Well, I've managed to find some internet access - not on my laptop, but at least I can check e-mail and blog! I bought the neatest book yesterday - "How to Speak Dog". Pretty soon I'll be able to put on my resume that I'm multilingual - I speak English and Doggish. :) Actually, it's a really good book - I couldn't put it down last night. Which explains why I've been yawning through every presentation so far today. Or, maybe they're just that boring... Actually, the conference hasn't been that bad, but it's not really what I expected. I'm just looking forward to going home and spending the long weekend working on those christening gowns!
posted by Sarah Reilly 11:23 AM -

I've Had It!
Ok, I had to dial in to work just to get my email and blog. I'm finding it extremely difficult to believe that I'm at a "Web Services" conference with no internet access. OpenSource had a (free) wireless network setup all throughout the conference area. The focus of that conference was not the web, but they understood the need for easy internet access. This web conference doesn't even have walk-up machines to go read news or anything with. Is it just me, or is that bizarre?

Late Monday
<rant>Why do people have such a prejudice against macs? I'm taking a Java tutorial and when I have issues, the instructor assumes right off the bat that it's because I'm using a mac, not because I've typed in a line of code wrong. I'm not one of those mac users who tries to convert pc users - I firmly believe that whichever platform you want to use is the one you should use. But (and not to offend the 46% percent (all 3?) of you who read this on a pc) I think windows is buggy and akward, and I can't understand why sane people think that it's easier to use than a mac.</rant>

Monday
Day 3 and no internet access in sight. I'm starting to go through withdrawal - I guess this means that I'm getting too dependent on technology. It's frustrating to have to watch the weather channel to find out about the forecasted high instead of hopping onto weatherunderground.com and getting the info in less than 10 seconds. It probably doesn't help that we have a wireless network in the house - I'm connected everywhere in the house, on my property, and even at the neighbors' houses. Oh, well. Maybe I'll dial in to work later just to get my email fix. :)

Sunday
We walked the freedom trail today, although we didn't go into many of the buildings - more out of lack of time than anything else. We met some friends for lunch and walked along the Charles for a while. Unfortunately, my allergies (or cold?) are getting the better of me, so I've been dragging today.

Saturday
Highlight of the day: we went to see the "make way for ducklings" bronze statues... They were pretty cool! It was neat to watch all the kids playing around them, too. Trinity church had some of the most beautiful stained glass windows I've ever seen, but my camera was not interested in taking pictures of them. Oh, well. Probably a tripod would have helped. We wandered around Newbury Street, went to Quincy Market, ate dinner at the "Barking Crab", and took a horse drawn carriage ride around the financial district. Pretty nice day, in all...
posted by Sarah Reilly 7:06 AM -

<insert sigh of relief here>
It's Friday!!! And I'm leaving for Boston extremely early (i.e. the flight leaves at 6:50 A.M.) tomorrow morning. Yes, I know, most sane people aren't even close to awake at that hour on a Saturday, but I've never been to Boston, so I'm eager to get an early start. Of course, I'm not too sure how much internet access I'm going to have while I'm there, so I don't know how much I'll get to blog, but it's a web services conference - you would think there might be web access around somewhere...

Plus, I got the laundry done, made progress on the gowns (no inside-out seams anymore) and made extensive progress on my master's project last night. I'm in a very happy mood, la la la. Now if I can just get to bed early so that when the alarm goes off at 4:30 I don't turn it off, we'll be all set.
posted by Sarah Reilly 2:51 PM -

Under Pressure
(...and the song now gets stuck in your head - sorry...)

Between working long hours, trying to make progress on my master's project, and creating two christening gowns, I'm not finding much time for sleep - or anything else... I'm headed to Boston for a week in, oh, about 44 hours, and I realized I have no clean clothes, nor any idea what I've got to pack. This is a problem...

I was so distracted last night while I was working on the gowns, I sewed one piece on inside-out. I discovered this after I had trimmed the seam allowances... I somehow managed to salvage both pieces even though I had to rip out a seam - no small feat when you're working with fabric as flimsy as organdy! Unfortunately, taking one stitch out at a time involved 25 minutes of holding my breath and praying frantically that nothing would rip. Argh. On the positive side, I now know that the seams my sewing machine sews are very strong.

