Cast of characters:

• My husband – J
• My daughter – Z
• me
• Grandma

On the drive out, she asked probably about seven or eight times “are we there yet?”, half of which was asked before we had even crossed the state line, and the first being barely an hour into the drive.  Overall she did really good on the drive out.  We’ve been lucky with her being a good traveller.

We arrived in the early afternoon on Friday and got checked in to our hotel, slathered on the sunscreen, grabbed our cameras and tickets and headed over to the park.  Some of the rides we did that day – Jungle Boat cruise (Z liked), Haunted Mansion (Z did not like, too scary), Pirates of the Caribbean (Z was undecided on this one, kinda scary, but she liked the short drops the boat does), Star Tours (she liked this one), and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (she liked, as long as I held onto her).

We were there until after the first showing of Fantasmic, so probably about eight hours, and then crashed out back at the hotel.

We slept in a little bit the second day, had breakfast at the hotel, and went back to the park for some more rides, including Autopia and probably some others that I don’t recall.  But, this is the day we did Splash Mountain and were pretty much soaked from head to toe.  We made sure to buy the picture for this ride.

We left early enough to have dinner out at a restaurant, then early to bed, since we would be waking early for the Magic Morning entrance into the park an hour before it officially opened.

Being able to get into the park early on the third day, we were able to ride Star Tours twice in a row (hardly any wait), the Buzz Lightyear blaster ride twice in a row, and then Autopia once.  Then it was time to leave the park and head to the airport to pick up Grandma.  After picking her up (and Z having a cat nap on the way to the airport), we dropped her bags off in our room since it was too early for her to check into the hotel yet, slathered on sunscreen again and headed off to the park for more rides, this time with Grandma.

We did a few rides in Disneyland (Star Tours again, via Fast Pass for J, Z & Grandma) and then headed over to California Adventure for the rest of the day.  We did the Tower of Terror (I am not a fan of this one, but I went at least once to show Z it was OK), Soaring over California, Monster’s Inc (Mike & Sully to the Rescue),  and Tuck & Roll (bumper cars).  We also saw the Aladdin show.

We decided on the fly to pick up Fast Passes for the “World of Color” show later that night, which turned out to be their last showing.  Then we had lunch at Ariel’s Grotto, where we had been seated at the table nearest the “entrance” for the princesses as they arrive, so Z was the first child to get pictures with each of them. I thought that was pretty neat. 

By now, the three of us had three full days of walking under our belts, and I don’t know about my daughter, but both my feet and J’s were SO sore.  By the end of the night after standing with a mass of people waiting to see “World of Color” for at least an hour, and then another thirty minutes while the light show played (during which I held Z the entire time – all 50 pounds of her – O.M.G.), it was a struggle to walk back to the front of the park to the shuttle bus area to get back to the hotel.  It was all I could do to tell myself “left, right, left, right, left, right” to force my feet to move. LOL I half wondered if I’d get to the hotel and remove my shoes to find nothing but bloody stumps.  Even though Grandma had only been there the one day of walking, her own ankles had gotten puffy and angry, too.  It’s no wonder though, I think that day we had been at the park a total of thirteen hours at least, and that is not counting the extra hour and a half that J, Z and I had been there before we left to go to the airport.

The fourth day, Grandma, Z and I got to the park at about 8:30 to get into Toontown before it officially opened (which is normally an hour after the park itself opens).  Our timing was fairly ok, when we arrived the cast was just finishing up their Mayor Mickey opening act.  We got pictures with Mickey and Goofy (missed Minnie and the Chipmunks), and rode the small roller coaster while we were there.  Afterward we went off to ride Dumbo, the Teacups (only once and with little spinning – mommy can’t handle that!), and the Astro Orbitor.  Then while I waited on a bench for J to arrive, Grandma and Z rode the Carousel.  Afterward they joined me on the bench, and once J arrived, off we went for more rides.  The last day is kind of a blur, but first J & Z went on the Teacups again so J could spin them really fast for Z, then we bought Z some Minnie ears (pink & black) and had her name & the year stitched on, then we went to California Adventure so Grandma, J and Z could ride the Tower of Terror a second time (she liked enough to want to ride it again), then I think we watched Muppets 3D, and went back to Disneyland for ice cream and to go wait in line to see Rapunzel (which took about 45-60 minutes).  Then we called it a day to head back to the hotel and relax a little bit before dinner out.

