loss, because it's not in the cubes immediately adjacent to me, as far as I can tell, so that means if I can hear it well enough to discern what it is, then it's probably pretty loud to the person listening. Good taste in music though, they're nice to have in the rotation.

Weather folks are predicting a record high for today here. Old record is 87°F, forecast says 90 or so. I don't think it officially reached 90 yesterday, but my car told me it was 92 yesterday afternoon in our immediate area. I turned on the A/C when I got home yesterday. It was actually a few degrees cooler in the house than the day before even though yesterday was the warmer day. Probably Wednesday the house started out warmer to begin with, since we cooled it down to 70 after that. Anyway, thermostat is set for 74/75ish now. I'm hoping to go back to what we had last week, more 70s weather instead of 80s, even if it means another storm or two. I hate leaping from winter almost immediately to summer with only a week or maybe two of spring.

My new insurance cards for the Impreza finally came in the mail Wednesday afternoon. So now I can officially transfer my plates. However, I have until the 31st, and we need to send a check to the IRS for $500. Even though the state owes us over $200, that'll take longer to get. So I'm gonna wait until I get paid Thursday to go down to the DMV and get that squared away, given the taxes are gonna run like $1400 or so.

And now, off to lunch!

All they do is waste air while causing trouble, usually with no remorse, and potentially causing billions in damages, not counting the billions spent on trying to keep the stupid assholes out. I'm pretty sure if these donkeyfuckers would be screwing with other people's shit in other ways (and probably still do) if they didn't have electronic ways of doing it, so to me they're just complete wastes of flesh.

Argh. Yes, I'm pissed. Yes, I'm venting.

I have to upgrade a phpBB board of mine. Tonight. That's modded and has a completely custom template and is several versions behind. I'd already disabled mine, 'cause it wasn't used much, but then I went ahead and created a placeholder index file, saved everything off, then deleted it all. However, this one actually sees somewhat regular use, so I have to get it upgraded since I refuse to just disable it indefinitely until it's more convenient for me to do this.

At least, it shouldn't take 20 minutes to get logged into the comp. It's bad enough that it typically takes 5-10. I came back from getting ice water and coffee, which even "efficiently" meant hitting the bathroom to rinse & wipe out the mug, then stop on the way to the coffee machine to put ice in the water mug, then getting coffee, then stopping at the water fountain on the way back from there to fill up with water. I came back and my comp here was still stuck at "applying settings". I was a bit surprised, but figured it'd be up with the login screen any second. (Typically, the bulk of boot time is "preparing network connections". This takes forever, and I'm not the only one with a laptop who has started seeing this the last several months.) I was wrong. It had apparently died at that screen. Only thing for it was to hold down the on/off switch, then turn it back on. After that it only took about 5 or 6 minutes to be all ready.

Last night was interesting. Got home, with my car telling me it was 84°F outside (yay for the little things like temp gauges in cars) and it was a tossup whether it was cooler in the house or not. Thermostat said it was by maybe 2 degrees. Yuck. I didn't get home until almost 6 (oops, 2 more hours' unplanned OT, but I actually contributed positively to a modelling discussion), so we shortly were headed back out for me to go to my class and J to use the gym with just a snack. Come home, it's still about 82 in the house but it's definitely in the 70s outside, so we go around opening all the windows wide, turning on a ceiling fan or two, and turning on the air vent. When I turned the light out at 11 it was still a little warm for good sleeping, but by this morning (after closing half the windows for the night) it had cooled off to 70 or so. It's going to be in the 80s today and tomorrow, so unfortunately for the cheapskate frugal part of me I see turning on the A/C in our future. If it cools off, we can always turn it back off again. That's one of the few things the house could really use: an attic fan. They're loud as hell, or at least my parents' is, but they really can get a breeze going through the house with the windows open, and keep it cooled off more. Just have to make sure to prop any doors open so they don't go slamming shut.

Work still owes me about a half hour, which technically comes from a day I didn't work OT thus I can't "ethically" claim it anywhere, so if I'm lucky I'll be leaving around 3 today. Flexing that little time is generally kosher without making adjustments to our "official" temp schedule in the timekeeping system, and leaving early sounds very appealing. Maybe I can get a nap in before getting in some desperately needed cardio. I haven't done any cardio in a good two weeks, and I'm feeling sluggish and lazy and bleh physically.