The master's project is going nowhere at the moment. I knew I was getting into a gray area when I decided to write it for os X, but this is getting ridiculous. Every time I try to do something it's like pulling teeth to get it to work. I finally gave up at midnight last night when I had searched the entire internet trying to find someone who had gotten ImageMagick working for os X... It sounds like people have, so I haven't lost all hope, but they didn't bother posting the magic incantations required. Maybe I should call Miss Cleo - I might have more luck. :)

...And speaking of songs getting stuck in your head, why is it that people say things like "guess what song I've had stuck in my head for days?" and then start singing it for you? Thanks. Now it's stuck in my head, too...
posted by Sarah Reilly 9:10 AM -

Blogger is fast this morning! :)
posted by Sarah Reilly 7:10 AM -

Lucky
I must be really lucky. I have seen, over the past few days, an average of two ladybugs a day - in my house! I have never seen so many ladybugs in my life! The weird thing is that they're almost all in my kitchen. We have a sliding glass door, but when it's open there's a screen which is in fairly good condition - no big holes or anything... So how do they get in? It's the most bizarre thing. I'm slightly worried that I'll come home one day and find my kitchen crawling with little ladybugs. I think they're trying to move in...
posted by Sarah Reilly 7:09 AM -

I guess I'm not supposed to blog right now - IE just crashed. Boom. Of course, it probably doesn't help that while I was typing out my blog I kept updating and reloading the javascript code I'm trying to fix at work. I think I reloaded the buggy code one too many times. I just don't understand where those pesky bugs come from. I mean, I don't write the bugs into my code!

So, is it Friday yet?
posted by Sarah Reilly 3:03 PM -

Weekend Catch-up
I meant to blog this weekend, but my computer was in limbo. Honest! Actually, Denis went and totally cleaned up my hard drive and re-installed everything for me. Of course, this is a rare thing to have to do to a mac, but I had about 4 different installations of different versions of the operating system lurking around my hard drive - now I just have Mac OS X. (Well, and 9.1 for "classic" apps.) So the only time I spent on the computer this weekend was to work on my master's project. Which I have made huge progress on! I'm actually starting to get excited about it again - I was starting to feel like I'd never get it done, but I've finally connected all the pieces, and from here on in it's only a matter of spending every night and weekend coding and documenting between now and the end of fall quarter. :P

I also did some work on those christening gowns. Yikes! This might take a while. But they're really cute so far. Maybe when they're a little more substantial I'll figure out how to post pictures of them.

And when I wasn't busy writing code or working with ivory fabric, I made several dozen chocolate mint cookies. I wanted to make something for the new neighbors, and I'd forgotten how many cookies the recipe made...so I doubled it. When all was said and done, I ended up making 16 dozen cookies. That's a lot of cookies. Especially when only 15 go into the oven at a time, for 12 minutes a tray. Two-and-a-half hours later, with cookies cooling on every flat surface in my kitchen and dining room, I never wanted to see another chocolate mint cookie ever again!
posted by Sarah Reilly 1:13 PM -

Mmmmm....
I've just been introduced to the best bagels ever to be had on this planet. I mean, I've had NYC bagels. They're good. Rochester bagels, well, they're better than no bagels. But Brownstein's bagels are the best. It's a really good thing they're nowhere near on my way to work, or I'd be shaped like a bagel by Christmas time!
posted by Sarah Reilly 7:55 AM -

Yippee!
It's that time of year again...football season! There is nothing I like better than coming home from Wegman's on Sunday morning, putting on a pot of chili, and sitting down just in time for the kickoff... Of course, it's really only pre-season, and a little too warm yet for chili, but just watching football is cool. Now if only I recognized any of the Bills this year...