The last day, was breakfast at the hotel again, then a little relaxing afterward before checking out, taking Grandma to the airport and then starting our drive back home.  Z only asked twice on the way back, “are we there yet”.  We stopped in Quartzite for some “Really Good Jerky” (and some sour gummy worms for Z), which we deemed to be really good.  If it’s not the consistency of boot leather, then it’s not good, but this was!  Then finally we arrived home and back to reality and two cats that seemed quite happy to see us.

I still haven’t really gotten past the “wanting to” stage, but I have been rethinking whether I should stick with this CMS, ExpressionEngine (EE), or change back to….

WordPress.

Yes, I know.  That program frustrated me with the two times my site got hacked, and was the reason I switched over to EE.

But designing in EE was challenging, mainly because if one cannot find free plugins to do what one wants, or is not willing to cough up the dough to pay for a plugin that does do what one wants… One needs to be a software developer to make ones own plugins.  And I am not that, nor am I willing to cough up the money to pay for plugins that will do what I need or want them to do.  The free ones are somewhat lacking.

So between WP’s recent updates… and coming across some external tools that may help prevent the scenarios that led me to leave it in the first place, I’m reconsidering WP.  It has loads of shiny plugins & widgets, most for free.  From what I’m learning, using those that are kept up to date, is key.  Not only because there could be conflicts between an out of date plugin and WP when it does update, but also for potential security holes that a plugin developer may discover and patch.

I suspect I had a few plugins installed that were a little on the old side, which could have contributed to the issues I had.  I’m willing to try it again, being careful with the plugins, although I am not sure whether I should try moving everything from EE, into a fresh install of WP, or just play around in a test version.  Still contemplating everything, really.  But leaning toward moving it all back.

Hmm. Decisions, decisions.

On a completely unrelated note.. I think I want a stick vacuum for sweeping up the bits of cat litter that my cats seem to trail from the laundry room down the hallway.  Much easier to use than my huge vacuum, and quicker than using a stupid broom. 

I was kind of looking for something fairly cheap, probably this from Shark:  Shark VX1.  What do you think?  Any recommendations?

One day I decided I wanted to try making my own vectors, and downloaded a trial version of Illustrator.  Worked for several hours relearning it (been a while since I took classes), then maybe played around with it one or two more days, and haven’t touched it since.

Got some inspiration to try some techniques with polymer clay, but once I got to a certain point, inspiration went *poof*, so I set that aside for now.

Then I joined deviantART, and spent hours looking at various things – digital drawings (horses, dragons, etc), traditional drawings… found my fave watercolor artist and other new ones… then got inspired to start sketching again, decided I want to learn how to draw people (without tracing like I mostly did for my daughter’s still unfinished watercolor painting from last summer).  Hands trip me up – they’re HARD to draw!  Feet will be too, I imagine.

I couldn’t find any stock hand poses in dA that i liked, so I took some of my own hand, and when I have some free moments I’ll try sketching those.  That is my latest interest as of late.

Then…. THEN, I stumbled across a couple of mom bloggers, who have been doing organizing and even renovating/remodeling of their homes… and wouldn’t you know it, I started getting the itch to get crap organized around here.  But time – where’s the time?!  And I even started thinking… well, if the housing market is so awful around here that we’re upside down on our mortgage, we probably won’t be going anywhere any time soon, so we may as well start thinking about updating this place… But really, that is long term stuff and not likely to be happening any time soon.  I’ll be the first to admit, we’re not exactly handy-manny’s around here.  Can’t hurt to start getting ideas though.

Maybe this weekend I’ll find where my gumption went and have a go at some organizing.  Maybe. 

Anyway, I digress.  This post is about the veggies.  On NutriSystem, we’re eating veggies, and lots of them.  So far I’m fairly easy to please in that regard, in that I don’t really have a wide selection of veggies that I’ll eat. LOL So I alternate between salads using red and green leaf lettuces, iceberg and occasionally Romaine, and spinach, for the greens.  Then I’ll add cucumber and tomato, usually, occasionally switching out the cukes for mushrooms or carrots depending on my mood.  My alternate fixings, would be the steamed veggies, usually – and mostly – cauliflower, broccoli (less of that), and sometimes carrots or mushrooms.

