If it's a new year, why does it feel so much like the old one?

If I were still in Ohio my best friend would probably be moving in with me, possibly forcibly, by the end of the month. Forcibly because it would be about an hour drive to where her mom lives and she doesn't like being far from her family. Obviously she likes her family.

The woman works three jobs and can't afford to live. She babysits three kids almost every single day, she works in a flowershop for her family and she 'hauls Amish'. Hauling Amish: Amish don't drive, therefore they call someone to drive them where they need to go, dubbed hauling amish.

Being as she's a single white female and has no children of her own, the county she lives in refuses to be of any assistance. She's lucky to have heat. She has a cell phone but she doesn't have a house phone, no cable, no internet, she had heat thanks to the system and her landlord is on the borderline of being a stalker.

If I won the lottery tomorrow, which I won't because I don't play, she'd be one I'd give money to. I know she'd open a daycare and run it the way it's supposed to be and the kids would not only get taken care of but have fun and learn things, too.

If anyone is looking to invest in opening a daycare that she could run, let me know... she'd be thrilled.

Check out this bird, that is hot pink. When they are born, they are not this color. I can't remember what color the lady said they were when they were born, I just recall her saying they were not hot pink.

There is something in their diet that makes them turn hot pink. I think it was some form of a vitamin. Again, I don't recall, I was rarely close enough to the lady to hear her speak and I kind of wish they had given us some form of a pamphlet.

Safari West feeds all the birds the same food, but these are the only birds that turn hot pink. There is something in their body that tells them to do so when they eat this type of food. I've never seen any other pink birds except for flamingos and I thought these guys were pretty freaking cool.

First, this is a great fun idea to do! Wish I had thought of it myself. Run over here and take a look at the image and leave a comment stating what the image is:

http://skeetsstuff.skeeterbess.com/2008/01/01/tuesday-teaser-for-january-1-2008/#comment-45299 = Skeet's Stuff - Tuesday Teaser. I have no idea what it is, part of it looks like a magnifying glass to me but, again, I think I am wrong.

Aftewards, check out the rest of Skeet's Stuff - she's a great writer and I admire her.

So I am making this afghan for Honey. I don't think I have enough yarn to complete the full afghan at this time, but I will be sure to be working before I get anywhere near the end. I have not even officially started the second row yet. I'm not working it in a plum/dark purple, but midnight blue. The lady who posted this pattern suggests not working it in more than one color, but I plan to do so anyway. I will post a photo of what it looks like when I do complete it.

I also made this scarf twice, one that was 100 rows long and another that was 70 rows long. One was for the eldest niece and the other for the youngest niece of Honey's family. They enjoy getting handmade items and I thought since the eldest is moving away to live with her father for a bit it would be nice to have matching scarves.

The scarf I made for the girls also had a matching hat, which is able to be turned into a beanie and I made that for the Little Lady, it turned out amazing and she loved it. I literally made it Christmas Eve right in front of her and finished it around 1 am. Instead of single crochets, I used half-double crochets. They look and feel so much better to me than single crochets, they are also, in my opinion, more sturdy.

I wish I would have had the blue that the scarf was made in, but I didn't, so I made them in the Soft Sage color that the baby afghan was made out of. I made Little Lady's beanie out of off white because she preferred it to the sage. The Soft Sage color is like a light mint green.

I've really learned a lot of new crochet stitches, too since I have restarted this hobby. The LionBrand yarn website has a great tutorial section on how to do certain stitches. I can't do them all yet, but hopefully someday I will, well the crochet ones anyway, I don't plan to learn how to knit, crocheting is complicated enough for me!

I miss having a slow cooker. In fact, I plan to find one when I am working again. Something simple, no need for anything fancy with me. Just something that I can put a roast in on low and let it simmer all day long. Although I would probably want to put a lock on it because I know the Little Lady and Honey may end up eating it before I get home.

In place of a slow cooker, I use the stovetop. Any roast I put in the oven comes out undercooked or tough as rubber, so I had to figure out some other way to make it as if it is in a slow cooker.

I put it in a pot with about two cups of water and add a season-all type of seasoning to it. I found the season al I've been using at CostCo and it's kind of like a mix you'd find from Mrs. Dash but it's a huge bottle.

Another thing I plan to make when I start working is home made beef stew. In doing this I throw in carrots, celery, potatoes, other vegetables as needed and two or three packets of brown gravy along with the roast and walk away again. No, I don't use beef stew meat, I don't see a reason as to why I should, it's roast anyway.

Today I am making Three Cheese Rice with the roast and mixed veggies. Everything is about done so I am going to go eat. Laters.

