So. I’m living in a motel right now. Some who read this know, some don’t. Drew and I broke up over a month ago. I’m moving into an apartment in Capitol Hill in about a week and a half, incidentally on the same day that Carolyn will be flying out to visit for the weekend. Things have been…weird. Sad. Strange. Am still dealing with it, and likely will be for awhile. People have been very supportive though, and I really appreciate that.

I miss having a kitchen. I got to use Jonathan and Jill’s kitchen a week back and have a sushi party with them, which was fun. Got some really good salmon, here’s a shot of some of the salmon rolls:

Work’s going OK, though I’ve been staying up late a few more nights than I’d like dealing with the persnicketiness of HTML emails. HTML emails are definitely one of the lesser appealing things that I do. One thing that I’ve been doing lately that I hope to do more of is developing for mobile websites. There’s a great Drupal module called Mobile Tools that will switch your theme based on mobile device detection, and with that plus playing with the JQuery Mobile theme, I’ve been working on the mobile version of my work’s website. There are of mobile design is so new, I think there’s lots of opportunities to do cool stuff. I’ve also been dying to actually contribute a Drupal module to the Drupal community, and am hoping I can find something good to contribute involving mobile.

Am hoping to do some packing today, I’m trying to get rid of stuff I just don’t use – I hate having lots of stuff, and moving it is a big pain, so I’m trying to better justify the things I own. Super fun times.

We’ve got visionary dreams of biking to Golden today. However, I have cramps. And Drew works from 7:00am – 12:00pm today. Soo, we’ll see if that works out.

I have a “You’re earned a phone upgrade!” card, meaning that mayhaps one of these days I shall actually achieve said phone upgrade.

My elbows hurt. This is because I’m back to working full-time in front of a computer. Which I am complaining about via typing on a computer.

Pak’ma’ra painting is still slow going. Curse you, persnickety clouds!

Salami Day was a raging success. I made over $13.00 in Google Ads clicks that day, woo! Need to redesign the site, it’s mildly craptacular as it is now, and it wants to be better then that.

I have a super-sweet new rice cooker. It slow-cooks, too! Will soon make more beans then you can possibly imagine.

So I ordered a bunch of laptop parts, I’m gonna upgrade my netbook’s RAM and hard drive, and then try installing Ubuntu on it. See, it’s becoming a hindrance that I’m trying to do all of this stuff with php and Drupal and am doing it off of my Windows XP computer. I haven’t used Linux much at all, but apparently it’s much easier to do backend web programming with it then with a Windows box, and it’s time I figured out how to do that. Assuming I figure it out in the next 4 days and get the netbook set up, I’ll have a teeny workstation to use while traveling to work on the Drupal site I recently started.

So I’m almost done watching Babylon 5 – we’ve got a few episodes left, and maybe a movie. I totally caved and ordered figures, which arrived today. They’re certainly not action figures, being that Sheridan is the only one where you can move both the arms and the legs, but they’re still cute. I’ve also got Delenn, G’kar, and Londo. Now I just need to figure out how to get the rest of the figures that I want via finding the internet sellers that are trying to unload them for cheap, rather then the sellers that think they’re super valuable and are pricing them accordingly. I found someone selling Ivanova and Vir for not too much, so they might be my next order. I can substitute some of my pre-existing figures for other characters. Aragorn makes an excellent Marcus (though I might still get a Marcus character if I see him), and Legolas makes an excellent Number 1. Honestly, I never liked Number 1, I kept thinking of her as “Mars Resistance Leader Hannah Montana.”

Season 5 hasn’t been quite as exciting as Season 4, but Drew warned me of that. All of the Londo/G’kar stuff has been excellent, at least. I didn’t care for the telepaths, and they took up most of the first half of the season. I also think there’s been a huge hole where Ivanova used to be, she was a great character and I don’t think Lochley was a good replacement. As much as I liked Delenn, her character stopped being as interesting once her and Sheridan became official, which happened around the same time the Minbari caste conflict ended as well.

It’s been a bit exhausting watching through so many seasons of something, so it’s good timing that we’re finishing up right before we leave, since I could use a TV break!