I feel like rambling, and I'm sure I have more inane crap to talk about, but none of it's coming forth. Maybe when next I babble it'll be about more interesting things. Oh, one more thing: this post went up later than the date said 'cause for a short while DBI.pm (Perl module that allows database access, at least to MySQL) was unavailable in some way.

... I did get the vast majority of my clothes put away. I had what'd built up since a month or whatever ago, plus what I hadn't gotten into yet from the last laundry-go-round, plus the delicate lights I washed last week. I was really tired and thinking of heading straight to bed (this was around 8pm), but J said he needed the basket (last night was laundry night). I was just going to put that stuff away, but then I got to putting away a few things from the pile, and it kinda went from there. My closet is full, let me tell ya. I noticed it when I put away all my hanging stuff when cleaning out the spare room, but hanging up my delicates... yeah. I need to take some of the things I've not worn in years (suit jackets and such that don't fit anyway) and hang them up in the comp room closet with the spare hangers and old jackets & coats. Stuff's a wee bit jammed in, and that's not good for keeping the wrinkles away.

I didn't exercise all weekend or most of last week either, shame on me. Hence why no weigh-ins the past couple Monday mornings, probably no point. I know I didn't suddenly gain everything back, 'cause my clothes are still fitting better (yay for fitting into my high waisted size 10 jeans!) so it wouldn't tell me anything new.

So, class tonight, no skipping out this time, and I'll see what cardio I can work in afterwards (either the RB or elliptical at the gym, or a quick session on the treadmill at home). Then I'll be good and go to the gym tomorrow. Fortunately I don't see OT anywhere in the rest of my evenings for the week. I worked 4 hours Saturday, then I did 3 and a half (only one still at work!) Monday to finish up some crap, and now I'm over 3/4 of the way done with filling out the next assignment which technically is allowed 5 days. Since I expect to have that done by the end of today, with maybe a bit of tweaking necessary tomorrow morning (won't be sure about that till early this afternoon probably) I don't see any upcoming reasons for me to put in any more long hours. Yay for a couple hundred extra bucks on the paycheck, but yay for not having to spend anymore evenings this week adding to it.

Ooh, and it's gonna be sunny and in the lower 80s today. Pretty pretty weather. We had the windows open some of the weekend and even last night, and I was pleasantly surprised at no allergies when I looked up the allergy report as of last night. Oak and maple were both in the red, we had windows open, yet I was having no trouble. Go go allergy meds!

It would appear that they posted residents' sensitive data on a public site. Data includes SSNs, license info, bank account details, etc. The information was never redacted from otherwise public records. Worse yet, it's been out there for years, and a county official claims that it's not a problem and that it'd be against the law for the recorders to remove the information automatically. A new law that doesn't take effect until the start of next year would make it legal and required for them to do so; in the meantime people who find their sensitive info available can write a letter to the county to request that it be removed.

There's a potential new alternative to surgery, a kind of angioplasty for sinuses, coming down the pike. It's not widespread yet by any stretch, but it's something to keep an eye on for anyone who's looking at sinus surgery in their near future to open up blocked sinus passages.

Our cat Zephyr has good taste in bedding. I'd washed a bunch of my lingeree (robes, slips, nightgowns, etc.) and J was nice enough to bring 'em up in a basket for me, all nice and unpacked-in (this was the load I did last Wednesday when I ended up with the allergy attack from hell). The stuff on top is two items made of silk. I've found Zephyr sleeping in the basket twice. I'd remove him, but it's too cute, and he doesn't know the difference between a regular basket of clean clothes and a "special" basket of clean clothes, so it wouldn't make sense to punish him. And they still don't appear to be getting wrinkled. I do need to put 'em away though, should do that this afternoon when I get home.

Infinite loops in code are fun. They're never intentional, so you never notice until you try to run the damn thing and it starts sucking the life (i.e. memory) out of your PC and you don't know why. (I was going through a List to do math on the stuff inside, and then adding the results to a new List. Only, uh, I was adding them into the same list instead. Oops.)

I still haven't figured out what all I want to do with my to-do list once I redo it, so I haven't really started redoing it yet.