No, really they do. Ever see a site with a negative rating? Well, mine has one. I never even had a chance at a PR0, I am a PR -1. You see it, believe it. Go to a PR site that does rankings and check it out. Everything I have ever seen tells me I am a negative one. NEGATIVE.

I know I don't have a lot of linky-love out there and that I now do sponsered posts but once upon a time I was the fourth site listed when you'd enter the word 'disillusioned' into Google's search bar. I miss those days, not that I got a lot of link-love then either, but still, people came, saw and went. And hopefully went away with some form of change in them whether I was ranting and raving about the people at work who wouldn't work or about the girl who kept falling asleep, or the client who yelled at me after calling five times because I couldn't get their representative on the phone. Sorry, I tried. I really did.

But this post isn't about work or customers or even anything. I am simply here to complain about Google's recent change. This is probably the longest running this blog has ever been. The server is paid up until 2010, I have to renew the domain name every year, but it's only 7.50 a year, so it's good to go. PayPerPost will help me pay for that, easily.

I don't think Google had a right to slap all of us bloggers around simply because we wanted to earn money doing something we enjoy. Hell, I didn't want to monetize this blog, but I didn't have a choice. I have a child to feed and bills to pay and I don't earn enough to even do that from sponsored posts.

Google did it to be petty. I enjoy Google. I would've torn my heart out before turning away from them, but now what do I do since they have turned their back on so many people? I still have an iGoogle page. I have three gmail addresses, two for personal needs and one for my resume. I have used Google documents and spreadsheets. The spreadsheets gave me access to keep track of my bills anywhere. I put every penny I spent and what it was spent on in there in order to keep track. Now I don't make money worth putting into a spreadsheet.

There was a time or two I enjoyed GoogleEarth. I used GoogleMaps and their 'drive it' feature to show me how to get to the airport to pick my Honey up when he was coming to Ohio to visit, and then to live. Google has completely infected my life. I feel as if it's a virus that I need a cure for.

I don't like Yahoo. I don't like MSN. I can't stand AOL. That left Google and they dazzled me and then as soon as I'm sitting around merrily enthralled with all their lovely gadgets, they stab hundreds of thousands of people in the back simutaneously. It was all planned out. They wanted to kill us but we are still here. We will thwart them somehow. I still have hope.

I have never personally seen a giraffe. I have seen them on tv, seen them in cartoons, but not until we went to Safari West had I seen a real giraffe. They look like they are the sweetest animals in the world, and they probably are. There were four adults and two babies that were kind of hiding. Practically fresh out of the womb. Giraffes' don't show pregnancy well, you don't know they are carrying until they are about due. Yet with how tall and skinny they are, you'd think otherwise, but that's what we were told.

Look at that beautiful animal. Tall and majestic is what I think when I see giraffes. They were so close you could almost reach out and touch them. I wish I could have, I wanted to see what their coat felt like. If it was a like a horse or a deer. I guess a girl scout troop had gotten to see one of the giraffes give birth, they even got to make the choice. Smart girls know to stay and watch to see what they may be in for in the future.

I hope everyone is enjoying the images from the outing we went on. You don't get to see these animals out in the wild unless you go to Africa, or Disney World. Laters!

In 2007, who most made you laugh?

A: Probably WichiDude, runnerup: Crystal at Boobs, Injuries and Dr. Pepper - read all her archives, about died laughing.

In 2007, who most inspired you?

A: My Honey, he thinks I can do anything.

In 2007, who taught you the most?

A: Funny, I'll say school, but I don't think I learned as much as I should have.

In 2007, who encouraged you the most?

A: All my friends, my sister and my Honey.

What did you do in 2007 that will have the most positive effect on your 2008?

A: Abandoned Ohio for California. It'll start looking up since the temp agency is looking to place me as quickly as possible.

I thought photohunter would be kind of cool. To join, or find out the rest of the month's photo hunt information, click the photohunter logo to the right.

This week's hunt is for an image that makes you think something is delicious. This lovely baby bird is enjoying a nice cool drink of freshly rained water and I thought that would be delicious if I were the bird.

I don't drink water nearly enough and perhaps this image should remind me, and others, that we need to drink water, just plain water, now and again. I do enjoy coffee, iced tea, some hot tea, (soda)pop, (chocolate)milk, hot cocoa and I just never drink enough plain ice cold water. Anyway, go have a tall glass of ice water and a great day!

So tomorrow I officially restart school after our holiday break. I have 12 weeks to go starting tomorrow and I will be finished with school. Well, at least with the Web Design Diploma course at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. I do plan to continue my education. I do not know if it will be with them or not. The Junior College in Santa Rosa is one of the best colleges around. Once I have lived here for two years I think I'll be able to take courses at the cost of local residents. They may even offer courses online, which I honestly prefer.

