Today I became a proud owner of an Asus eee PC. It’s tiny and makes me feel like my hands are huge and clumsy. It will be perfect, though, for running around town with — unlike my Mac, which is very precious and heavy. I do ALL of my work on it and feel weird carting it around. I’m tempted by the options of installing Ubuntu or OSX on it (though — no sound? That’s a dealbreaker…) Maybe Ubuntu, since it feels more Mac-like than this Xandros install.

In the second geeky thing today, I FINALLY realized the best use for the weird kiosk PC I inherited from the museum: to watch Netflix movies on demand. As a Mac/Linux user — this is amazing! And I can mount the whole beast on the wall and watch whatever I want. Maybe we DON’T need cable after all….

Just took the A List Apart web worker survey. The results are always interesting! I’d love to peek at what I wrote last year…

We’re starting to reap from our garden, which is exciting. I never imagined it being this successful, being my first garden!

For the first time in many years, I alphabetized my records — and counted them. I have 276. A modest number — I’m not a collector by any means. The high counts? Elvis Costello and the World Inferno Friendship Society each with 5, Guts Pie Earshot with 6, The Smiths with 7, and The Clash with 8. No duplicates, and only one that was still sealed.

I finally finished Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I left it at work over the weekend with a mere 20 pages left, and I was itching to see it out. It was very moving for something super surreal, leaving it very murky what is real and dream — the blurred lines were nice. You can read the first chapter here, and I enjoyed this NY Times review.

Also got the latest Bidoun — what a fabulous magazine! It never fails to provide something that strikes me. Alas, the article about Eldridge Cleaver isn’t online. It’s quite something. Where else could you find a story about “taqwacore” — a Muslim punk/hardcore. (Clearly, The Taqwacores needs to be next on my reading list.)

Back to my failing Ubuntu installation…

We’re painting the porch, peeling the cool-but-aged wallpaper & painting in the stairwell this weekend. Here’s some before-photos from scraping the porch. Fun! Lead!

A first legitimately spring day… bike ride to Minnehaha Falls.

Bryan came into some furniture from a customer who just wanted it moved. My favorite is the television, which I wish we could just use as a shell for our current television, but he won’t let me take it apart!

… but I got a few photo in today. Now with daylight savings time, I can work late and still have time to take some photos in the evening. Punk rock photo group, yeah!

Even though it is the first beautiful day of the season, I’m still listening to Leonard Cohen, Nebraska, Dear You… why? A little sad today. I need some spring music.

Team Open Circuit, after being awake and working for 30 hours. I was delirious from the red-eye flight from San Francisco, and anticipating my flight to Boston in a couple hours. Not my normal week.

Kettner made this. I love it!

I participated in a 24-hour web design challenge this past weekend. Our group from Twin Cities Open Circuit was paired with an excellent nonprofit, Doorstep Healthcare Services, which literally brings the medical professionals and equipment to the doorstep of many people who otherwise wouldn’t have access to it. It was a nerve-wracking experience trying to “make it work” in a mere 24 hours, but also completely amazing and fun. Thanks to my teammates Bryan, Chach, Crystal, Kristen, Craig, Thomas & Bretton for making it happen, Sierra Bravo for putting it on, and Shira for being such a great client to work with!

Here are some photos of the madness:

A few photos from my day in San Francisco.

On the dog-walk today, I peered into the fortune cookie factory dumpster.

A great fireworks shop outside of Nashville:

Old sign in Knoxville:

Entrance and caves at the Lost Sea by Sweetwater, TN

Another highlight was the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge — the “hidden city” in the 40s where they processed uranium for the bomb. The museum was unlike any I’ve been to — extremely positive about nuclear energy, minimizing the effects that it had and may continue to have on Oak Ridge and surrounding areas. It was apparent that it was created to promote nuclear energy, as well as the extensive cleanup the city has done on the site. It’s worth checking out — if only to learn about the strange history of the town. A quick visit to their website confirmed my suspicion that the Oak Ridge Boys are in fact from the area. That explains a lot…

We stopped on the way home at an amazing antique mall in Indiana. I found a beautiful old book of bug illustrations and verses — caterpillars, ladybugs, dragonflies, etc. Turns out that it matches our kitchen well, and we’re considering using the illustrations for the mosaic on the counters. I’ll post pictures on this project as it develops!

I won the best white elephant gift last week at our holiday party. A giant orange “A”. It’s perfect!

Now, why am I no longer able to tag my posts? Arg.

I rekindled my love of Television without Pity’s coverage of 7th Heaven episodes this weekend. It’s amazing that a television show could be that bad — and TWOP was there to heckle it every step of the way.

Tippy had seven seizures on Saturday night, and then she had one at 4 am on Monday morning, and again at 9 am… we took her in and will be starting her on potassium bromide — along with the all the other meds. Poor Tip! At least we’ve gotten her back in the crate training habit. She doesn’t even seem to hate it.

My evening consists of: brushing up on javascript (yikes — too little, too late), listening to Meneguar (house of cats — funny because when I stayed with their roommate once, I got sick with cat allergies), and picking out creepy dolls and stuff for our work haunted house.

My flapper mummy costume — not quite as entertaining as Aaron’s mummy-with-fez-and-moustache or Matt’s astromummy-dressed-up-as-cowboy-for-earthling-Halloween.

This weekend has been crazy — old friends in town, a bunch of shows, blowing insulation, a four-hour seizure from Tippy at 3:30 this morning…

The weird portholes you have to drill to fit the insulation blower into the wall.

I was HOPING that insulating would be like having backpacks of cotton candy that we blow at each other. It’s not really like that.