Bring on the boring!
So, when last we were with our main character, Brian, he was giving out the basic details of his life and dredging up an outline of his history. He was looking forward to a long weekend of rest and relaxation. His girlfriend, Holly, was going out of town so the house would be quiet and he would sleep a lot, lounge around in his underwear, shower when he felt like it, and eat whatever he felt like eating. As with all great plans, though, once engagement takes place, the plan goes out the window. So goes the set up for today's rant.
Okay, I knew things weren't going to be QUITE that relaxing this weekend but I was really hoping to get SOME rest. Holly and I have been working pretty hard the last few weekends to get ready for my sister, Sara, my neice, Kory, and Sara's boyfriend/fiance, Jason, to come into town for Thanksgiving. They came, they saw, we ate, we shopped, they left, and I, at the end of all this, was exhausted. I did half-days of school while they were in town so as to keep up with my school work and maintain my 85% attendance that is required by the VA for me to get my full time money. (By the by, I want to insert, while I am sitting here in class, eating a Light Fat Free yogurt, that I DETEST Light Fat Free crap and aspartame or any artificial sweetners!) So, this weekend was supposed to be sitting on my ass, enjoying one weekend before I get into ski patrol and Christmas mode. It was not to be.
First off, I feel bad because I was supposed to go over to one of my fellow workers homes to look at a car I want to buy from him. I was pretty tired on Friday and totally spaced it. I knew there was something I needed to do but couldn't recall what it was and so ran some errands and then went home. I had to send out a quick fax for one of our SCA folks as Holly is the treasurer of our local group and then I was all prepared for veg time. As I got home it had started to snow a little bit. I sat around for a bit, vegged out in front of the toob. It continued to snow. I decided that I should stay up as long as possible so as not to completely throw off my graveshift sleeping schedule.The last few hours I was awake I spent playing some America's Army but couldn't hang for very long and was asleep by around 4:30am.
I woke up around 9am. I was not very happy to be awake but I couldn't go back to sleep, as much as I tried, so I got up. So, even as exhausted as I had been, being up for well over 24 hours, actually, closer to 30 hours, I guess my body is getting used to 5 hours of sleep. So, I decided to continue to veg in front of the TV as I had slept on my couch though I had almost pulled out the couch bed on Holly's couch. I watched a little bit of TV, got up, fed the dogs, got out the HTML books so I could set up the website for the SCA event that Holly and I will be running in January, and started to browse through those books. I, eventually, went up and decided to see if I could find the VA paperwork I need to get the school stuff going on but couldn't find it so I got dressed and went out and started shoveling the driveway. Mind you, 12 inches of light, powdery, Utah snow, even if it has melted down a little bit, is still heavy when you have to shovel the whole thing alone. Holly and I texted back and forth about getting a snowblower. She doesn't really think we need one so I'll let her shovel the next big snowfall or finish the sidewalks and the little area at the top of the drive and she how she feels about it afterwards. So, I would shovel for an hour, take a break for a bit and then go back out and shovel for another hour. It took me close to 3 hours when all was said and done, including a little area out back so the dogs wouldn't think it was okay to pee or crap on the deck. Then I took a hot shower and took myself out to eat.
One thing I have never really minded was going out to eat alone. I feel, as long as I have a book, I have a date. My final rest period, after the shoveling and before the shower, I ended up watching most of the movie Infamous about Truman Capote when he was writing "In Cold Blood." It was a really good movie and reminded me of something else I have been thinking a lot about lately. I have never really gotten into reading classic or mainstream literature. Yeah, I've read some of the ones that we were all forced to read in school like "To Kill a Mockingbird" and stuff like that. I read some of the old Greek stuff like the "Iliad" just because I was into the stories about warriors and stuff like that, too. But I have never read some of the stuff like Jack Kerouac, Jane Austen, Milton, Steinbeck, Hawthorne, Bronte, etc, etc, etc al. Now, mind you, I'm not one to judge a person by what they have read. I read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi. I have read some of the classic sci-fi and fantasy authors but its just not the same. So, I made a decision, every time I go into the book store in the future, I'm getting something new along the lines of classical fiction. I have actually been told by some people that are a bit better read in those fields that I would really enjoy some of the different artists. So, I ran to Barnes and Noble and I got some of the Morgan LLewellyn books and I got "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote. I decided to read that first and headed for the Cracker Barrel.