I know that going to a school and networking with other students and teachers is probably the best way to get a job, good education, contacts, etc. but the problem I have is that if I end up in a class with people my age acting as if they are in high school, or worse, then I won't be able to handle it. And I think I may end up getting the balls to tell them how they are acting. Or perhaps not. I've put up with childish antics so much over the past 6 years that I just close my eyes and shake my head. But then I had no choice, part of my job was to deal with the childish coworkers and clients.

Still waiting patiently for the temp agency to find me work. I did better than I thought I would on the tests they wanted me to take, I didn't do the best on the Excel test but they asked me questions that I had no idea how to answer. I did try, but I ended up having to skip them. I only missed two on the Word test and one of them was because I accidentally hit the next question button twice and it skipped a question. The other I had gotten wrong.

The Little Lady starts school on Tuesday, instead of Monday. I don't understand why, but that's how the schedule is. I would love to send her to school when there isn't any, that would be wonderful.

Honey is going to take me to the library tomorrow. I really was hoping there'd be a copy of the book I need for school, but they don't have it on the catalog online. Perhaps I'll get lucky and it'll be hidden away in some dark corner. If anyone wishes to send me a copy of Multimedia Communication Systems: Techniques, Standards and Networks by Rao, Bojkovic, Milovanovic Copyright 2000, please contact me and let me know. I'd love to borrow it, yes I'd send it back to you if I weren't going to be paying for it.

I got most of the dishes done today. Honey is cooking dinner. Tomorrow we are going to scrub the kitchen down with Lysol. I know, it's not enviromentally friendly, but I am going to do it anyway, even if my lungs flee my body.

Alright, I am off. Laters.

Gotta love the ring-tailed Lemurs, they are adorable. They are very playful, too. What shocked me about where they were located at is that there isn't any fencing or wall around them. There is a little man-made river that runs in a circle around them, sort of like a moat, and all kinds of bushes. The birds that aren't enclosed are welcome to come and visit them whenever they wish and share their trees and water. I didn't see any of the lemurs get out of the trees. I know that they are tree-living animals, but it was shocking that they would simply stay there and hang out.

Isn't he a cute one? He was looking at all of us as we gathered around to stare and giggle at them. The rest of them were cleaning each other and lounging facing away from us, but this guy enjoyed wondering what we were doing. He seemed genuinely curious and I am glad, he was the best one I got a photo of.

Hoped you enjoyed this! I'll be back later, I want to start some laundry since it looks like the flash flood warnings and the rain have passed. Laters.

Since I've started reading my books voraciously again my cat, Velvet has decided to retake her place on my lap constantly. This has begun to include me being on the laptop and it's kind of hard to have both the laptop and a cat on your lap. There just isn't enough room. So it's hard to do anything when she wants to curl up on me to sleep. One arm she has her head laying on and the other arm has to figure out what angle to be at in order to hit the keys right.

So if anyone has any advice on how to type while there is a cat and a laptop on your lap, feel free to let me know!

So I got up at 6:20 this morning to wake up the Little Lady for her first day back to school having having something around 3 weeks off. I was quite shocked at the amount of time they gave off for the holiday because of the simple fact that most schools back east only give two weeks. But then again, they do need those extra 5 days for snow days or they end up having to add days on at the end of the year. Since it doesn't, or rather it's quite rare, for it to snow here, they don't have to worry about it.

There has been so much rain the past week or so that I thought the sun would never come back. It did come out for a little while yesterday but when Honey looked at the weather gadget it said 80% chance of rain today. It rained this morning about 10 minutes after the Little Lady got on the bus, and I remembered to tell her to take her umbrella, otherwise it would still be raining.

It's not raining right this minute, but it could start up again any time now. The fog was rolling in last night and it was quite thick, which kept it from getting below freezing here. I like fog, it holds in the warmth and keeps it from being almost true-winter cold.

I started school yesterday and already turned in the assignment that was due today yesterday. I kept thinking it was day 2 for some reason, when that is today. So later this evening I'll be working on tomorrows assignment and try to get that turned in today. We have to write a 1 - 2 page summary on the benefit that IPv6 is going to bring over IPv4. I'm wondering what happened to IPv5?

I still haven't gotten the book for school, but I am hoping to get it this week. Unless someone out there graciously wants to share their copy, that is. The library doesn't have any copies of the book, which kind of shocks me. Makes me wonder if the library I went to in Ohio would have it.

I also wanted to mention that Venomous Kate has a new blog out. It's called Blogging for the Money. I strive to write like she does. She's amazing, beautiful and talented. If you are interested in learning from one of the best bloggers in the blogosphere, I suggest you check out this new blog of hers.

Hope the day is going well for everyone out there, I'll be back later!