The carpet cleaning, particularly downstairs, was a resounding success. I spent several hours downstairs Saturday night with nary a sneeze, and two dudes who often find themselves a little sneezy (one usually starts sneezing his head off within a half hour, and appears miserable within 2 or 3) felt great. Now all we need to do is remember to vacuum a couple times a month, and get some nice looking seat covers for the long and old, uglyish couches, and we'll be all set.

Didja know cold air return vents get absolutely gross? Ours are clumped with fuzz. Seriously. We need to get that shit cleaned out. the regular floor vents aren't too bad, mostly just random crap that's fallen into them and then stuck over time. It's not the pennies and buttons and pins and random junk in those vents that has sneeze potential, it's the fuzz clumps. Yeurgh.

My first ever mileage reading for my first ever gas tank in my new car was... pretty bad. Kinda obvious I'm not a natural yet at driving stick. Yeah. Only got, if I'm remembering the amount I put in right off the top of my head, about 23.5mpg.

I *gasp* played WoW again last night, for the first time in at least a month, probably closer to 6 weeks. I'm coming back to playing my new CC hunter since it's going to be forever before they allow paid transfers, if they don't scrap the idea entirely. She was 16 when I logged on, and is almost 18 now. First I did some random low level crap, plus leveled fishing like a mad fiend since the Ice Flow lake in Dun Morogh was giving me level after level, then J finished up some stuff and came and helped me out exploring and killing shit. OMG AGGRO MAGNET! (Got a little exp at the top of the Badlands, plus got the flight points in Arathi and Southshore.)

So, I didn't get as much done for work as I wanted, getting stuck in places it was very frustrating to be stuck in, in spite of working till 7:30. So I gave up, woke J from his nap, and we grabbed some food. Not going to get a workout in either, sadly. But at least my site's back up again, and seems to be a smidge faster to boot.

J was as impressed as I was about how nice both carpets turned out. The blue carpet in the spare room actually looks blue instead of grey-blue, and while the somewhat-shag carpet in the basement and on the stairs into it is made of varying shades of brown including a little almost cream, so you can't really visibly see dirt or anything, there's still no smell. Well, J said it smelled "damp" but that's kinda normal when it is damp. It's a little... brighter I guess, too, less drab. The big test will come Saturday watching movies with J's buds, maybe taking a turn or two at Guitar Hero, etc. If I can spend more than a couple hours down there without having to head upstairs to snag my inhaler or blow my nose, it'll be an official resounding success. Now I just want to finally get around to getting seat covers for the two big old couches.

I think tonight I will spending some time with J and going to bed early. I really need some sleep. I think this weekend I need to plan to clean the main bathroom and put away the rest of my clothes that didn't make it last night, plus the stuff I've worn in the last few weeks. Probably do the clothes tomorrow night and the bathroom on Saturday. Or some of it Saturday and the rest Sunday. There I go, planning ahead again. I should stop doing that, since it's so rare I actually do everything I set out to do, for all manner of reasons ranging from piddling excuses to Big Stuff. Even though I haven't rewritten it yet, I really should go back and actually use my to-do list again. What a novel idea.

Don't have the insurance card yet. I even checked in today's mail. Ah well, I guess I get to do it after work some time next week, or maybe Saturday morning if it's arrived by then and I feel like braving the DMV on a Saturday.

[9pm: If you tried visiting you may've noticed nothing loading; things were down for a while, and came back up some time this evening. Below is what I wrote in my LJ this morning, so bear in mind I wrote it from the perspective of not being able to put it here. ]

So last night I skipped out on my workout class (yes yes, bad me), in order to finish cleaning out the spare bedroom for its carpet cleaning today, and get some work OT in. Weelll... yeah. Amongst all the clothes I'd piled on the bed I found a bunch of delicates that needed washing so I was bringing them downstairs a few at a time, and then when I'd found 'em all I set up all the light colored ones to wash.

Unfortunately, J did cleaning in the basement for that carpet to be cleaned, also moving all the furniture. That stirred up massive amounts of dust and whatever into the air, so by the time I was done putting all the rest of the clothes from there on hangers or in a pile on the bed to be folded, I could not stop sneezing. Nose drove me insane! I went through 1/4 a box of Puffs in a couple hours.