Oh, and Denis reminded me that I am also genetically predisposed to worrying. About anything, everything and nothing. In fact, I'm worried right now about waking up for work tomorrow. Guess I'd better go to bed!
posted by Sarah Reilly 10:18 PM -

Sew What?!?
I'm in the middle of about a million projects. Ok, maybe not that many, but there are a lot! I'm making a wedding gift. Can't say what 'cause I think the future recipient might read this occasionally... I have a couple of cross-stitch pieces to do for my twin nieces. Christmas is coming, and I have wonderful intentions of making a number of the gifts I'll give. And I volunteered to make the twins' christening gowns. Two of them, of course. So, maybe I'm nuts. :) I have six weeks to come up with two (identical) angelic gowns. The thing is, I can't wait - I wish I could skip out of work right now and go buy the fabric. There's something about buying all the stuff to start a project that's particularly enthralling. But, I've decided I need an apprentice. The thing I hate most about sewing is laying out all the pieces and pinning and cutting. Especially with slippery fabrics - satin, organdy - all the stuff these gowns will be made out of. If someone else did the cutting, I'd enjoy this so much more... Unfortunately, it's not likely I'll be able to talk Denis into it! :)

I'm wondering if it's genetic to always have more on my plate than I ought to be able to handle. My mom's like this too. I think my grandma might be. I guess it's like being Italian & Catholic and having guilt built right into my pores - the chronic need to fill up every second of the day with something to do is just written on my DNA. I can rarely relax in front of the TV without some knitting or cross-stitch or something - even laundry to fold. And to just sit and veg - that never happens - there's just always too much to do. I suppose it's unhealthy to not be able to sit still and do nothing for a while? But then again, I wouldn't get half so much done. And as it is, I've got, oh, about a million projects half-finished in the closet... :P
posted by Sarah Reilly 3:16 PM -

New Neighbors
I have new neighbors. The funny thing is, I didn't know my old ones were moving out until the moving truck showed up in their driveway today. No "For Sale" sign or anything! One of my new neighbors is apparently a sheriff...at least, there's a sheriff's car in the driveway. I'm never quite sure of the new-neighbor ettiquite. Do I walk over while they're in the midst of moving in? Do I wait until it's not so hectic? Do I have to bring something now, or can it wait until the weekend? It's so complicated. Oh, well. I guess I'll just go say "hi" and bring them brownies later when they have a kitchen table to sit at...
posted by Sarah Reilly 6:38 PM -

Sunday
I meant to do a lot of stuff today - re-wallpaper my family room, work on my master's project, etc. - that just didn't get done. Instead I spent the day helping my parents haul out 27 years worth of junk from their basement. You know, all the stuff that gets accumulated through several moves, three kids, and a menagerie of dogs, cats, birds, bunnies, fish, rats, guinea pigs... But the coolest find (besides 3 dozen rolls of exposed but undeveloped black-and-white film) was a box of 8mm movies - and a working projector to show them on! That pretty much ended the day of cleaning as we watched movies (mostly of me - the curse of being the oldest child) from the late 70s. It was really nice.

Saturday
I had a bunch of my cousins over to go swimming. I don't think I could have arranged for better weather for a pool party - it was 78 degrees and sunny, and the water was 88 degrees. Sigh. We got my cousin's dog Casper to almost like the pool. Molly, of course, was swimming around like the loch ness monster. She's also started lifeguarding - if someone goes under the water, she swims over to rescue them. Unfortunately, she doesn't know she can swim underwater, so she just circles around until the person surfaces. This makes diving a little more difficult. My little cousins Aaron and Emily loved the water - Emily spent about 2 hours retrieving diving rings from the bottom of the shallow end.