I’ve learned that using the steamer machine doesn’t leave the vegetables as bright, or tender as I would prefer.  They’re usually dull colored and sometimes even mushy.  Even lessening the time a little is still less than stellar.  Plus it takes longer than I usually have time for, anyway.

So I’ve found a way to get near perfect steamed veggies, using the microwave and either ziploc or glad brand plastic containers (BPA free of course).

it’s pretty simple really – cut and add the raw veggies into a 4 cup container, add a small amount – and I do mean small amount, probably 1/8 to 1/4 cup – of water, and cover loosely with the container’s lid.  Microwave from two to two and a half minutes.  Take them out of the microwave carefully (it will be hot!!), push the lid closed for a few more minutes. I usually use that time to cook my NutriSystem meal, and by the time that is done, the veggies usually are, too.  Then I drain the water, open the lid, and voila!  Tender, not mushy, and still brightly colored veggies.  I either eat them from the container or pour them onto a plate, and use “I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter Spray” to add a little buttery flavor.

The trick is the amount of water.  If you add too much water, it will take longer for the water to heat up, the veggies will take longer to cook, and it really defeats the purpose of trying to cook them quickly!  Plus longer cook times is what seems to dull the colors of the veggies and overcooking also is what leads to the mushies.  Less water means quicker heating, quicker steaming.  Better steamed veggies!

How much weight have I lost so far, you may be wondering?  I just hit 10 pounds today.  I was stuck for about a week though, hovering between 8.5-9lbs lost.  Not too bad really, for the first month.  My husband has done even better, I think he is at 25lb down.    So far this seems to be one we’ll stick with longer than the other two we tried.  Onto the next month and hopefully 10 more pounds!

Regardless of the reason, for 2011 I would like to try to improve and post more regularly.  Not necessarily every day, as goodness knows that would be nearly impossible. But maybe a couple times a week at the very least.  I probably should since I actually paid money for this “content management system” that I’m using, after the second hack of my former WordPress blog last year.  I’ll make a go of it.  Even if it’s just nonsensical blather. 

So 2010 was fairly good.  Nothing catastrophic happened within my immediate family, although there were some sad moments within the extended family circle, but, there were also happy moments. We still have our health; in fact our daughter had only caught a few bugs the entire year.  I never thought I’d be so thankful for the several bugs she caught her first two years of daycare, but it’s definitely paying off.  I even made it through the year without a sinus infection for once, whereas I’d had one each of the previous two years.  Yay!

We still have good jobs, a home and good running vehicles, and although they’re both getting up there in mileage, *knock on wood* they’re still very good to us.

For 2011, one of our goals is to work harder at chipping away at our debt.  For my business, my hope is to be able to add more items for sale to my studio, and selling more items.  My marketing is laughable right now, so I need to work on that a lot.  I got a new camera for Christmas, so photos should improve as well. I just need either some macro filters or a basic macro lens, I think, so I can get some really close up shots.

I hope everyone had a good 2010 and wish everyone an even better 2011.

I’ll leave you with some photos of two gifts I made – one was for my husband’s grandmother, and the other was for my sister-in-law’s grandmother.

I am toying with another blog platform. It is actually called a “CMS” – “content management system”, but in a nutshell, that is what all blog platforms are. Some are just more robust and can do more than others.

Anyway, I used this one, called Expression Engine, as my main blogging platform for several years at another domain, but stopped shortly after that domain got hacked (via another even older and neglected blog platform – Movable Type), because I didn’t feel like dealing with fixing all of the broken links and all that carnage clean up the hackers left me with.

The learning curve for this other system is pretty steep, and not is a “one click” setup type of blog. I’ve been working on it here and there, for weeks. It has some shortcomings (I cannot find an auto-Plurker plugin for it), and strong points (stronger spam control, supposedly, although I haven’t had much issue here on WP to be fair, the plugin I have for WP works pretty good). It is more for a developer type of person (web developer, etc), than not. But I do like to get my hands dirty with coding now and then, making something work that didn’t automatically do so, essentially build something from the ground up, so to speak, and this fits that need pretty nicely.  I did everything there – the graphics, the layout, the templates (internal to EE).  It’s not quite 100% finished, but it is getting there.

