Not to dwell on an ages old lament or anything, but there really is so much to do, and so little time. I have what I think of as "to do list head," which always makes me want to take a nap rather than get started on things. Of course, not all the things on my to do list are essential, but I'll let you judge for yourself:

My To Do List

• Make dress out of pirate flag (have flag that I won on eBay; just need to get pattern, lining material, and learn how to sew a dress).
• Finish reading Quicksilver, which is a struggle. (What happened, Neal? Why was Cryptonomicon eight billion times better? Perhaps it was just too tough an act to follow, even for you.)
• Pay bills.
• Do some yard work so as to avoid being "that house."
• Read plans for building soapbox car.
• Modify plans for building soapbox car to work with our team's master plan.
• Make Peter Murphy/Bauhaus favorites compilation CD.
• Buy remaining Christmas presents.
• Write something on blog about two weeks ago when six high school friends came to town.
• See about getting new chair for work.
• Get off ass and go jogging.
• Scan in selected passages from The SAGA (high school newspaper) for friends who were in town.
• Buy new shoes for volleyball.
• Edit novel.
• Write story about what would happen if people were stuck at a karaoke bar.
• Put darkroom back together, develop negatives, make prints.
• Take more pictures (especially with Holga Christmas present, which totally rocks).
• Make pinhole camera by April 25, which is Pinhole Camera Day -- neat!

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Fresh from the referrer logs:

Does drinking sprite mess up your period?

What? Who told you that? I'm going to wager heavily on "No."

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Reading about the blind monkey brouhaha on Semaphoria's site made me giggle (sorry, James). But after I was done giggling, I started thinking about how political debates so frequently end in attacks on intelligence and how ridiculous that is. "You do not think how I think. Therefore, you must be stupid. Allow me to attack your education and be a patronizing bastard, for surely that will make you see my point."

Wouldn't a point be better made by saying, "I disagree with you, and here's why." I think most people are way more receptive to being educated as to your own personal viewpoint than to being insulted. Just a thought.

I think it was Galileo who said, "I have never met a man so ignorant I couldn't learn something from him."

Anyhow, speaking of ignorant, how are we going to get ourselves a new president? The current one is not doing a good job at all. Which of the democratic candidates do you like? Any other candiates catch your eye?

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John pointed me to a cool site: Mixmaster, which allows you to put the content from one site into the layout of another. Like, if you wanted to pretend that Chris doesn't update all his stuff by hand, you could put his content in Sam's layout, like this. Or, you could throw all of Cherz's stuff into Sydney's layout, like this. Such fun!

By the way, Therese, I'm sorry it's taken me so long to update. I'll try to do better for you.

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I've often thought that it would be fun to occasionally post some not-entirely-unsolicited advice here, based on search terms I find in my referrer logs. For instance, "things to say to a girl" shows up surprisingly often in my referrer logs. By that, I mean I've seen it at least three times.

So, I've had this thought rattling around for a long time, but the problem is that I can't actually think of a good way to execute. I could put it in "Dear Nerdygirl" format, like:

Dear Nerdygirl: I'm looking for some things to say to a girl. Any suggestions?

Dear Sad Bastard:

And that's as far as I get because I can't think up anything clever or pithy to say. Everything I write ends up sounding trite or lame or... whatever. The words just aren't there at present. So I open it up to you, fair commenters. Please give this person some advice on things to say to a girl. A random stranger's love life might very well be in your hands.

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Okay, so according to one of my co-workers (who I don't like very much), identifying my cat and putting his photo on the web makes me a crazy old cat lady. So that's good. At least I know now, before the age of 30, what kind of crazy I am. I was kind of hoping for porch/rocking chair/shawl/shotgun/yelling-at-hooligans crazy, but I don't suppose we get to choose these things. Which is good, because I'm fairly clueless with the shotgun, so I'd probably shoot at a hooligan, causing my rocking chair to fall over, off the porch, and then, while struggling to get up, strangle myself with the shawl. At least with cats, there's a chance that you get used to the pee smell after awhile.