What did you dream about last night? Me? I didn't dream about anything. Apparently, I didn't sleep either. Honey said I tossed and turned all night. I don't remember tossing and turning and I know I didn't dream because I'd have remembered something, even if it were completely vague or faded.

He got up this morning to work and I got up before him to get the Little Lady up for school. With me I took a comforter and a pillow to sack out on the couch while she got ready so I could walk her out. Due to an incident early in the school year, we choose to walk her to the end of the driveway. There is an automatic gate and you can't get in without a code or calling the main house. Someone pulled into the driveway while she was waiting for the bus and asked her to open the gate or give them the code. I think they wanted simply to turn around, but it isn't allowed. It's not a turnaround and people don't see the gate until they pull into the driveway. There's plenty of room to pull in and back out, but you can't see traffic when you are backing out.

Anyway, he got up a few minutes after I came out to the couch and after using the bathroom and making himself coffee decided that he could walk the child out and I should go ahead back to bed. This is when he told me I didn't get any sleep last night.

I stayed on the couch for awhile, but then I ended up going back to bed. This was probably around 730 this morning and I slept until almost 10. That three hours seriously helped me out though. I got the other half of the kitchen bleached and the floor swept. I did a load of dishes today and the kitchen looks almost nice. I still need to mop, but I am going to save that for tomorrow.

Alright, well I am off to do homework. Laters.

The goats were playfully establishing dominance as we drove by. The one attacking wanted access to the cute female goats and decided to take a stand. I don't think he won, perhaps he was simply testing his strength, because they stopped shortly after they started.

I suppose I'll never know if the young goat got his chance to woo the female goats by beating the older, wiser, stronger goat. But here's a photo of them testing themselves against each other.

I am thinking of taking some of the photos I've taken and making them into wallpapers. So if anyone would be interested any of the photos that I have posted over the past few months, feel free to contact me and let me know what photo you'd like in a wallpaper. I'd be happy to make one.

Wouldn't life be different for us humans if males fought over us women like this? Oh wait, sometimes they do.

So I completed today's assignment and learned some interesting things regarding IPv4 versus IPv6, again who knows what happened to Ipv5, perhaps it was in the works but they skipped it and decided to straight to 6.

Thanks to IPv6, millions, wait wait, trillions, more computers and handheld devices will have access to the internet. You have to have an IP address to get a connection and they are running out of the 32-bit IP addresses that IPv4 uses. IPv6 uses a 128-bit IP address, which makes it a much longer address, but there will be so many more available that they won't have to upgrade that part of it again for several years. I'm thinking that IPv5, if there was going to ever be one, would have been 64-bit, since that is the normal in-between number of 32 and 128 when it comes to computers.

I'm not sure how much sense this makes to anyone. You'll still be able to use url's to get where you need to go, unless for some reason you need to use an IP address itself, such as at work. Offices that do use such a system will have to upgrade and make sure that their employees keep their IP address written down so they don't have to memorize it.

I have a feeling this is going to effect inter-office communications as well. The UberMachine we had (copier, scanner, printer, fax, could also email and scan) was accessed by an IP address through the server. Everyone was able to print from either office because their computer knew the IP address to the machine and it had to be a static number. We had several issues where the provider kept taking us off static and the IP number kept changing. Obviously that meant no one in either office could print until it was resolved and they hated returning our phone calls!

So I can imagine what's going to happen when someone in that office can't print and there isn't anyone in the office that can fix it or has the authority to call the provider and have them walkthrough the correction. Since I no longer work there, I find that this would give me gigglefits. Hell, even if I did work there, I'd still laugh my ass off because I always had my own non-network printer!

Ahhh the love of technology upgrades. When they are this big, this global, there's no way you can't avoid them. It's a good thing for the most part though. I can't wait to see what happens.

Honey brought me flowers this morning. They are flowers that his mom was going to have him throw on the compost pile because they were giving her a headache. I understand why, their scent is easily overwhelming. But they haven't given me a headache and they are especially pretty so I am going to keep them. I don't have a fancy vase to put them in so I put them in a cup from where I used to work. The purple color of the cup looks good against the yellow and white of the flowers.

I talked the Little Lady into smelling the flowers and letting me take a photo, then Dusty decided he wanted to smell them to, so I got both of them smelling the flowers. It's been a rough day keeping him off the counter today.

My best friend informs me, and she should know since she has been working in a flower shop, that they are mini daffodils. I'll believe her because I have no clue!

I moved them from the edge of the counter to the center of the counter after taking this photo because I don't want them to get knocked over. Not only would that damage the flowers but then I'd have to mop up water and wipe down the counter again.

Off for now!

