From the archives of my birthday:
January 3, 2003
1. Do you wear any jewelry? What kind? I always wear a watch, I have like half a dozen, mostly Fossils and one really nice Citizen, it depends on the weather if it's hot or cold because of the change in fit, I have small wrists. If we're going out somewhere nice I'll wear my wedding ring, which is a 1920's white gold european cut small diamond in a filigree setting. I have a quartz crystal on a herringbone silver chain that I've been wearing non-stop since I got it in about 1985. I used to wear at least little tiny hoop earrings regularly when I had a 9-5 job, but now I have to remind myself to wear them from time to time so my ears don't close up. And I went nuts on Italian charm bracelets earlier this year and try and wear them when I think about it, I like them because they're not dangly and they're so much fun! I have tons of costume jewerly and barely wear any of it, I need to sell some more off on eBay...
2. How often do you wear it? If I'm leaving the house the watch, crystal necklace and maybe a charm bracelet are the first things I grab, I go nuts without a watch. I don't wear my wedding ring most of the time because I'm afraid I'll lose it or break it, I'm hard on jewelry. I used to wear a lot of rings, but I have big knuckles and a lot of my old ones don't fit anymore, I have one from the 70's that been repaired and resized like six times.
3. Do you have any piercings? If so, where? Just my ears, once. Didn't get it done till I was in my mid-twenties when I found a gorgeous pair of amethyst earrings and I told myself it they went on sale and I could afford them I'd get my ears pierced. I rarely wear the earrings anymore, though.
4. Do you have any tattoos? If so, where? No, if I did it would be something spooky, like a bat or the bat symbol.
5. What are your plans for the weekend? Put stuff up on eBay Saturday night, read a little bit, work on my website and play with GoLive some more.
OK, now I feel really foolish. After reading the horrific reviews of Adobe GoLive CS Classroom In A Book and flipping through the thing, I figured I'd just wasted $45. So I went to the Adobe user forums to see if I even needed a new manual for 6.0 to CS/7.0 (still am not sure what's new in in other than the interface) and came upon many more critics of how useless the book is and how the SAM's people are putting out a book within a month or so on the whole Creative Suite release and that I could buy a normal old-fashioned printed reference manual directly from Adobe and it was supposed to be much more useful. So for $29 I could get just the GoLive manual, but for $59 I could get the manuals for the other CS programs (Photoshop, ImageReady, Acrobat, InDesign, Illustrator...) so I opted for the whole set (plus delivery plus tax. I already bought a Peachpit InDesign manual since I was switching from Quark Xpress, but actually found InDesign to be much more intuitive than Quark and barely used the manual. I'm clueless on Illustrator, I never used it or Freehand enough to know what I'm doing, so it will be nice to have a manual for it, and you can never have enough Photoshop manuals ;-) I've got to have an eBay sale on outdated computer manuals again, my shelves are overflowing...
So off I go this weekend to return the book I drove all over town looking for tonight, no wonder my husband thinks I'm wacky... SO glad I didn't open the CD. As soon as I started flipping through it I realized it was basically a rehash of the manual that actually came with my version of GoLive 6, same tutorials, and the illustrations didn't seem to match up to the new version, they looked like they were taken from 6.0.
Finally made it to Sam's Club to pick up my $100+ worth of prescriptions that I dropped off earlier this week. I had told my doctor I wanted to up my Prozac from 30 mg a day (3x10) for 40mg (2x20) and she wrote the prescription out for one 40mg pill a day, yikes... I thought the pharmacy had shorted me when I checked the receipt because it was only $11 and for 30 pills, but no, apparently 30 40mg pills are less than half the price of 90 10mg pills, huh?? Well, OK, I figured they would cost more but who's complaining?
Got a new birth control pill too, decided to switch to LoEstrin from LoOvral (which I've been on for like 15 years) after seeing the following on the Family Practice Notebook's website (which is fabulous, BTW):
1. Breast Tenderness (lower Estrogen)
2. Headaches (lower Estrogen)
3. Moodiness (less Estrogen or more Progestin)
4. Weight gain (less Estrogen or more Progestin)
5. Libido decreased (more androgen)
OK... I can do without all of the above and it said LoEstrin is better for women over 40 so I'll let you know how it works out, I'm starting it up tomorrow night and am going to try skipping my period for the three months on/one week off deal since I'm not having a period anyway, just lots of migraines in my week off.
We went out to eat tonight and I blew my high protein diet at IHOP with french toast, but at least I had eggs and bacon with it. I couldn't finish the french toast, though, which is a good sign. I was going to have an omelette but my eyes were itching already (I'm allergic to eggs) and I want to see Kill Bill Vol. 2 tonight so I figured I'd better not chance more than one scrambled egg. I've lost about four pounds so far since I've dropped my carbs again, though, so I'm trying to behave.
