Happy Hearts and Smiling Faces

You'll find happy hearts and smiling faces
And tolerence for the ethnic races
in Denton.
-- "Denton, U.S.A." in Shock Treatment by Richard O'Brien

Well, I'm baaack!

After a long hiatus and a month of moving, I'm back in my new digs permanently. Actually, to be completely frank, I moved in last weekend (on my birthday! A nice birthday gift!) but I've been so busy packing and getting used to life here in the new plac e that I didn't have time to really spend to write. Plus, last week was The Blair Witch Project week and Mike's Birthday Week. So, I put some time into email, chatting, and getting this new site design up... but not enough to update it. Now, I'm back and with a vengance! I've got lots of nifty things to tell you about. Definitely too much for just one entry. So, I'll start with some photographs.

One of the myriad of photographs of my eyes that I took. It was all part of the new redesign but that all fell flat. I'm not a photographer and I decided that I shouldn't do anything to suggest that I am (which, taking a picture of my eye and integrating it into the site design gave it the feel of a photographer's site). Last week, Andria told me that she loves the new "box" feel for my websites with the graphics hugging (or straddling) the content window. So I decided to scrap the idea that I had at the time and start developing a new one with the box concept in mind. It's a nifty trick (applying the graphics to the content box) and I enjoyed applying it to this site. It took a few tries to get the colors and the balance of elements just right (and lots of help from Mike)... but I like what I see. What do you think, Constant Reader? Constructive criticism is most welcome.

As you can see, Mike and I are still in the process of moving.

Scratch that. I am in the process of moving. Mike doesn't have as much stuff as I do, so all of his materials are tucked away already. All of those boxes are mine, pretty much. Papers from school. Books still unpacked, because we don't have enough bookshelf space for them. Stuffed animals. The works. I tried to empty my parents' house of my things. I realized how much junk I have accumulated. I've been frantically trying to throw away as much as possible... but it's always hard to do that with some things that have memories attached to them.

I'm trying very hard to wipe my hands and say, "Well, I'll make new ones."

It's still hard, though.

I've taken over the living room with my computer (and my piles of boxes). As you can see, ever the techy one, the computer is one of the first things out of the box.

Mike has decided to take up the larger Florida room as his territory and set up his computer there. It's tremendously hot since the sun goes right into the large windows and our two tiny air conditioners are just enough to heat the bedroom and the living room.

The florida room closer to the kitchen, we have made into our eating nook. Here, looking out to the trees through the beautiful windows, we have our breakfast, lunch (when we're home) and dinner. This is a great spot and, in the week that we've been here, we've found we love this spot tremendously (note the tools in the far left corner).

Since we don't have an air conditioner yet in the loft bedroom (but we do have spanking new carpet and the cat smell is gone gone gone!), we have made the smaller side bedroom as our home. This will become the guest bedroom (and have more bookshelves) when we're through with it.

I've gotten a library card and a video card from the local video store (a short walk down the lane). I've gotten to talk to our downstairs neighbors, the Lorenzes. They are an energetic, young couple and are really nice. The only weird thing is that the husband of the duo is named "Mike" which leads to interesting conversations with my mom.

Speaking of mom and my family: Els and Jean came over for a short spell today. We went out to lunch at the local "diner". We wanted to go to Evergreen, a notable vegetarian and fish restaurant in the area, but they were closed for some unknown reason. We picked up some snacky foods at Kings and watched Good Neighbors, the videotape gag gift that I got Mike for his birthday. My mom dropped by and gave me a new rice cooker. 5 1/2 cups straight from Chinatown (read: good quality).

Mike worked today and yesterday so that we couldn't have a proper weekend together. He got called in for an emergency rush job. It seems that some mathematician working for a construction company is very allergic to bee stings and got stung. He is now in a coma. Since the project is waiting for this mathematician's specifications but can't get a word out of him, they hired Mike to do make sense of it.

I feel bad for the guy that got stung and I hope he gets better (so Mike doesn't have to work around the clock), but at the same time, it's a Good Thing^tm for Mike to get work.

Me, my work is generally the same. I got a promotion about two weeks ago (I am now a Senior Associate and they raised my salary $5k a year). The raise will help with my new expenses. The amount of money that I pay to commute to work has doubled. The plus and minuses of living in my new, swanky neighborhood.

That's all for tonight, folks. Iko from Upper Montclair, New Jersey, signing out.