So I was running around with my Honey today, who wouldn't tell me anywhere that we were going. We tried two book stores to find the book I needed for class but to no avail. I gave up and ordered it online. It'll be here Tuesday. Even though I paid for two day delivery, because it's Thursday today they won't deliver it on Saturday because I wasn't going to pay $71 and change extra to get it. The least they could do is deliver it Monday, but no, Tuesday it should, and better be here.

I turned in my homework, which was definitions, and did the quiz that I needed the book in order to do. I didn't do so well but we are able to take the quiz more than once. Unfortunately, it doesn't tell you which ones you got wrong, so a couple that I was confused on I may have right and if I change my answers they'll be wrong.

I'd wait until I got the book, but we have to go week by week. Google and Wikipedia weren't much help either. I tried searching the terms used in the questions (yes, it was an open book quiz) and tried searching for more information in the online reading but couldn't find answers that coincided with the given choices. I plan to try again tomorrow since I was asleep and gone most of the day.

I didn't get out of bed until slightly after nine. I did get up to get the Little Lady out of bed and then went back to bed with all intentions of getting back up at 8, which gives me my extra hour of sleep. I couldn't seem to get up. I think the rain is starting to depress me. After all of our running around (book stores, quickie mart, lunch, grocery store, gas station) I took my contacts out and laid back down. Then I remembered I needed to order my book, so I went back and did that blind as a bat that I was. So I laid down and set the alarm for 4, which would be another hour. I didn't get up until 430, but at least it wasn't much later than that. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to sleep tonight. This is all after having my daily cup of coffee and Dr. Pepper with my lunch! Caffiene still seems to knock me out instead of keeping me awake sometimes and that is the most caffiene I have had in a very long time.

My Honey bought me apples today at the grocery store and I have been craving apples for quite awhile now. I blame my former coworker (who I love) as she and I used to bring apples to work for our snacks when we got hungry in between lunch and time to go, or just for breakfast. I love apples, they are my favorite fruit of all the possible choices. She'd watch the phones while I would go and slice mine up - can't be munching on a whole apple when you have walk-in clients, it's just not a pleasant sight - and I'd make her calls hold while she was doing hers.

She just happened to mention apples to me a couple of days ago. She buys these apples called Pink Lady Apples and she is the only one I know of that has mentioned them to me. I don't know if there is another name for them at all. I have had Gala Apples, which we almost bought today, Granny Smith Apples, which I believe are for baking(?), and Golden Delicious Apples used to be my favorite. We used to have an apple tree when I was a kid, they'd get so perfectly ripe that they would have red veins inside them. I don't know what kind of apples they were.

I am glad Honey's parents have apple trees. That will definitely fulfill my need during the summer and fall, but during the winter we'll have to shuck out the money if I get a craving.

I'll never step into Barnes and Nobles again. Not because they didn't have my book, but because they didn't have computer stations like they do at Borders where I can go and look up my book and find out where it's at. You have to ask someone to do it for you, so I interrupted someone's work day and in 10 seconds she was able to tell me that they didn't have it. Not that they didn't have it in stock, they didn't have it in their system. I don't know if they are hooked up to a huge database for all Barnes and Noble stores or if they are on a system just for their store. I will guess their store since they didn't even have the option for me to put in an order, like Borders did.

I didn't order it from Borders/Amazon, either. I probably should have put it on my widget and ordered it through that. Would I get a percentage if I had done that? I don't know. If anyone out there has done so or knows it to be so, please comment, let me know.
I ordered it through the school's bookstore, praying I wouldn't have to pay an arm and a leg. I didn't. I got the price that Borders would have had for it, which is a good thing because when I had the books I needed for the next classes all set up in my cart, everything went up in price. Everything! I was so not happy. So I removed everything from the cart and I will figure something out for the next two books I need. I'll have to save up for them because I am not entirely sure of their cost. I shouldn't need any new software for the next two classes either.

Ok, well I'm done rambling like crazy about my day out. Laters!

I wish I would have my book for this class already! It should be here tomorrow, supposedly it is 'in transit' per the UPS website. I just hate waiting and I didn't get any refund for the student loans this period, in fact, I had to pay them this time and it would have been more than it was if I hadn't chosen to take three classes at once. No, I am not at this time taking all three courses, but after this class I'll be taking two at the same time. Please don't fear if I vanish for a bit as it will be a very stressful time.

Especially if I start working, too.

So school is paid and that is the big thing. I am going to have to work extra hard to do well in this class. It's all audio and visual and I was never an AV geek. Although, when necessary, I can program the vcr.

The weekend went by so fast. I didn't expect it to do so and I didn't have any homework due on Friday, Saturday or Sunday. I didn't even login and I should have. I should have gotten all the online reading done beforehand and I'm doing that now. I can even have it read to me if I want, but I prefer listening to music as I read, I feel I can read faster, better and retain more listening to music. Doesn't matter what kind as long as it isn't too distracting.