My mom made it back to the doctor for another x-ray and apparently her hip is not fractured just bruised badly, thank goodness. We went to Luby's last night and got take out and brought it to them so she could have something other than Chinese delivery food, my dad's not the greatest cook and he can't stand for very long and now she can't either. I feel like I'm not doing enough for them, but I couldn't think of anything else to do, if I was a good cook I would have brought her a casserole... She says it feels a little better so maybe it's starting to heal.
Annoying item for tonight... I was watching Oprah today and saw Chris Rock and Jon Stewart and they also had SNL's Maya Rudolph on, who is Minnie Riperton's daughter, which would explain why she's so good at playing black ladies. So after the show, Sparky whips out one of his 70's Number One Hits albums and starts playing "Lovin' You" over and over. Sort of a frightening thing to have stuck in your head, especially at bedtime. Oprah mentioned that she was "the late" Minnie Riperton, which makes the song both annoying and sad at the same time if you know the lyrics, which, unfortunately, I do. Her fansite said she died of breast cancer in 1979, at 32 years old, even sadder, I did not know that. Apparently she was a pioneer in breast cancer awareness, damn, where was I in 1979? Oh, yeah, in high school, unaware and self-absorbed. I probably heard about it at the time but my memory is shot now. But Maya does look like her and certainly has her pipes ;-) The site says "Lovin' You" started out as a lullaby for Maya, I was thinking earlier today, weirdly enough, that perhaps it devoted to her husband or children, but that chorus might be a little alarming. [She says as the piercing sound echoes through her brain, over and over...]
Wow, I learned something new tonight. You shouldn't use image file names longer than 8 spaces without putting an underscore in them. My best friend was looking at my revised website tonight on her husband's PC and my banner wasn't loading (gulp). I tried redirecting the URL, etc., but it turned out it was because I used too many characters in the name, she said it causes some sort of UNIX error. It looked fine on my Mac, but apparently PCs aren't as forgiving. So I shortened it and it's fine now. Apparently that was the cause of my little glass brick spacer gifs appearing incorrectly also under Netscape & Mozilla, I changed the name on them and now they are invisible as they are supposed to be. I have lots of work to do on updating image names... when you have a Mac you forget that not everyone can use 15 and 20 character long file names, I haven't used a PC in so long I guess I figured they probably overcame that barrier but not so.
I went on a search tonight for a manual for GoLive CS. I figured I'd have several to choose from, so I tried Microcenter first and they didn't have one. The guy said he hadn't even seen one, which is crap because Adobe makes a manual for everything they put out. So I went to Borders books and looked it up on their listings and there is just one manual available for the new CS version, published by Adobe and I got their only copy in the store. I was hoping for one of the Sam's 24 Hours manuals instead (which are half the price and are easier to use) but I just checked Amazon and this is the only one out there, and dammit, Amazon has it for $15 less with free shipping! I think I'm going to hang on to my receipt for this one and leave the CD untouched, it has some really bad reviews it looks like [sigh]. I have a good Sam's book for GoLive 6 but Adobe decided to move all the buttons around with CS/7 so I thought it might be nice to have a paper manual to refer to because I'm still not real comfortable with GoLive after using Pagemill for so many years...
Well, last night I sayed up till 7am working on my main website and got a new home page and two new indexes up, one for all my TV & movie pages and one leading to my weblog and my personal info area. I had made lots of little rollover GIFs and ending up not using any of them, just plain CSS script, which seems to finally be working OK on my Mac version of IE. The visited links weren't lighting up all day, but now they are. I still haven't gotten a manual for GoLive CS, I'm having to refer back to my GoLive 6 book, where everthing is slightly different. When I bought the programs the guy told me it would have manuals, but they're all online or PDF which are a pain, IMHO.
I opened it up in Netscape and all looks fine except I can see my spacer GIFs in the main menu. Looks OK in Safari also, though my version of Safari keeps changing some of the test on pages (not just mine) into something that looks like Beatnik font. No, my preferences aren't set for anything but Helvetica & Courier, so I don't know what the deal is.
