Sunday Chris and I hosted a little cast party. I bought most of the supplies, including sliced cheese for the grilled things. Four packs, in case people were hungry. I was in a hurry and didn’t really read the labels like I usually do. I saw “blah blah grams blah blah milk blah in every slice”, and into the cart in went. It turns out that there’s a small amount of a certain milk protein in evey slice, with the remainder made up of soybeans and various other items. The result is slices of yellow stuff that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike cheese. And I still have two whole packs left over. Let this be a lesson for you.

I made a soup last night of things from the garden. Mainly parsnips. I planted a bunch of them last year, but I’ve been eating them very slowly. They’ve been in the ground almost a full year now, and they keep getting better and better. The winter seems to have made them sweet, like a carrot naturally infused with honey. Since they’re so old, they’ve mighty large, and they’ve got a woody core running down them. I had to cut that out before slicing them into the pot. Along with the parsnips were some winter onions and chopped collard greens, all from the garden. Supplemented with mushrooms from the fridge and old peas and corn from the freezer, wetted with milk and cream, the soup was very tasty. It was a large pot, so there’s plenty of leftovers. The first jonquil has bloomed in the yard. The grass is greening up, and it’s at that stage where there’s as many shades of green as you can imagine. All the plants are vying for control of the dirt. There’s the wildflowers, the grasses (many varieties), the weeds, and the mosses. Each has its own patch, and the patches together make the yard a carpet of greens, blues, and blueish-greens. It’ll be soon time to fire up the sourdough pancake powered lawnmower – it keeps the grass short enough to allow the flowers to poke through. The peas went in as planned. I ran out of peas before I ran out of dirt, so I’ll need to get more. If all goes well, there will be many, many peas in a couple of months. Want some? On a completely unrelated note, this weblog was declared to be the 500th site to be powered with Greysoft. I’ve only just begun to explore its potential, but I’m very, very impressed. Noah Grey has done a magnificent job with it.

I realized recently that I haven’t been drinking near enough water. At work, when I was thirsty, I’d head for the coffee pot. My body’s been craving water, but I didn’t listen to it. Well, I finally got a water bottle at work that I’ll empty twice a day. It’s a 1.5L bottle, and I just finished the second fill. My nose is running, so I guess I’ve had enough.

A year ago, I was woken from a rather pleasant dream by a storm that shook my (then) new house. It was one of the first nights I’d slept there, and the ferocity of the storm and the unfamiliarity of my surroundings had me a little frightened. The storms came with tornados, and while none struck close to me, they did kill 20 Georgians. Georgia remembers.

Tonight, I plant peas. And write down construction plans for the chicken coop (and the brooder that will be inside for a few weeks). And probably buy seeds. I’m coming out of my winter doldrums, I think. Or maybe now that the play’s over, my creativity is ready to be expressed in other ways, through growing and writing. It’s been very easy lately to look at what I’ve done and think I’ve been slacking. The weblog has been mighty quiet. I’ve not done much outdoors. I feel like I just haven’t made anything lately. I think the play had me fooled. It was easy to overlook, somehow, but really all my creative energies were focused solely on that project. Now that that’s gone, I can get back to other things. For one, I hope to turn this space back into the fun place to visit it used to be.

Welcome to my new online home! I’m no longer renting, either. For the first time since I went on the ’net, back in 1989, I’m an owner. (Of course, domains weren’t around then, but when the arrived, I never bothered to get my own until now. Amazingly, my name was still available.) Things are mighty different around here, though hopefully you won’t notice right away. First and foremost, I’ve stopped using Blogger to maintain my weblogs. I still like Blogger, but the company’s recent collapse made me realize I had to be in control of my own content, no matter how easy Blogger had made things. It turns out that there was the perfect solution: Greymatter. CGI scripts on my own server give me Blogger-like ease, greater flexibility, and complete ownership of my creation. Nothing against Blogger (I’ll still use it for other projects), but it was time for me to move on. Because of the move, you may run across some dead links. Not those pointing off-site – those die all the time – but internal links. If you find any, please let me know. There are many links pointing back to me, and many of those point to specific entries. I’m keeping everything at the old addresses for the foreseeable future, so those will still work. I’ve moved all of the archives over here and integrated them in as best I could (Here’s the last Blogger-powered front page.). I’ll try to make the old merge with the new painlessly for you. As always, I do appreciate your coming to visit me, whether I know you or not. Please do come again.

Today I migrate my laptop from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 Professional. I’m scared.

I’ve come out the other side. Amazingly enough, I only had to reinstall two applications: my virus scanner and web browser. All my email survived. And, my first impressions are great. I like Windows 2000. I am using Stardock’s wonderful Object Desktop, so my GUI doesn’t even look like Windows to begin with, and changing to W2000 didn’t affect me there at all. If you picked up my laptop right now, you would think I was using Apple’s OS X.

I’ve come out the other side. Amazingly enough, I only had to reinstall two applications: my virus scanner and web browser. All my email survived. And, my first impressions are great. I like Windows 2000. I am using Stardock’s wonderful Object Desktop, so my GUI doesn’t even look like Windows to begin with, and changing to W2000 didn’t affect me there at all. If you picked up my laptop right now, you would think I was using Apple’s OS X.

Today I migrate my laptop from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 Professional. I’m scared.