Fluff, Dreck, and Flotsam

eithni got me a copy of Wild Color: The complete guide to making and using natural dyes for CHEAP! My stoopid hurty-neck kept me from being useful for terribly long last night, so I laid around reading for the better part of the evening... The pictures are beautiful, but I'm bit concerned by her casual use of "stale urine" as an ingredient...

I am busy. Super-duper busy... And aparently a masochist.

I'm in the middle of the network migration for which I was hired as "project staff" at the Uni. (The migration being the "project".) Hopefully by the end of summer I will be a "permanent employee" of the department, or I'll be looking for another job after Pennsic.... again. So I've been putting in a lot of extra hours on weekends to get people's computers migrated as "seemlessly as possible." Working 12 straight days stresses me out... Working with a bunch of tightly scheduled luddites REALLY stresses me out.

So given the fact that the next month and a half is going to suck ANYWAY, I figure I'd liven things up by quitting smoking. I haven't had a cigarette since April 8th, and so far no one is dead. Having quit for 3 months last summer, I must say that quitting this time was much easier... I just had a lingering feeling that I was forgetting something. I can't tell you how many times I checked to make sure I hadn't left the oven on...

But as we all know, I am a retard, so those two things weren't enough. I am displeased with my current weight, and I live in terror that quitting smoking will make me gain even MORE weight, so of course, NOW is a GREAT time to start a diet and exercise plan...

I'm really REALLY amazed that no one is dead. Like, really.

Initially, I lost 9 lbs, but according to the scales, I gained 4 back during coronation. :-P. I find it hard to believe that the 7 oz steak I had on Saturday evening did this to me...

Aaaaanyway.

All that is not the point. The point is, that as my reward for not killing anyone, I have bought myself the recipe software of my dreams. It allows me to create and export cookbooks complete with nutrition information for every recipe:



(Notice that I've left of the crunchy topping because I am on a freaking diet. I was pleased to discover that a good sized portion of this only has 230 calories... I love cheesy potatoes.)

So... Yeah... My next task will be getting all my favorite recipes imported into my cookbook.

Well, I had to cancel Framing Day, because Zig and I were polluted enough that I didn't want to risk infecting anyone else with our crud. So I dutifully hung the "PLAGUE BEARER" flag on our house (Not literally, though Zig still has the one that gigawattwarlock made for us at Pennsic 35 available for use, should it become necessary.) and set forth to accomplish as many errands as my headache would permit.

I got some decent picture frames at the thrift store, and will try to get some matting materials over the weekend. I did about 2 hours worth of spinning too. I think this last spool of yarn will be enough to complete the current sweater, with enough left over to make myself some wrist warmers.

Zig was much more sickly than I was, so I made him the "comfort food dinner." Pork chops, cheesy hash-brown casserole, and mixed veggies with dill butter. Dinner looked like an advertisement for 1960's housewifery, and it was very tasty.

I also picked up naughtyaelf's computer and took it home with me after some cursory inspection. I believe the hard drive is failing, and due to some bad sectors, her operating system has started acting like an altzheimers patient. (If you click the back button in her browser, IE crashes, which is fairly entertaining.) So today I found a spare 10GB hard drive that *doesn't make a grinding noise when it runs* and dropped an image on it. Tomorrow while I'm at work, I'll drop the new drive into her little PII computer and see if that doesn't make things all better. (I didn't notice any other hardware issues, but the hard-drive issue was so overwhelming, it was possible that I might have missed somthing.) I'm also going through the computer cemetary in my closet for spare parts that still work. If there are any other "upgrades" I can apply to her system, they will be applied - for my own amusement if nothing else.

My day of hardware tinkering has been nice... It reminds me of why I got into this line of work in the first place... "Sometimes I'm pretty good at what I do!"