I’m going through a slight conundrum with my car. See, I just took it in for it’s 90K checkup, and spent a buttload of dollars getting it fixed up. Which I’d expected. The thing is, I really liked the shop I went to. It’s an oil change and car repair shop that also has a coffee house attached. While I sat and waited for my car, I down two different types of chai tea, one of them on the house due to my really long wait. The one I actually paid for was some of the best chai tea I’ve ever had. So, this shop has an oil change deal where, for $99 you can buy 4 oil changes + 4 drinks. The problem is, I’ve got my own ramps, and my own pan. I’ve been changing my own oil for several years now. It saves me money. But then again, it’s not like it saves me a huge amount of money. And it was also a huge pain to change oil in the winter, given that the parking lot was perpetually covered in wet slush most of the time. And I live in an apartment, so it’s also a pain just storing the oil changing materials (especially since I lack a balcony or backyard). In any case, I’m currently debating selling my oil changing stuff and just going to this shop. If I do this, I might hold off until the weather gets crappy again, since changing your oil in the summer is no biggie. That slush last winter sure was awful to lie in, though!

Now here’s something I’m curious about: New York has the ball drop and all, but what about the other time zones? Seems to be that Chicago should have a ball drop for the Central time zone, Denver for the Mountain time zone, and I suppose Seattle for the Pacific time zone. Don’t let New York get all the glory! I’d suggest more southern cities, but it seems that people have this idea that the holidays should be all gobbed up with snow, even though many parts of the US don’t see snow around the holidays at all. However, I’m open to a ball drop in .

We were there 2.5 days, whereupon I received stuff and ate stuff and hung out with Drew’s relations. We decided to split up the drive back into two parts, and ended up getting a motel room in Topeka after having eaten some incredibly delicious BBQ in Missouri earlier. I need to either make or get ahold of some St. Louis style BBQ sauce, as it’s really good. I’m a sucker for some sweet and smoky. We might have driven further that night, but at some point the roads got slushy, then icy, and it would have been a waste. It’s interesting to observe weather driving west. It was really cold in Nashville with no snow, bitterly cold in Topeka with bunches of snow, and the further west we drove across Kansas the warmer it got, and it’s gonna hit close to 50 in Denver today.

Incidentally, next time we’ve got this kind of distance to go, we’re gonna try to fly instead. Driving is fun if you aren’t really familiar with the route so much, but we’ve both seen the 430 mile stretch on I-70 across Kansas waaay more then we need to at this point.

And here’s a few thoughts on hotels. I like nicer hotels, but only if someone else is totally covering it. As Drew and I were splitting the tab, we stayed at a Motel 6. In terms of cheap hotels/motels, it often seems better to choose chains over non-chains. With non-chains it’s questionable as to how livable the room will actually end up being. However, it doesn’t matter much for that chain if whoever stays there thinks it sucks, as they’re just passing through and so repeat business isn’t too much of a concern. So, if they’re sheisty or lazy, they can get away with lower standards. However, staying at a chain place, there’s a possibility that you’ll continue to visit their other locations when you travel. Thus, the Motel 6 was as bare-bones as the price suggested, but had the benefit of being appropriately clean and not being sketchy.

We got back last night around 8:30, and Estha was super glad to see us. We now have giant piles of crap sitting everywhere which we should probably deal with at some point. Also, so much junk food. My goal is to not eat it all today. Incidentally, my New Year’s resolution is to not gain too much weight. Screw losing weight. And screw not gaining weight. I’ve accepted the fact that, every winter, I put on lbs. Conversely, every summer, I lose those lbs. All I want is to not gain so many lbs that my bras stop fitting, as that is a royal pain. Mind you, I’ve got summer bras and winter bras for this precise purpose, but when I start outgrowing the winter bras things start getting really pissy for me.

Anyhow, we scored a giant bag of miniature candy (kisses and teeny Reeses cups and such), which pleases the little Martha Stewart part of me as it means we have stuff to put in our candy dish for the next month or so. Incidentally, we decided that we’re gonna keep our Christmas tree and lights up until the beginning of February. See, I get depressed in the winter. I think the excitement of the holidays helps, but January is generally pretty bleak. So, I shall experiment with leaving bonus Xmas light cheer up, to see if that combats seasonal affective disorder type issues.