Alright, I am going to quit stalling and go read. Glad I don't have any assignments due until Thursday.

Every now and then I get a good photo opportunity with my cat, Velvet. She's a silly old kitty who tends to fall off of the cat tree, the couch, the table, where ever she happens to have fallen asleep. We call her stunt double Tevlev (Velvet spelled backwards). Dusty has one, too, called Ystud (repeat of name being backwards). So when she isn't falling off of things in her sleep she's usally sitting in the window meowing at something that isn't there when we look or cleaning herself.

This day she decided to claim the food bowl. The food bowl is hers, not yours, not mine. I put the food in it and she decided to stand on top of it to stake her claim. Each cat has their own food bowl so that we don't have to worry about either of them going hungry. They switch bowls all the time. Since we have been having to lock Dusty in the bathroom for doing naughty things at night he has food and water and a litter box entirely to himself.

Ok, except when Velvet goes in there during the day to use his litter box in order to aggravate him.

I found this cute and endearing how she was claiming her food bowl. So here it is, click to enlarge, and enjoy!

So it's that time of the month again and I am just extremely stressed between school and finding a job and keeping the house clean and watching my cat fall off the windowsill. At least this time she made it to the back of the couch before sliding down.. she didn't slide down this time, she actually made it! So proud.

I've been attempting to read Burnt Offerings, which is the book after the Killing Dance, by Laurell K. Hamilton, and haven't been able to get into at this time. I think I'm full of Anita Blake right now, blasphemy I know! I can't get enough of her, normally, but I think reading several books back to back the way I did sort of burnt me out.

So I have been working on Honey's afghan, which I changed the pattern again. I know, I know, I need to make up my mind. I have. It's quite an easy pattern, a lot easier than I thought it was going to be and it was one of my first picks. I originally didn't choose it because I couldn't find a visual demonstration of two of the stitches needed and now that I have, I can do the pattern. You can view the pattern I am working on here. I am using midnight blue and kelly green in alternate square rows. Every nine rows I change colors and stitches, so far it looks really well. I have about 2 and a half rows left before I switch back to midnight blue. I am going to need three more pounds of each color to complete the afghan, which I'll eventually get. I'll post a photo when I am done making it.

I am off for now, but as always, I shall return.

For Christmas the kitties got new toys. Mostly mice, some squeaked, some were furred and filled with catnip, others were furred with feathers for tails minus the nip. This is one of those that are furred with the feather tails that Dusty is looking at. I thought they were quite cute and the look on his face says it all. "This isn't a mouse." He picked up the mouse three times and I wanted to get a photo of him with the mouse in his mouth but he wouldn't co-operate with me after realizing it wasn't a real mouse that he could tear apart.

Also featured with this photo is a border I created. I was bored with just plain photos. So I played around in Photoshop to create a border. I think it turned out ok, it's basically just a texture applied to a few pixels around the outside of the image. Let me know what you think.

Does your cat play with toys? Dusty does, but Velvet doesn't. She just doesn't have much fun in her, once in a blue moon you can get her to play with a toy. I don't know if it has anything to do with the way she grew up or not. She had one sister, the rest of the kittens didn't make it, the mother didn't make it. The kittens had to be fed by droppers until they were able to eat solid food and then they only ate out of your hand. It took a few weeks to get her used to eating out of a bowl. So she didn't get to really ever be kittenish with her sister and just romp around. Anyone else had a cat like this?

Anyways, enjoy the photo. I am off again!

Lately I have felt like there is something missing. Other than a job, of course. The Little Lady spends an abundance of her time on the computer, on MySpace (monitored, of course) making layouts for her friends and uploading them for others to take. Honey has admin responsibilities on the server that hosts a game he plays. He basically makes sure that everyone is on the level and following the rules, when there is an issue he gets it fixed. He's the go-to guy if there's an issue. It takes up a lot of his free time.

I don't feel lonely. I've got friends to chat with online, on the boards and posts to write. Writing.

Lately I have been wanting to write again. Again.

I haven't written anything except blog posts for a very long time, or so it feels that way. I can dive into a book and go away for a few hours, live in someone else's fantasy world created for my enjoyment, but even that isn't enough.

I want to write. I just hate not knowing where to begin. I'm not in the mood to write erotica at this time. I'd like to go back to writing about a few characters from years ago that I used to play, but I don't think I have it in me. So I want to create new characters and figure out what makes them tick.

I've got school to focus on the most though. This class is possibly going to be more difficult now that I have the book in front of me. How odd does that sound? I have several pages to read to catch up. I think I may just focus on what I have to read for this week and get this week over with. I actually want to learn something. I've already decided that keeping all of my books is a good idea. I can actually sit my ass down and read through them and perhaps learn something. Except the PHP book. I'm not going to learn anything from it.