I'm trying to streamline and simplify the entire site while not losing any of my Google listings. I wish I could use text links for my webrings to make everything more attractive, but webring.com has that stupid javascript (which still doesn't show up correctly on my home page, the "Welcome you are surfing etc. ring click" text isn't showing up just the word "here" which looks very odd just dangling. When I originally set it all up years ago, I didn't make folders for two of the large categories, but it's not too badly organized. I'm moving all of the TV/movie pages into one category, and putting my book & music review pages, miscellaneous pages and weblog into another. And I'm moving the Gothic Artwork page into the Gothic category. I'm also adding an "About Tish" page, but I haven't got it done yet. Also make new banners and put a linkage page up. I figured while I had the motivation I'd better just start throwing things up and I'll work on redesigning & updating the rest of the site as I go. I want to make my images all pop-ups, add lots of new images, change layouts around, add something more personal to my witchcraft pages... Lots to do!
Well, as usual we didn't do anything of significance over the weekend, we're not church goers and don't have kids. It rained from Saturday afternoon on through Sunday and actually got pretty chilly. so I didn't even want to get out of bed today when I woke up.
My dad called last night to let me know they had spent five hours in the emergency room because my mother had fallen the day before and they wanted to make sure her hip wasn't broken. I wish they'd let me know when things happen instead of after, we only live like a mile away. Her stupid doctor changed her blood pressure medicine (again) and she said when she woke up in the middle of the night to go the bathroom she blacked out when she sent to stand up and fell. Which is exactly what my dad was going through about a month ago and the reason was exactly the same. I hate doctors. But she was smart enough to switch back to her old medicine right after that happened and is, at least, not feeling faint anymore.
Her x-ray didn't show anything and they wanted her to wait around another few hours for an MRI, but after five hours in an ER full of screaming children she decided to just go to her regular doctor to get one done later this week. I hope she hasn't damaged anything, she bruises really easily, I told her that Sunday would be the worse day, being three days after, and she called me today to tell my I was right. Luckily, my parents are like me and stockpile pharmaceuticals for emergencies, so they already had some Vicodin for her to take.
Being flat footed, hyperactive and then having coordination problems due to MS, I've injured myself so many times it's not funny. I also worked under hazardous conditions working security for most of my twenties, it's amazing I never broke anything (knock on wood). Just last night I had to go out to run an errand in the rain and a huge wind came up out of nowhere and slammed my umbrella into my forehead, but things like that happen to me. I was at a Pagan fest with some friends a few years ago and had opened a bottle of essential oil to smell it and when I put the stopper back on a drop of it flew up and hit me right in the eyeball. I seriously think I'm cursed sometimes, I used to blame it on my ex-husband (who really was cursed with having serious freak accidents) but I think it's probably just me, because I've been tripping and falling since I was a kid.
I did well yesterday with my eating, but dinner tonight was ravioli, which we'd already bought and is one of my favorites. I looked at the back of the package and almost fainted myself when I saw how many servings there were in each package (we buy it at Sam's Club). I had four Pepperidge Farm cookies left that I'd bought, I made Sparky split them with me to get rid of them. I've been trying to ignore two packages of the "two bite scones" that I've been addicted to for about six months now, hoping they'll just go bad on their own. I've been trying to add some yoghurt into my diet the past few months, I like the little tiny Dannon Light & Fit Smoothies the best, they're just the right size but I had a coupon for the bigger Yoplait Nouriche smoothies and bought three last time I went shopping. I started off Saturday by drinking one for breakfast and then ended up burping up iron all day, it had added vitamins, which sounds like a good thing, but doesn't taste good (bleecch). And I have two more in different flavors, I think I'll stick with the Dannon from now on, coupon or not.
I felt all shaky after eating the pasta tonight, even though I only ate half of what I usually eat. I've noticed carbs tend to make me either nervous & irritable or sleepy. We're trying to figure out what to eat nightly that's not made of pasta, if I had a chef or we could eat out every night it would be easier, I don't mind eating meat every night, I just don't like having to cook it. We have a George Foreman grill, but there's only so many ways to make chicken and steak before I get really bored. And most of the vegetables I like I'm either allergic to or they have lots of carbs. Sam's Club has some wonderful tropical chicken salad right now that I've been buying, it tastes good and seems healthy, if I could figure out a way to freeze it I'd stock up on it because I know they won't have it too long (sigh). I like meat with fruit, which completely grosses Sparky out.
2 am, I've spent the entire night listing eBay stuff (you want a tan? check my auctions!), hope it sells well. I think I'm going to take the rest of the night off to work on my website and then pack everything to mail tomorrow, I'm pooped! I'm in between novels, just finshed Charlaine Harris's Living Dead in Dallas (fun Southern vampire romance mystery) and haven't gotten the third novel in the series Club Dead yet, so I'm still debating between vampires and werewolves to start as my next before bed book. I've pulled Dr. Phil's weight loss book out (that I bought like six months ago, also at Sam's), I probably ought to start on it too ;-)