And on a final note, today is Drew’s and my 4 year anniversary, yay! Unfortunately, Drew is currently passed out in bed with whatever disease he picked up on this trip. We’ll be hitting the Macaroni Grill later for anniversary dinner, whereupon I will gorge myself on sea life and exciting beverages. Until then, I will hang out with Drupal and try to figure out what the heck to get Drew for our anniversary that he hasn’t already received over this long holiday season.

Drew starts the car, and there’s a “bloop” noise and gushing…then dripping. A bunch of oil slowly oozed out of the car. As it was getting on towards dusk and we had no idea what was going on, we stopped for the night. The internet mentioned a few possibilities, with a few curses thrown in the direction of Jiffy Lube and their ilk. I was able to snake my hand in from the top and grab the oil filter, and it seemed tight enough. Today, I peered under the car and tried to make out where the oil plug was. I couldn’t see it, and, reaching around amongst the oily patches, I thought I felt a hole with oil around it (neglecting to realize that the entire freaking underside of the car had oil on it at this point).

So we headed over to Advance Auto, where, along with dumping the old oil, we pick up some new oil plus an oil plug. In this fabulous overcast 30some degree weather with the parking lot still partially covered in snow (and the remainder now covered in motor oil, unfortunately), we rolled the car back onto the ramps. I get underneath, and the plug’s still there. Looking up, I can also see that the oil definitely came from the filter. However, I can’t seem to tighten it any more with my hand. So Drew gets under the car, and can’t tighten it any further, either. So then we switch tactics, and he removes the oil filter altogether. Oil filter looks fine. Then I decide to stick my hand down where the oil filter used to be, and poke around to look for any funny business. After I’d grown a few new joints in my forearm, I manage to get my hand into where the filter goes…and pull out a twisted little rubber ring, left behind from the last filter. Hooray!

Drew screws the oil filter back in, saying that it screwed in both tighter and easier then the last time. And the car is fine, now. Which is good, as that would have put a serious damper in our upcoming trip otherwise. Now all we have to go is go get a bunch of kitty litter and some newspapers to take care of the mess we left in the parking lot!

Well, it was both messy and awkward. I’d hoped I could just twist the filter off with my hands, as I had a Fram filter on and they have a really good gripping surface. No go. Tried it with one of those kitchen rubber lid twisty things, still no go. Tried whacking a screwdriver into the filter using a hammer. Got it in, and found it impossible to turn, so I had to whack said screwdriver in further. By this point, residual oil is dripping down the screwdriver, onto my hand, down my arm, and onto the hammer. I kept having to rest my arms, as there were all of these car parts in the way and I needed to hold both arms at angles not comfortable to hold for long periods of time. Got the screwdriver in enough, and twisted. It turned, just a little bit, until the lever that the screwdriver made ran into other car parts. Still couldn’t get the filter off with my hands, even with the loosening. So, made another hole. Everything is doused with oil at this point. Hole took entirely too long to make, as I was sore and pooped. It worked, eventually, and I got the filter off. Had to throw my poor blue hoodie away, though, it was unsalvageable.

Didn’t do Drew’s car yet, no way in Hell are we undertaking that method for his car. Don’t even know where the parts are gonna be on his, as he’s never changed his own oil before. So we went to Lowes and Home Depot, neither of them carried oil filter pliers, the bastards! I’ve located a pair, though, at Checkers Auto, so I’ll have to stop by there tomorrow or whenever next is convenient. Incidentally, there is an infinite amount of schlock carried at Lowes and Home Despot now, what with their tupperware bins and home accents and stuff. It’s like everyone wants to compete with Walmart. Soon you’ll be able to buy underwear and bananas at Lowes/Home Depot, too.

In other news, I just got a lb. of ceviche from the grocery store for a little over a buck a pound. It’s got a kick to it, too.

Put Xmas lights up, along with our wee little purple tree. Once Xmas is over this year, I look forward to scarfing up reject lights and decorations off of Craigslist so next year will be fabulous.

NaNoWriMo is coming up in less then 10 days now, and both Drew and I are gonna do it this time around. I wanted book #1 to be out of the way before book #2 got started on, and I’m just waiting on proof copy #3 (the final one, at least it better be) to come in the mail. Assuming that’s perfect, I can set the book for sale on Createspace and Amazon. Then comes the fun part of figuring out how to market one of these babies.