It cooled off a bit too, but it still hasn't rained. Which means everything is dead and brown - except for the weeds, of course. And the lawns of the people in my neighborhood who are ignoring the water usage advisory and still using their sprinklers. I mean, it's not like it isn't obvious who they are... Hmmm. Those people must have planted a remarkably drought-resistant strain of grass. Or Astroturf. Give me a break! :)
posted by Sarah Reilly 8:08 AM -

Uh-oh! Jenny's blog is being held hostage! Note to self: never let Denis post in any future absence - who knows what he'd demand (a new titanium powerbook?) for my blog's return... :)
posted by Sarah Reilly 8:40 AM -

Heat Wave
I live in Rochester for a reason - I don't like hot days. Not one little bit. The only reason I can stand them is that we have central air, air conditioning in our Jetta, and an inground pool. We're going to hit 90+ for the umpteenth day in a row here, and I just don't like it anymore! Of course, I'll have to come back and read this in January, when we've been below freezing with sleet-like snow for three months and no end in sight. :) I think I'd be happiest if the temperature was between 55 and 70 year-round, with a couple warmer weeks in the summer to swim, and a couple cooler weeks in the winter (with snow) around my birthday and Christmas. I'm not sure such a place exists. Oh, well - guess I'll have to stick around here.

I'm doing a puzzle. I have a million other things I should / have to / ought to / need to do, but I'm doing a 1000 piece puzzle on my dining room table. What a relaxing way to spend an evening. Even if my master's project is falling a little behind... Besides, it's inside, in the air conditioning. Heavenly.
posted by Sarah Reilly 7:15 AM -

I almost forgot! We also went to Krispy Kreme with Denis' parents and aunts - they had never experienced the warm gooey goodness that is a fresh, hot Krispy Kreme donut. Mmmm. And, of course, we had to go to mega-Wegmans, because that is a tour stop for all out-of-town guests. For some reason, the mountains of fresh produce and refrigerators of meat and fish astound and amaze everyone who is not familiar with Wegmans. I just take it for granted that I can get blueberries in January, asparagus in August and cookie sprinkles at 1:00 Christmas Eve morning. If Wegmans ever went away...well, it doesn't bear thinking about.
posted by Sarah Reilly 10:30 AM -

I've figured it out - just like some people have a biological urge to have children, some people also have a biological urge to encourage other people to have children. It doesn't matter what family event we go to - now that we've been married for just over two years, the first words out of people's mouths tend to be "Hi. Why don't you have kids yet?" Especially if we go near anyone else's kids... To me, this seems like a rather rude question to ask someone. I mean, it's not that I don't like children. I love them. I want them. Eventually. But that's not a good enough answer to that question. I just need to find a polite way to say "butt out"! I hope I never become that nosy when I'm older. But, if it's a genetic thing, both Denis and I are doomed. :P

Anyway, it was a good weekend. Denis' family came to visit, and I think all we did was eat and play dominoes for 24 hours - oh, and we wandered around Shoen place by the canal. I did my first solo stint in church - without a sound system, because they moved mass into the parish center. We had a family reunion. Molly spent about three hours in the pool over two days. And we introduced my cousin's dog, Casper, to the pool too. My house is (relatively) clean, because I had to clean it for our visitors. And I got nothing at all done on my master's project. Oh, well. But I did get a little too much sun, and I think I'm going to go to bed now and hope I don't look like a lobster in the morning.
posted by Sarah Reilly 10:14 PM -

Technology Addicts Anonymous
Ok, I admit it - I am a technology addict. I was in Kmart last night and while I was standing in line, I noticed the line next to me was beeping and booping and awful lot. I looked over and they had...self-checkout registers! Being the addict that I am, I immediately left the line I was in (even though I was next) to go over and try out the self-checkout. Pretty cool. Until I realized that they are in fact just making me do the work that the cashier usually does, while the cashier was standing behind me and explaining the thing to me like I was a total idiot. The interface was actually pretty self-explanatory, if a little talkative - it tells you the price of everything you've scanned. At least it doesn't announce the name of it - that could be embarassing...for other people, not me. I never buy anything I'd not want my grandmother to see me with, since she only lives 5 minutes away! ;)
posted by Sarah Reilly 10:16 AM -

Argh. Since the wedding on Sunday, at random times one particular song keeps getting stuck in my head... I don't even know all the words (probably why it gets stuck) but it goes something like: "If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, don't make a pretty woman your wife..." It's got a catchy tune, but I can't help but think that it wasn't a very flattering song for the bride, no?

posted by Sarah Reilly 7:15 AM -