Needless to say, the clothes that needed folding didn't get folded, the room wasn't done, and I sure as hell didn't get to any OT.

I think had I gone to work at the normal time (doing virtual today) I would've had about 4 hours' sleep. I'd even had to supplement my Zyrtec with a full dose of Benadryl to get control of things, and it kicked in (literally, just about) just before 1am. Fortunately, I'd planned on staying asleep until J's alarm went off (forgot to turn mine off, but I went back to sleep after it woke me). Then I stayed in bed another half hour after that.

The good news is that I'm no longer feeling miserable, I had time to make myself an egg for breakfast, and the two carpets are now clean and drying (OMG there's no smell at all downstairs now!!). I'm gonna be working a large part of day, between not getting as much done this morning as I wanted and the fact I'm going to go around 1:30 (avoid the lunch rush and the afternoon rush) to the DMV to get my car officially licensed and taxes paid (that's gonna hurt). However, I kinda didn't have a whole lotta recreation planned this evening anyway, so that doesn't bother me so much.

I want to rewrite my MT to-do list I use on my site, and had just created a 2.0 version in MovableType, but my site went down (whole schmear, email isn't even up) yesterday and is going to stay down until this afternoon or later. They had a massive spam bomb hit, which wasn't itself so bad, but it coincided with some harddrive failures. So, to maintain data security and use the chance to upgrade hardware, everything's staying down till they've done the upgrade. In any case, that means no rewriting today. I am hoping, though, to go over to the gym at some point and get some cardio in. I also might try to make myself get through at least a half routine of what we typically do in the class I skipped last night. Dunno if I can force myself to do an hour but I can probably manage to make it a half hour or maybe 40 minutes. I'll change the arm work to higher weight, lower reps though, since I have that freedom.

Forgot to post this yesterday: I was given a green light with how I'm progressing shifting. J's friend Justin, a fellow Subaru evangelist came by Tuesday evening so he could see what I'm doing, give me any pointers, correct any glaring potential bad habits early, etc. Nothing major, though I am taking the suggestion of upshifting at 3000rpm instead of 4, to see if it helps with mileage and generally be nicer to it. I learned that a heavy keychain hanging from the car key in the ignition can eventually hurt the ignition, so now I detach the rest of my keys and stick 'em in one of the 2 middle cupholders. Also, on relatively level ground in a back Flo Valley parking lot I foiund I could successfully pull away from a dead stop in 3rd gear if necessary; it's just really slow to make sure it doesn't die. Justin was nice enough to leave the pass with me for the time being should I need somewhere to practice in the near future.

I just sustained 3.6mph on the treadmill for 20 straight minutes. Woot. Bonus is I was in my walking shoes and have no foot pain whatsoever. Got hella sweaty but didn't breathe ridiculously hard, yea.

That's in addition to my workout class, by the way. Now a quick cool shower followed by bed. Mmmmm, sleepy time.

Only 240 minutes of cardio to go for the week.

I called the insurance company just after 8am when they open, to get my new baby on our policy and take the old one off. Well... I had kinda noticed that the payments hadn't changed way back when we called to remove J's sable (like, a year ago) from our policy, so I asked. Heh, well... yeah it was never removed. Oops. (I'd be upset, but it cost $30/month to insure, which is pretty much chump change given how much J's then-new car was costing anyway. Even my Corolla was almost twice that.)

Luckily, my parents use the same company, and that's who we'd sold the car to. So they were able to look up the exact date they added it to their policy, and go from there. Of course, since it's been over a year since then (January 4, 2005) they have to send it back to the underwriting people to get it straightened out and get us a refund.

The good news is, after the difference between my old and new cars, it's going to be maybe $8/month more starting July (new policy date) for all our cars, than what we were paying with the Sable accidentally still on there. So there's not going to be this huge difference when it's all said and done, compared to what I was used to.

We're also looking at a refund of about $480 back, which would mean we don't owe anything on our policy for the rest of the year, plus a little money back. Sure, it all works out to normal in the end, and that's money that could've earned us (a pittance of) interest if we'd had it in our savings account. It's just kinda nifty anyway, and it's nice to know everything should be worked out the way it should be. Better late than never, I suppose.