I have exported all entries from WP (except this one, as I’ve just typed it up), and am slowly working on adding them to the “blog” part of the CMS. When they were first imported, they got put under a default channel, and when I created a new channel for my blog, they did not automatically move over, and I am not sure if there is a mass editor that would allow me to do such a thing (or maybe there is and I just don’t know it). But at any rate, I have to move them manually one by one, along with associating them all with the proper categories, which also got messed up in the transfer – but that was not ExpressionEngine’s fault, that was the software I had to use to convert WordPress entries I exported, into Blogger format, and then into MovableType format (which EE can read). Yes, yet another pain in the butt, but I’m invested in this darn it, and I’m going to see it through! I’m still working on getting them moved to the correct channel, so not all of them will show up yet.

For some reason, even though all of my comments are visible in the entries themselves, nothing but new ones are showing up in the sidebar’s “recent comments” box. I’m not going to worry myself over it, that box will (hopefully) fill up soon enough, and it only will hold like five or six anyway. And speaking of comments, during the port, for everyone who commented here in the past, I had EE create an account for you on my new blog. I have NO idea if it has set any passwords for them, but if it has and it won’t let you comment without logging in, let me know over here and I can set up temporary passwords for you, if you like. If you do not want to have the browser log you in (if you have it save your passwords) every time, then I can delete you as a member and you can comment as normal without logging into anything. Whichever is your preference. I am not entirely sure yet if your Avatars that show up here on WP will also show up over there (if you use Gravatar for that, I CAN get that set up); alternately if you remain a member, you can also upload an Avatar to my server and it will display it from here when you comment.

So, rather than go on and on, I’ll just stop here and ask if you could go take a look-see.  Tell me what you think, how it loads for you, what browser you’re using and if it acts funny, etc.  If you want to leave comments there (see above if you run into issues with your login, it took your email addresses from here when it created the users), feel free.  If you can’t or don’t want to, comment here instead.  Oh, and yes I know some of the pages will have my grinning kid at 6 months old on them.  I used her picture as filler at first and haven’t gotten around to taking it out of all of the templates yet. So enjoy the pic.    Keep in mind it’s not 100% ready, some links may not work, some pages may look funny, but I wanted to get a general idea of what my visitors think about it.  Thanks!

The week before, my gynecologist ordered cholesterol and other similar blood tests for me as I’d never had them done before, and while everything else was within normal ranges, my triglycerides were slightly elevated at 185.   All I’d had to drink that morning – because I did not know I was going to even have a blood test done and so I did not do any fasting – was about 3-4 oz of Diet Dr. Pepper.  Normally I also have coffee, along with some type of cereal and 2% milk, but that is usually once I’m en route to work for my 45-60 minute commute (I take the cereal dry in a baggie, stuff like cheerios so is easy to eat in the car), so those I had not eaten yet.  She did not order a retest so I have no idea if that slight elevation was “normal” for me after a fast, or if it was due to the diet soda.  Either way, I read up on things afterward and decided that day that I was going to stop drinking diet sodas or anything sweetened with those artificial sweeteners – after I finished my last crystal light, and last soda that I already had open and was drinking, of course.

This is not to say I am giving up caffeine, also, oh no. I still have a morning coffee, and instead of soda now I am drinking iced tea, using Truvia as the sweetener.  But, I have not had one drop of soda since last Thursday, nor any crystal light.  Instead, I’ve been trying VitaminWater by Glaceau (both the “zero” and the regular stuff, the “zero” is supposed to have the same stuff that is in Truvia), and sometimes, Gatorade.  I’m not reverting to regular sodas because they contain high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which I’m also trying to cut out of our diets.  That is turning out to be much more difficult than avoiding splenda or aspartame.  They sneak that stuff into pre-packaged frozen foods that are supposed to be “diet” foods, did you know that?  For shame.  I’d much rather see straight sugar, or cane sugar in foods, than HFCS.  At least with the former types of sweeteners, it takes longer for the body to break them down than HFCS (or so I’ve read).

The hardest part so far is trying to explain to my four year old that we’re not buying such-and-such cereal anymore because it’s “bad” for us (she prefers Lucky Charms and it’s various brand equivalents).  She seems to like an alternate cereal I bought for her (an organic brand) that has a minimal amount of ingredients in it, but not enough to forget about those marshmallow cereals. Not yet, anyway, but I’ll keep trying.  I’m just glad that her preschool sticks to the relatively low-sugar stuff for breakfast like cheerios and chex and the like.  Then again, they probably don’t want a bunch of toddlers hopped up on sugar for the morning, either. LOL

So that’s our goals so far – cutting out HCFS as much as we can, and, at least for me, dropping diet sodas and crystal light. For hubby that last part is probably going to be a bit more challenging, I think.

