I’m making the move to free hosting. I set up a WordPress site and am migrating most of the posts from my old site to the new one.
Goal one is to save money if I’m not posting on a regular basis.
Contradictary goal is to make it easier to post so I have incentive to post more often.
I can’t let go of all the old things. I’m holding on to the old domain name–at least for a year.
So the comments issue is resolved. Of course it would be that way. The much more complicated issue is the first one to be resolved.
The fact that the header works in every browser that I have running, except Windows IE, really chaps my hide.
I just want you to know, if you’re looking at this page in Windows IE right now, I’m harbouring a great deal of animosity for you at the moment. Go get Firefox or Netscape so I don’t have to fret over my stupid header not showing up in your stupid browser.
So, is posting once or twice a year sufficient to consider this a blog? No, I thought not. Well, here I go again. I’ve been delving into the world’s of Facebook and Twitter. I’m trying to figure out how to make these three different world’s interconnect without being totally redundant on them.
I’ve decided that what really matters is the purpose and the content. What do I really want to make these different vehicles do for me?
Not sure if I’m completely satisfied with the answer I’ve given myself. But I’ll try to revive this thing and give it a shot.
I have the beginnings of yet another redesign, hiding on the server. If I’m unable to commit to letting it see the light of day, then that’s probably as clear an indication as any that luteyland.com needs to ride into the sunset and fade away.
So Lefty and I haul ourselves out of bed at the crack of dawn on Sunday morning. We engage in our raceday preparations and then hop into Lefty’s mini-cooper for the hour drive to the race site.
Although we’ve only been to Norco once before, we’re pretty sure we know exactly where we’re going.
Once we arrive in Norco, the line of cars stopped on the highway waiting to turn onto the levee road is as good a sign as any that we’ve arrived at our destination.
We’re able to register, get our numbers, and make trips to the port-o-pottys with about 10 minutes to spare before the start of the race.
Lefty’s goal is to enjoy the run and have a good time; my goal is to not break an ankle.
According to course veterans the trail turned out to be not nearly as sloppy this year as it has been in previous years. I wound up with a little bit of mud on myself, but I never hit any really rough spots in the trail. The most frustrating part of the race was getting stuck behind walkers and not really having any room to immediately pass them.
Overall, I was happy with my race time considering this was my first ever trail run. When I consider that my overall strategy was to not injure myself my time looks even better.
Next year, I’ll have a plan. The first part of that plan will be to wait until race day to make the drive to Norco.
So Lefty and I decide at the last minute to head down to Norco for the Spillway Classic Trail Run. Neither of us have raced in a trail run before, so this is unchartered territory for both of us.
On Saturday, we haul ourselves out of bed at the crack of dawn; engage in our pre-run, raceday preparations; then hop into Lefty’s mini-cooper for the hour drive to the race site.
We arrive in Norco a little after 7:00 a.m., plenty of time to find the race site and register.
We follow the directions to a “T.” When we arrive at the alleged race location, the area is remarkably free of any race day activities. The exception being a line of bright yellow port-o-pottys.
Now, I don’t know if you’ve heard of Norco, much less been to Norco, let me assure you, most people would be hard pressed to get lost in this town. There’s a McDonalds, a Shell refinery, a bar, a boat launch, and not much else.
After arriving in Norco, we spend the next 45 minutes driving around the alleged area of the race site. We drive a mile or so down the levee, no race. We drive through the boat launch parking lot, no race. I get out of the car and ask several boaters if they know where the race is, no idea. We drive down a nearby dirt road, no race. We’re certain we’ve missed some crucial detail in the instructions that is preventing us from getting ourselves where we want to be.
As I am wont to do, I complain to Lefty about the lack of promised signage pointing us to our destination. My brain is already crafting a tersely worded email about the inadequate directions and lack of prominent signage.
I keep reading through the race materials. Reading and rereading the directions. To no avail, we cannot find the race site.
I mention to Lefty a fact I find a bit ironic, according to the racing materials, this is the second largest trail run in the U.S. (the largest in the South). At the moment, its size does us no good because it isn’t large enough for us to find.
Finally, Lefty–proving that she is the smarter of the two of us–says “did we get the date wrong?” Um.
