Title 6 (Taxation) is staring at me, just begging to have its headings checked. But I’m tired of the Indiana Code for now. And I get to go home in 15 minutes.

The amazing thing is that we actually have work to do again…lots and lots of it in orderly piles. I love this kind of thing: there is a very specific order to the steps that need to be taken in order to make sure that the Code is ready to go. You don’t have to figure out what to do, because it’s very simple. Once in awhile (well, more often than that), my brain loves not having to work very hard and this work satisfies my inner anal-ness. The question is: do you get to list the Indiana Code on a CV as a publication?

I also, at Julesapunk’s suggestion, bought Emergency Sex at lunch. I’ve only read a few pages into it, but I can already tell that I’m going to have to make hard choices between reading it and finishing her graduation present. I think I need to call that punk tonight, because she’s going to be the designated Peace Corps volunteer for my godmother’s sixth graders. They’ll send her letters and learn all about Niger…I think it’s going to be awesome, as it has been in the past with other volunteers. Anyway, she wants a poster for the classroom!

And in a final wrap-up, I think I got lucky and inherited my mother’s cholesterol. Given my family history, this is a very, very good thing. But, I’m getting tired of going running and I need to find another form of physical activity in which I can participate, considering that I don’t own a membership to any sort of health facility or own a bike (although I may borrow one). Maybe I should start the skating again. I miss it.

Thbbbbb, blogger.

Thanks to Ryan, I now know that this whole template thing wasn’t my fault!

Actually it’s all bloggers fault, for some reason they have introduced “div style=”clear:both;” (ed: I’ve had to mess up the formatting to make this show up as text) to the start of every post. The only reason I believe is to ensure that when people use their new image uploader is doesn’t make the blogs have the posts continuely aligning left of the image, however they’ve managed to break more blogs because of it. Hopefully blogger will remove this code shortly and let people choose to have it if they want.

Chicago

Ok, so the trip to Chicago was a complete success and I didn’t get killed on the way up or the way back! Woot! We left at noon from Indianapolis and managed to get stuck in the middle of the rush hour. Which sucked. And I kept wanting (and sometimes actually going for it) to get off the interstate and take my chances on the streets of Chicago. I made Duchess nervous. Anyway, the trip home took and hour and a half less time than the trip up and I even took Lake Shore Drive! Go me! And the toll road wasn’t scary. I’m not saying that its a trip that I’d do everyday, but it was fun.

So, dropped off Duchie and made the easy trip to j00j’s house where I got to meet Robbie! The exciting greyhound! Who I should have taken a photo of! But he is soft and huge and very sweet and it was exciting to finally meet him. And j00j’s family is very cool. Her brother was someone I hadn’t met, but he has very good taste in DVDs. He also enjoys British shows and has Yes, Prime Minister (which I do not). Evanston is not as snooty as Summit, NJ (home of Diana, the college roommate), but way cuter and more trendy. And right on the lake! I really enjoyed wandering around the downtown, which is within a very easy walking distance of j00j’s house.

On Saturday we went downtown to the Art Institute, where I had never been before. I really liked its accessibility and I’m going to give them mad props for their huge impressionist collection. (One of the most famous is the Sunday in the Park with George painting and they had a whole room of Monets.) Sadly, I feel like I’ve moved on from just needing to see Impressionists (unlike two years ago when I dragged Diana to the Met) and their collection of older European art wasn’t “sock blowing.” They did have lots of El Greco work (with their amazing neon colors, but no “anti-Spock” hands”) and a few of the sort of Caravaggio-ish paintings with the amazing and dramatic light, which I really love. Ooooh, and some great portraits. I didn’t used to like portraits, but now I’ve come to realize how amazing they can be if done well. The Art Institute also had several sketches for larger paintings, which are always fascinating. Anyway, the long and short of this blathering paragraphs is that we had a really great time! That evening we met up with Duchess and her boyfriend to have dinner in Evanston and hear about their adventures at the Taste of Chicago, which was in the park right next to the Art Institute (I had also wanted to go see the new Gehry bandstand, but there was no way that we were fighting those crowds.)