No hail after all last night, for our area anyway. J was nice enough to go out and take the tarp and rope and blankets all off after the storm rolled through. The blankets didn't really get wet except a few drops that came off when he removed the tarp, which shook off. We'll bring the blankets and rope back to my parents once the rope dries out. All that worry for nothing, and yet I have a feeling had we not wrapped my car up there would've been nasty golfball or baseball sized hail that would've peppered it with dents and maybe broken a window or two. I should get my neighbors to all thank me that I single-handedly saved their cars and roofs and gutters.

I also learned this morning that I can do acceptably well in stop-and-go situations driving a stick. The light at St. Denis was entirely out (it and the one at Patterson are ~ 6 car lengths apart), then the light at Washington was flashing red. So I got to creep and stop, creep and stop, for a good 5 minutes or more. Which sucked, but I didn't kill the car once the whole time. I still need to figure out how to efficiently and quickly shift into second from first, without shudder-bouncing the car. It's not a huge shake or anything, but it isn't smooth and it isn't fast. So... yeah. I'm also learning how to downshift into second from third to make a turn without riding the clutch too much or having the shudder-bounce happen. I am improving though; I no longer get to where I'm all adrenaline-shaky by the time I'm done driving a few miles, which means I'm a lot more comfortable with it, including on inclines at a light. That, in turn, means I'm doing a better job of rolling away from a stop.

Beyond that, I'm just having the general "break-in" period of any new car, such as learning the sightlines, learning how the steering and brakes feel, etc. Which shouldn't take me long. I plan on snagging a couple lawnchairs from my parents and learning now to parallel park in it (that's how I learned to get my license -- chairs are better than cones because you can actually see them when you're close, and if you bump them they just fall over or whatever so they're better than doing it "live"). The sightlines are different enough from either of the two cars I've driven that I really do need the practice.

I go and get a brand new car, and they're talking damaging winds, tornadoes, and large hail. And the front edge is about to hit in about, oh, a minute, with sirens already having briefly sounded.

We borrowed some furniture blankets and rope from my parents, grabbed a spare tarp from our pool, and wrapped my car up as best we could. I don't want hail damage< 2 days after taking my new baby home.

Guess what followed me home last night...

Impreza Outback Sport. 173 horse power, manual transmission, more cargo space than the Impreza 2.5i sedan at the same length. No more will J have to hear me bitch and moan about all the little things about the Corolla that annoyed me on any particular day, no more needing my foot to the floor to get to highway speed up an onramp. I miss the Corolla a wee bit, since I had it for 6 years, and I was a dork and waved goodbye to it as we left. But, I now have a console (including the extended one) that has a lid that will stay on, plus two cup holders by the parking brake so having a shallow console with a lid doesn't bother me (the Corolla's center console lid was held on by two screws that shook loose twice, so I left the lid off because it was deep enough to hold two medium sized drinks). I have power windows and locks, and an alarm, for the first time. I now have to drive stick full time. We can take this one on driving vacations because it doesn't suck to drive, and it has more space to put our stuff, and in the future when we have children to take as well we have a cargo rack on the top. Edit: I forgot to mention, besides what it actually is (points to top paragraph where I added it) that it scores 5 stars on all the safety ratings, and has a nice symmetrical all wheel drive.

My first ever brand new car.

The only minus was that it is not blue. *cries* Alas, to have blue, I would've had to spend a fair amount more: would've had to order it, wouldn't have gotten the package this one had at the same price, etc. I decided the "cheap" in me was more important than the color in the end, so while I've wanted a blue car for years, I'm still quite happy because $1000 or more (probably would've been more like $2000 all told) just to have blue would've been rather silly, looked at logically.

We got 4.9% financing on it, very sweet indeed. Got $950 trade-in for my Corolla, and put $5K down on top of that. With a five year loan, it's only $240 or so a month in payments. Only question not yet resolved is how much more the insurance will be. I still had comprehensive on the Corolla (yes, silly me, but it stood me in very good stead with the hail damage 3 years ago) so it won't be a stupid amount more. Should be cheaper than J's Impreza WRX 'cause of the lack of turbo and HP and such, therefore it's less of a "performance vehicle". *chuckle* It has plenty of performance for me, that's for damn sure.

Wheee. OMG-I-have-a-new-car!!!