I've been looking at the Holly Lisle website again. She's an author and has been so kind as to share her wisdom on writing. Some of the information I find worthwhile, other information I am not sure.

I have two books by Orson Scott Card on writing. One is on writing SciFi & Fantasy and the other is on Character Creation. They are both great books. And stupidly I didn't think to look for Worlds of Wonder while we were at the library today. Ohwell, we are going to go to the other library soon (I'm hoping tomorrow) and I can look to see if that one has it. Or I can look online now and spare myself the time.

Well. I am off for bed. Goodnight, Sweet Dreams and all those Other Good Things.

I think this class may be the death of me soon. Reading the book is like reading a manual for something simple to use but they are making it seem complicated. I can't figure out why they put a 400 level class in the diploma level program. I understand in a way, it's a way to figure out if we can handle something like this and want to continue our education. We wouldn't have to retake this class if it turned out a student wanted to take the associates or bachelor's level.

Again I am glad I decided to keep all of my books. When I took the accounting and business management courses years ago I had kept those books, too. But because of a low shelf I kept them on, the Little Lady got a hold of them when she was little and decided she wanted to color in them. Never leave a child alone when you are doing laundry, because the phone will ring and you'll get distracted and the child will get bored and curious.

I didn't have any homework today either, but I did have two assignments due for tomorrow. I completed the first assignment to the best of my ability. We had to search on some technology information and listen to audio samples of the same clip over and over compressed differently for each one, then we had to watch two videos and try to discern the differences even though they were both excellent in quality both video and sound.

I know it sounds like fun, but it really isn't. It's education at it's finest though.

And I am happy. I can still talk and text who I want, as much as I want and not have to pay a ton of extra money. We finally got local phones! Honey loves the local MetroPCS, has used them forever, and since they have increased their towers we get good service where we live, so we decided to go for it and drop our phones with the company taken over by AT&T. Everything seems to be getting taken over by them again. Cingular is the new AT&T and then Cell One is the new AT&T. We can't afford AT&T so we ditched, sort of.

My Ohio phone was no longer under a contract and had we known this we would have dumped it when we moved here, as soon as we got here. Currently there are 29 days left of my Ohio phone life and no, I won't be using it. Honey's phone, unfortunately, has until March of 2009 before the contract expires. We dropped the phone down to the cheapest plan they have, which is 20 bucks a month plus tax. We took off all extra features that were paid for. Then we shut the phone off. We'll pay the 20 bucks a month plus tax until we can afford to shut it off for good, currently that's $280.00 bucks. And if the Little Lady does go to Ohio this summer to visit her friends, we'll can always give her the phone for use there if she no longer has her track phone, which has an Ohio based number as well.

My new phone is called a Huawei (I think the guy pronounced it Who-Way) and even though it doesn't have any games or decent ring tones, I like it. I bought it because it's a flip phone and the Nokia they had wasn't. Yes, I like Nokia, they make excellent phones. My last two were Nokia brand and they were capable of taking a beating. My previous phone actually ended up sitting in snow for about a half an hour before I realized it was missing. It worked just fine. So I definitely recommend the study Nokia phones if you are the type who tends to drop their phone, or it falls out of your pocket, or it gets left in the snow. Whether it will survive the washer or not like Little Lady's Motorola trac phone or not, I don't know.

So we'll see how well this phone stands up to the test of time with me. I don't plan on putting it through the ringer, but things do happen. Laters.

I'm seriously confused. Yes, I know that's what it says in the title. Anyway, I know that people are busy and want a blog or website for their business or personal life, or for the heck of it. What I don't understand is why they would pay someone to write posts for them. Because they weren't meeting their mark for the month? I don't understand that. If you don't have time to sit down and write, which many people don't, then you lower your mark, right?

I can understand paying someone to design a website for you, but not a blog. There are thousands of free templates out there, and some you can even personalize a bit now. Me? I try to make everything myself. It's so much more personal that way, but then again that is what type of business I want to be in. I am going to school for Web Design, so obviously I plan to try to do graphic design as well. I tend to be better at coding, depending on how complicated it can get, but other than that I think I've had some pretty interesting layouts in the past.

I've made layouts of others and they put in their wants and needs, but I don't charge them. Usually it's for someone I host here at S-E.O and I do it for them because I enjoy doing it. I may not be the best at making layouts, but I have gotten better at it with assistance, one of my hostees helped me learn how to make layouts that are able to scroll. I never knew how until he told me. I still tend to screw it up though and always have to go look at previous layout coding to see. Yes, I have quite a few of my past layouts saved with their coding so that I can look back on it.