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I think I've identified my cat as an Egyptian Mau. I'm positive he's at least part Egyptian Mau, since they're the only domestic cats who have spots. Actually, the first photo on that page looks like it could be my cat, except he's not so brown. But the spots, the stripey legs and tail, and the cool mascara (which is actually a cat term, it turns out) look just like him. The only thing is, my cat has blue eyes (and he's cross-eyed to boot). Maybe he's part Siamese or something, too.

In addition to cat-identification, I've had a rather productive day. Among other things that I won't catalog for fear it would bore the snot out of you, I finally got the quotes page moved over from the old site.

Also, the blog archives going back to March, 2001 are up. All your clever comments aren't working yet -- I think it's something to do with file permissions, but I haven't looked into it yet. I'm sure there are plenty of links and possibly some images that are broken because I haven't done any sort of QA on it. On the other hand, the dinosaur marching across April, 2001 still works.

After updating all the pages from the early years by hand, I have a newfound respect for Chris. Or maybe I just wonder why, oh why, he still insists on updating his site by hand.

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Sorry about the outage earlier. My hosting company had some configuration issues, but they've run a script and it appears we're back in action. That's all they told me, so that's all I know (other than the fact that it happens enough for this specific configuration issue to be in the "reason" dropdown box on their support request form).

But, of course, you really only want to hear about the weather, right? Isn't that the only thing worth talking about these days? Here it is: Portland is slippery. Very, very slippery. It's mostly covered in huge sheets of ice. It's starting to melt, but we've got a long way to go. According to the National Weather Service, you should refrain from looking up if you're in the area.

For those of you who are stuck in your houses with nothing to do but surf the web for entertainment, I offer the following two links:

1. Some Japanese construction company wrote a song that made the Japanese pop charts. I think we can all agree that Japan is just weird.

2. The finalists for the Bush in 30 Seconds contest are in. Kind of a downer, but if it motivates anybody to not vote for Bush this November, I'm all for it. Because the thought of him in office for another four years depresses me.

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Doug gave me a link to this nifty song generator. Just type in your lyrics, and they'll sing it for you. Oh yeah. I put in the following (completely inane) haiku:

sing it for me, please
oh, how i love happy songs
makes my heart sing too

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It's snowing again. It's all dry and powdery and the wind is blowing it around like mad. There was a snow drift inside the outer door at work this morning. I took a picture; I'll try to remember to post it soon, but we all know I'm kind of flaky when it comes to that sort of thing.

I'm mesmerised by the snow, especially when it turns into big huge fluffy flakes. So pretty. Hopefully the freezing rain won't start for a little while yet.

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A few highlights of the holiday season:

• It's over, and the most crowded store I ended up in was Powell's, which is the one place in the world where I don't mind standing in line. Perhaps all that online shopping really is clearing out the stores -- or at least making them tolerable places to shop.
• I spent Christmas with my grandma, which I haven't done since I was a kid. When she opened the gift my sister and I got her, she made this "oh!" sound that she makes when she's pleased. It's very Grandma-like and it made me happy.
• For Christmas dinner, Grandma, my Uncle Doug, his wife, Lousie and I drove to Red Bluff to spend it with my cousin and his family. It was such a nice, relaxing day with super yummy food. Mmm.
• While in Chico, I got to meet up with several of my old high school friends at Tres Hombres. It was (as always) lovely to see them all.
• New Year's was also nice and relaxing and spent with good friends. My favorite boy took me to his work dinner at Huber's (good food!), and then we went to some friends' house where I proceeded to overindulge a bit on the chardonnay. New Year's should always be spent with good friends -- there's really no substitute.
• It snowed in Portland. It snowed a lot. There were snowmen and foot tracks in the snow and the trees looked so cool and the powder, when stepped upon, made really good crunching sounds. It made everything so quiet, since most people stayed in their houses -- very few people were driving anywhere. It's melting off now, and the snowmen are comically toppling over as if they overindulged on the chardonnay as well, with hats and scarves and twig-arms askew.

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