Okay, two quick side trips, here. And, yes, I DO have AADHD (thats Adult Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) so be prepared for many such side trips into my mentality. First, Cracker Barrel is one of those places that, to me, is just an ideal perfected. It is one of the VERY few places in Utah that I can get sweet tea that is made to perfection. They, also, have catfish, pinto beans, turnip greens, country ham, and hash brown casserole. If there is a Temple or Mecca for this Kentucky Boy in Utah, it is the friendly, neighborhood Cracker Barrel. I have always loved them. In fact, when I was stationed in Dover, DE, I had one of the Cracker Barrel maps in my car and that is how I decided where I was stopping on my longer trips. I am ery fortunate here in Utah to have several along I-15. Secondly, there is no better feeling than to go in somewhere for comfort food and have a server that is second to none. I had one of the best dining experiences I have had in a long, long time. First off, I know what I like to eat at most restaurants that I frequent. You can tell what I am craving by where I decide that I want to go eat. So, I went in for catfish, turnip greens, pinto beans with diced onions and chow-chow on the side, fried apples, biscuits with strawberry jam, and, of course, my sweet tea. I told the hostess that I didn't need a menu and she commenced to taking my order to pass on to my server, Mike. Mike, I think, was short for Saint Michael. Normally, I tell the server to bring me back a refill as soon as they set down my drink because I am going to drain that puppy dry as soon as it hits the table. I didn't have to tell St. Mike. He showed up with two glasses of tea for me. I almost wept. He told me that he thought I might be a big tea drinker. I wanted to hug him. Throughout the course of my meal, as soon as one glass was empty, he was there to refill it, even though I still had a second glass to drink from. So, when I left, he got the just under 50% tip ($5 on an $11 tab). That was almost the best part of my entire weekend.
When I got home, I started really hitting the computer hard. I threw in a load of laundry while the computer reboted (I really need to build a new computer!) and got to work. I decided that I was going to try Comcast's personal web page builder to just do a quick and easy, down and dirty webpage for the event announcement. About 4 or 5 frustrating hours later, I gave up. I couldn't even get my test page to show up. Actually, it may have shown up somewhere but I didn't know where to look for it. So, I started looking at my Valhalla-Reenactment.org website and trying to remember how Patty helped me to set it up. I was too frustrated, though, so I went back to the books and started to page through and watch TV for a bit. Once frustration levels died off, I went back to it in the wee hours of the morning.
Now, mind you, I'm relatively knowledgable on the net but nowhere NEAR what I want to be. I know a lot more than what I think I do but terminology and how to really put it all together has always been my biggest problem. I'm slowly learning it as I attend my classes and learn more every day. I still have a long way to go, though. That goes especially for web design. Kind of funny, though, that I am beginning to pick it up a bit and still haven't taken a class for it. I'll really be delving into it more now that I am supposed to be the webminister for the local chapter of the SCA, too. So, I started off making a copy of my front page on my website and renaming it so I could look it over and play with it. I immediately remembered ow to get rid of my side bar with all the little buttons and took that out. I started tweaking it here and there and trying to figure out how to move around in there and get it to do exactly what I wanted to do. I was getting tired, though, and as I have always believed, taking a little break from something sometimes makes things just really click when you go back to it. So, I went and slept for a while and actually got around 7 hours of sleep. Woo hoo! Just before I went to bed, though, Holly called to tell me that she had hit some ice and gone Dukes of Hazarding off the road she was on and had ended up on the median. I talked to her for a bit, waited to make sure she was okay and all that, and then I went to bed. I woke up a little while before she got home and went back to laundry and trying to get ready for her arrival home so we could go eat. We were both a little testy to start off with but, once we got to Ruby River, my favorite steak place in the area, things started to look up. One of our favorite servers, Dave, was working and I requested being seated in his section as he always takes good care of us. I ordered my usual, 16 oz New York Strip- rare, Steamed Vegetables, Raspberry Vinagrette on a house salad, good sourdough bread, some really tasty jalapeno poppers and a non-sweetened iced. Holly and I talked for a bit and were both feeling tons better by the time we got home. I suddenly realized that the new SCi-Fi Channel show was on Tinman and we tuned in to that. Holly fell asleep on the couch and I watched that and another movie and then sent Holly to bed and sat back down in front of my computer. Sure enough, my little break from looking, working or thinking about the webpage paid off.
I realized that the probelm I was having was that I hadn't been thinking about the .css file. This file holds all of the basic formatting for the web pages on my site. Once I got in, copied it to a new file name and made some changes there, things really just fell together. I played with Gimp for a while getting the header graphic JUST right. Then I finished off the rest of the site. It still needs a little tweaking but the basic site is up, now. It only took me maybe 2 hours once I realized my mistake and I felt a great sense of accomplishment as I had figured it all out on my own.
Anyway, I better get back into my book. I'm at school right now and want to finish this chapter before the end of the day. School is breezing along but I've been goofing off a lot, lately. I hope this missive finds everyone well!
Cheers!
Brian