I personally wouldn't pay someone to make a layout for me. I know that I can go to websites, such as Celestial-Star.net or Aethereality.net and get a free layout from their site and all I have to do is provide a link back to them. Plus there are several layouts that work with Movable Type, LiveJournal, TypePad and whoever else SixApart took over.

I would not pay someone to make me a WordPress layout either.

Can someone enlighten me on this? I know there are people out there who may not have the time, or may not have the knowledge, but please enlighten me. Is it simply to have someone make you something unique? Not everything out there is entirely unique. I've had people steal my splash page before. I still don't know why and told them they needed to take it down, they never did. I think it's still up there, but I haven't bothered looking since I have changed the splash page 4 times since then.

Ok, well I am off. Laters.

I don't mention him often but I do love him dearly. Jack has been a huge source of entertainment over the past several months. I am quite happy that Honey went out and bought him and added him to our family. I was a little anxious at first though because I have never cared for a reptile. My sister and her family had an iguana, but they aren't the same type at all. Jack is also, and this is most likely biased, much more adorable than Izzy (their iguana) was.

Jack has always been playful, too. If you've never owned a lizard and have a couple hundred dollars to spare, then a Chinese Water Dragon may be the one for you. Make sure you look up information on them first, though. Honey had to leave the first pet store he went to because he was on the phone with a friend who knows reptiles and she told him they weren't taking care of them and quite possibly may be sick and end up dying on us. So he listened to her and went to the other pet store. There they had Jack, fresh from the tropics I guess. He was there only for a short while and he had admirers because of his wonderful personality among the employees.

When we first got Jack, he wasn't used to us and therefore was a touch frightened and tended to whip us with his tail if we tried to pick him up. But when he finally figured out how well we planned on caring for him, he was thrilled with us. We can pick him up and hold him for a few minutes at a time and we can reach in and scratch him behind his eyes quite a bit. Being a tropical lizard he has a love of water and heat.

For quite awhile we couldn't figure out why he was trying to hang upside down on the mesh cover of his tank, but we finally realized that he must not be warm enough, that we needed a stronger heating bulb. We did get him one, but man I do miss this. It was always fun to watch. He got quite strong and could hold himself upside down for a few minutes at a time. He was also smart because he'd let his back legs fall before letting go with his front and he never got hurt when he fell.

So here's Jack, named after Jack O'Neill from Stargate SG-1. He has a pond with no fish and he has an amazing personality. (Sometimes we think he may actually be a girl, but ... well we'll worry about that later. His cresting has never come in and that's usually how you determine.)

As always, click to enlarge. I am off again!

I have my settings regarding comment filtering set to 0. That means I have to go look at each and every comment posted. I have no problem doing that at all either. I get to read what you write and see if you are legitimate. You, who tried to post on the Daily Photo of Jack, didn't fool me one bit. You made a mistake. You mentioned that Jack was cuter than my sister's iguana Izzy, but you copied and pasted it from the post. I know that, because you didn't change the fact that I had words in parentheses.

Let's see. You also didn't put in a name, you put in 'hosting' as your name and then you put in some horrid email address that was for making or inquiring about payments.

I junked you in a heartbeat. Better luck next time.

So today I started a new Guild Wars character. We are on the Night Fall version right now and plan to eventually add on Factions and the other game. I have two characters, one which I am going to feature today as the daily photo.

Lila Frost is currently a level 5 Dervish/Paragon(not thrilled about the Paragon side, I wanted assassin but they don't offer it). I just started her and she already kicks some major ass. I like that.

Cute and innocent looking, don't you think? That's why I wanted her to be an assassin, too. Again, ohwell.

I try to strike back. It doesn't always work and I end up even more frustrated than ever. Sometimes I try to read. Sometimes I try to write. Other times I screw around with stuff in Photoshop doing different tutorials I find around the web. Yesterday I started making this and today I added finishing touches. I don't really think much of it.

The brushes used were found at Aethereality and the image of the woman was taken from this image (make sure you have your pop-up blocker armed and ready).

As always, click to enlarge. So yes, I have no idea why I went trolling for a wallpaper, I didn't even know what I was looking for. I like Need For Speed games so I decided to grab this wallpaper and steal the woman in it. Not hard at all. I followed a tutorial over at Aethereality to turn her from a photo to a sketch. Then I started all kinds of other effects. There are around 10 layers in the original file, which is the same size as the wallpaper, 2 of those laters are different gradients, 2 are full of different brushes. One you won't be able to tell is actually a brush. But that's ok.

I enjoy doing tutorials. It helps me learn new things and (sometimes) gets the creative juices flowing. Anyway, I am off. Enjoy the image. If anyone really likes it and wants it wallpaper size, leave me your info in a comment and I'll share. Laters.