I will be glad when this is over, I’ve had ideas brewing in my head for things to work on, and I signed up for a membership at beadsandbeading.com so that I can learn a few techniques with polymer clay that I don’t know how to do yet, and I’d really like to get started on some of that!  But this project has left me little time in the evenings after work to do much of anything but get dinner, relax a little while eating, then get my daughter ready for and into bed, and then start working on some tasks for the project at work, and finally go to bed myself.

The exception was yesterday, since I had completed some extra tasks on Friday (2/3rd of my set number for Saturday), I decided to leave the last 1/3rd for Sunday and take Saturday for myself.  Well, it was also because my daughter was invited to a birthday party across town, and I knew when I got back from that, since she would be staying overnight at her grandmother’s house, that I sure wasn’t going to want to do any work-work… So I went out to dinner with my husband and we hung out for the evening.  I couldn’t muster the motivation to start any jewelry or polymer clay work that evening, knowing I wouldn’t be able to pick it up again who knows when.  So when my husband started playing a first-person shooter video game (I can’t handle watching those, they make me nauseous), I went back to my office/craft room and started reading some of the older posts at Beadsandbeading.com, and noting which back issues I may want to order at some point.  And I also did a blog post here for a Crazy Train rider.

So anyway, if we keep up this speed on how we’re getting through our task list, I am hoping that maybe by this weekend, or early next week, we won’t have to worry about doing any extra work from home and can actually get our own lives back to do with as we choose.  That will be nice indeed.

I dusted my PC monitor, my iMac and my desk (the dust bunnies tried to run, but I caught them in my hand vacuum). I still need to work on moving other stuff around, though, to get it to where I can utilize my side desk for working on my clay or jewelry.  I’m going to try my best to keep the space on my desk in front of my PC monitor (it sits on a raised part of the desk), clear so if I get a bug to work on some jewelry while my side desk is cluttered with clay and tools, I can do that.  Plus, that is also where I put my docking station for my work laptop, so with that in mind that will help (I hope!) me to keep that space clear of clutter.

One thing I have discovered with this move of my iMac, however, is now that the keyboard is up on the desk (instead of on the keyboard tray), I’m probably going to need a wrist rest for my palms.  I never did figure out how to keep my hands elevated for long periods of time while I type, so I usually end up typing with my palms touching the desk and, in time that just starts to hurt.  Or I could just learn how to type with my hands elevated instead of being lazy and letting them always rest on the desk! That would be the cheap and quick way to solve that situation I suppose.

Anyway, as I sit and write this, I am periodically looking around my workspace and wondering where to start next with this reorganization.  I’m to the point where stuff is kind of here and there and everywhere and not in it’s permanent home, but I don’t quite know where to start to continue to get things completely in order.  I hate that.

However it seems I need to do something soon, all this chaos in my room is leading to my cats becoming overly curious and poking their noses where they need not be.  I fear one of them may cause an avalanche of precariously stacked boxes if they get too inquisitive and actually try to start climbing things.

Since I have no desire to do any of that extra work the day job is once again forcing upon us, this evening, I think once I’m done here with this post I’ll turn my chair around and take stock of the mess that is left and just start getting it done.  My aim is to have it done by this weekend.

In all I had almost 50 orders to take care of, the ones that took the longest spanned yesterday and today and there were less than ten of those, but due to the nature of them, it just takes longer to do them than the others I had. No, I did not spend ALL day yesterday and today working on them, I’d take breaks now and then to hang out with my husband and daughter, and eat and such.   That is probably why it took longer over the span of the weekend than it would have if I’d sat and worked straight through it, but I was trying to have some semblance of a weekend intermingled with the forceful work I had to do before Monday.

But now I’m done, as of about 15 minutes ago, and it feels like a huge weight has been lifted. I really hope our boss doesn’t put us into that sort of situation again, it royally sucks being salaried and working with no extra compensation. Oh, I guess they’re going to buy us lunch or something. Whoop-dee-do. That’s just SO worth the loss of about three evenings and what probably equates to one full weekend day.  Pfeh.

Now, I’m going to try to work up the motivation to pick up where I left off with my office re-organization. Becaues, you know, I’d really, really like to get back to working with my clay and making stuff so I can finally make use of my Artfire studio!!