Sunday we went to the Baha’i House of Worship, the North American incarnation of the Baha’i houses that are scattered around the world. This is a pretty amazing building, decorating inside and out with elaborate carving that is at one time Persian and Celtic and incorporates both Baha’i motifs and symbols from the other major world religions. When you see it, it’s no wonder that it took nearly 50 years to build. We sat upstairs for awhile to read a prayer for Jules before she leaves for Niger (only the secondmost unliveable country in the world!) and I wanted to center, as well. (I miss my Quakers!) There were so many visitors, too, which suprised me. We went downstairs later and joined a tour, which turned out to be “An Introduction to Baha’is 101.” We wandered the gardens a bit afterwards, too. And took pictures for our Jules. Here are a few and the rest are at the other link:

Complete Set

Afterwards we went to the camping store in downtown Evanston and I ended up buying a pack. It wasn’t the one that I originally thought I’d get, but that one didn’t fit me all that well. I’m pleased to have the whole bag buying thing out of the way! Came home, crashed in bed and didn’t wake up until after I should have already been at work…a great way to start the week.

Did I win?

I still haven’t got a clue what was wrong and I even tried writing my own template (that attempt did, I will confirm, go down in flames. But, I’ve adapted one of the Blogger templates and have gotten to mostly look like the old one. I’ll probably be tweaking, but this is good enough for now (am I the only one who thinks that the “leave a comment” bar does not need to be that big?) I like using the percents for widths, though, because it doesn’t leave too much blank space, no matter how big your window. I know, I’m late to the css party.

I heard on NPR this morning that Apple’s released a new version of iTunes. Luckily, I had already decided to bring my computer to work so that I could go to the coffeeship after work to upload the photos from the Baha’i House of Worship this weekend. I’ll try and put some of them up tomorrow, along with the massively overdue update from the great trip to Chicago.

This isn’t perfect, but it’s closer to my old look. I still don’t know what happened and I’ll use any free time I have this afternoon to reinsert the links. Thanks for your help, Kristine!

This is still under reconstruction. Despite Kristine’s help, I couldn’t figure it out (and it happened with lots of the ready-made Blogger templates, too.

Huh?

I can’t figure out why the gaps.

Ok, here’s the airplane dilemma:

• Stick with the current ticket and arrive in London after both my registration date and my course induction meeting, or
• Buy a new set of tickets (total cost~$900+) in order to arrive in time for both of these events, which seem fairly important.
• Stop being the idiot who screws up plane tickets. I don’t know what it is with this flight.

In other news, I’m leaving work early today in order to drive up to Chicago with Duchess. j00j and I are going to tear up the town, quite literally, I’m sure. Preliminary plans: Baha’i House of Worship, Art Institute (to think that I’ve never visited!), Viennese coffee & desserts. Others, I’m sure will follow. Anyway, I think it’ll be a fun weekend!

Yesterday was a lazy day. I walked about a mile at lunch, two (pretty slowly) at night with my godmother (who, btw, keeps running into my high school/middle school friends or their parents at random points in the day), then a few lunges and a very short jog as I caught back up after said lunges. Oh well, I think we’re going to be doing a lot of walking this weekend (why drive to the HoW when it’s only two miles away?)!

Eeeeks!

Today almost ended before it started.

I walked into work, turned on my computer and tried to access the internets. Upon several failures, I was made aware that the air conditioning had failed in the server room overnight and fried parts of the server. Another division got sent home entirely (which I was soooo ready to happen here, although we haven’t been working all week, anyway). I had even decided to drive to Richmond and get my stuff!

But then the internets were resurrected, although I guess the important bits of the network are still down (i.e. the randomly-lettered drives where things are saved).

I forgot the best news of yesterday. My godsister (I live with her parents) has a nine-month-old baby boy and she was very recently diagnosed with stage IV metatastic melonoma. She had treatments last Monday through Thursday and then had to stay in the hospital until she was stable enough to come home. Which she did last night, so she gets to spend some quality time with little Sam, I hope. It’s also going to mean that my godparents will get to have something of a normal schedule. I did worry about them last week.

There was talk of her hiding out at our house today. She’s got a million wonderful friends and they all want to help and cheer her up, etc. They don’t quite seem to understand that she’s literally too exhausted to feed herself, let alone give Sam a bottle. The last thing she can handle is 10,000 people calling and stopping by, no matter how wonderful they or their intentions are at heart. That’s tough and it’s hard to turn people away. Hence, the hiding. On the upside, I haven’t seen her (or Sam) since the Sunday before Father’s Day and I wouldn’t mind saying hi if she’s at our house.

Anyway, just wanted to note my “yay”-ness.