LadyGypsy.net – the blog of Kimberly Dowd of New Jersey

I did two things today that I never thought I’d do:

1) I started playing Dark Age of Camelot (again). I rolled a Cleric named Gynnett. Pronounced “Gannett,” natch. Every other name I created was already taken, and if with the “y” in place of the “a” the name looks pretty Anglo. Anyhow, Gynnett’s level 8.

2) I uninstalled Movable Type. Yes, after all the brouhaha I made about getting it working, I scrapped it. Why? For starters, my blog is pretty simple. Right now, I don’t really want comments, I don’t like TrackBack, and I don’t need an RSS feed. And it was taking me a tremendous amount of time to tweak the styles of my site through the MT product. I scrapped it, went back to Blogger, and had my own styles up in a less than an hour.

As I was walking Max around in the cold, I found myself looking into the ground-floor apartments. Hey, if it’s dark out, and the lights are on inside, AND the privacy blinds are opened, anyone can see in.

Some apartments were beautifully furnished and decorated. The small amount of ground outside were decorated and treated as a real yard. These people must have accepted the fact that they are here for a while, and that they are going to make the space their own.

Other apartments were very Spartan. A few furnishings, no clutter or touches of home. Looking like the owners could — and would — vacate at a moment’s notice. These owners know that they’ll eventually have someplace else to go.

And you have us. To be frank, I’ve given up on this apartment a long time ago. I used to keep it nicely decorated.I was proud of it. It’s my first place. But I’ve grown tired of trying. Seven years is too long to be here. In the past few years, when we bought furniture, we bought furniture that we could take with us into a house. So we were shedding our apartment-friendly furniture for larger, house-ready items. Our computer desks are bigger. Our loveseat’s bigger. Our TV’s bigger. Our dining room set is huge. We even graduated from a full mattress to a queen. There is very little room to walk around, which irritates me.

So it’s with a hopeful heart that I look forward to spring. Although my lease isn’t up until August, I hope to start the summer in our own little home. Without having to share walls with other people. And with our own patch of green.

I’m ready.

I have Horizons running on my desktop next to me. As I mine gems and ore (a process which consists of clicking the resource, clicking ‘gather’ and waiting), I surf on the laptop, which I have set up on a tray table. Caelia managed to drag her sorry elven butt to level 12 druid and level 13 jeweler. Most of my guild mates are above level 20, so I’m playing catchup as usual. I just don’t have the wherewithal to play for hours on end every day anymore.

The Wings suffered a devastating loss last night to the Rochester Knighthawks. Mom, John & I attended the game with about 14,000 others. I love that sport. Unfortunately, they started with an Eagles Pep Rally, which I swear is the most inane thing to do. Why, why, WHY kill the home-opener crowd’s excitement about the Wings by trying to redirect that energy toward the Eagles?

And as usual the Eagles blew their SuperBowl chances by losing the NFC division game to Carolina. It’s a lonely world out there when you’re not a football fan. I look at all of the Eagles paraphenalia and all of the people and their excitement (and tomorrow, communal grief) and I feel badly that I can’t participate. I don’t know how it is in the rest of the country, but here in the Philly area, if you don’t care about the Eagles, you’re a pariah. I’d walk down the halls at work, and my coworkers would look at me, give a thumbs up, and say, “go Eagles!” Yeah. OK. What I hate the most are the ones who don’t follow the team all year long, and then whip out a green shirt the week before the playoffs. I’m glad they lost. The hype is too much.

In other not-as-pathetic news, I emerged from mourning my deceased Palm m515 by purchasing a Tungsten E. What’s funny is that the “E” cost less and does more than the m515 did two years ago. It doesn’t have a HotSync cradle — it has an AC adapter for charging and a USB cable for syncing. I decided I’ll sync it to both my laptop and my PC at work.

Now before you sneer at me for being a tech-freak…you have to know how much I use my PDAs. I have my whole life calendar stored in them, plus phone numbers and addresses for everyone I know. The last month at work has been insane…with tasks and ‘to do’ notes stuck all over the place. I fully believe “E” will help me relax a bit. Sadly, it isn’t compatable with the 515′s keyboard.

I went through the pile of resumes for the new Content Producer job. 3/4 of them were asking for WAY too much money. More than what I’m making. Uh-uh. Not gonna happen, people. So the hunt continues.

Young Max has crawled up on my lap and is trying to go to sleep. That’s my cue to log out, and head to bed.

Yep. There’s my parking spot. I feel guilty for having it. That’s just like me, though.

Wt: 145.8.

On the way home from work today I flipped on the Oldies station and heard the title song from the movie “Grease.” Once I stopped sobbing, I realized that the song is absolutely lame if you listen to the lyrics. “Grease is the way we are feeling?” Wha??

Today I had my “Rising Star” headshot taken and spent most of the day trying to worm my way through some scripts for a new online Classified ad-placing system. It will allow people to completely order classified ads online, even picking whether or not they want the ad bordered or bolded or w/a graphic. They’ll be able to pay w/a credit card. We have a form on the site for that now, but that just sends an email to the Classified Department and they in turn call the person back to verify. Plus a 10am meeting with a rep from GemStar. I also finished the job description for my new hire. I think the ad will start running in tomorrow’s paper! Wanna work for me? Soon you’ll have your chance.

(waves hi to those who will be visiting this site because you’re applying for the job and Googled my name)

Tomorrow I go back to the ad reps to follow up on the ‘coupon’ presentation Peter and I did last week. I’ll be glad when the weekend hits. I’m still not used to working until 5 yet.

I installed Movable Type on my site tonight. That’s a blog management tool. Right now I use Blogger, which served me well, but I think I’m ready for more. This means that, yes, I am very serious about redesigning my site. I think the blog will be on the home page instead of its own page. But I have a while to go before I’m near completion.

The snow today was boring at best. It barely covered the grass, yet people either drove like they were driving Humvees across mountain ranges, or like they were covered in scorpions and one sudden move means death.

I left the usual time and ended up at work 5 minutes earlier than usual. Despite the snow. Now I think tomorrow I’ll leave 10 minutes earlier and stop at Starbuck’s on the way in. Friday morning treat! And maybe I’ll buy a box of Thin Mints from Janet. (She’s Clark’s wife. Remember Clark? He painted his self-portrait in blood. Janet’s refreshingly normal.)

And to leave you with JUST how much of a geek/nerd I am, I ordered a small pair of Obsidian earrings from the web tonight. Why? Because I’ve been a member of the Obsidian Knights guild for over 2 years.

Great…now nobody will want to work for me….