Yes, yes we did. At the top of the racing materials it clearly states “Sunday, July 20, 2008.”
One would think that in 45 minutes of reading and rereading the racing materials I would have processed this most important piece of text. Nope.
Well, there’s nothing left to do except heckle boaters or head home. We decide to head home.
I will now be referring to Saturday as a successful scouting mission. For we clearly DID find the race site, that bright row of yellow port-o-pottys has been set up for the race that is happening TOMORROW.
Seriously? The Montgomery Flea Market is just like a Mini Mall! I share this with in the hope that you also will not be able to get this song out of your head.
There are times when I feel like my life is blazing past me. Let me go ahead and utter the age-old parent’s lament, “my kids are growing up way too fast.”
My little ZoZo is loosing her first tooth. She filled the house with joyous shreaks and whoops when she first realized her tooth was loose. The entire house was required to wiggle her tooth multiple times to confirm the fact.
There has been A LOT of tooth wiggling in the ensuing days. So much so that she now has created some discomfort for herself. This morning she came to me, pointed to her loose tooth, and asked with about as sober a countenance as she is able to muster, “Momma, what’s goin’ on here.”
What’s going on is the gum around the tooth is now swollen and sore because she can’t keep her fingers out of her mouth. In addition to the irritated gum, I’m sure there are more insidious forces at work in her little mouth. I shudder to think about the germs her grubby little fingers are transferring into her mouth about 10,000 times a day. If she doesn’t succumb to some horrible illness before the tooth falls out, I feel pretty confident that she will have inoculated herself against most communicable diseases.
Lest you think I’m bemoaning my current state of worry, let me assure you, I’m treasuring every moment. When my body is old and my brain is racked by dementia, I really hope I’m able to remember the “Momma what’s goin’ on here” moments.
So I went out for my little three mile jog this evening. The weather was beautiful. I felt so good, I decided to push my pace up a notch.
At about the half-mile point, my right foot caught a buckle in the asphalt.
My ankle didn’t twist.
I didn’t stumble.
Nope. In an instant I went from a completely vertical position, to a completely horizontal position.
Luckily, when I landed, my face avoided contact with the pavement. My chin and nose just sort of “kissed” the asphalt as the rest of my body landed and then skidded across the street.
Unfortunately, when I landed, only my face and feet where spared.
The damage report: both knees are scraped, the right knee is pretty swollen, the palms of both hands lost a layer of flesh, the fingers on my left hand are nicked and cut, my right fore arm is skinned, and I have brush burns on my thighs and stomach.
Adrenaline is a beautiful thing. I popped back up and jogged my bloodied body home.
The fall proved to be the most pleasant part of this experience. As I went through the process of scrubbing bits of dirt and gravel from my open wounds, I alternately felt like I was going to either throw up or pass out.
Asphalt hurts.
I still have a job.
I still don’t completely understand why I allowed things to transpire in the manner they did. I’ll be beating myself up about this one for a long time.
At this point I’m just thankful that everything seems to be alright.
So my knack for procrastination has finally caught up with me in a terrible way.
Without going in to too many details, I learned that some information I had based a decision upon was inaccurate. When the new information came to my attention, I intended to deal with it immediately, but was unable to do so. I wanted to handle face-to-face with my boss and it just wasn’t possible when it first came to light. So I went about my business.
Fast forward two weeks. The situation is brought to my attention again through another source and I still had not acted on it. Now it looks REALLY, REALLY bad that I failed to correct the situation sooner.
Now I’m stuck in a position, where it could look to others like I never intended to act on the new information. Unfortunately, the simple truth is, I forgot about it because it really didn’t seem like the top thing on the list of priorities.
It turns out now that it should have been THE top thing on the list of priorities.
Depending on how a series of conversations goes on Monday morning, I could be in the job market in a relatively short period of time.
Presentations suck. I hate attending them, especially one’s that contain the word “networking.”
What I hate even more than sitting and watching and, yes, even mingling–I mean networking, is presenting.
I had to give about a 30 minute presentation and hold a question and answer session to a large group of people today.
By large I mean more than two.
Actually there were probably close to 30 people attending.
I have to do the same thing tomorrow.
I’m hoping tomorrow I won’t speak so fast that I run out of breath and have to periodically gasp for air.
