Catchy Name Needed

I know some people have seen this article already - and the thing is, I don't disagree with a lot of what she says. But I went to Galveston right after I read it yesterday, and I thought, "Hell, this place isn't dead." It's going to be a different city for a while, and it may end up a smaller city, but it ain't gone just yet.

I drove down Broadway, and there's still a ton of trash piled up out there, but apparently that's because Broadway is technically a state highway and the city isn't allowed to pick up trash there. (It's been in the paper, lately, which is why I know the answer to this. The state said they were held up by having to award contracts for the trash pickup and it will be done "soon".) But things are clean behind the trash piles, for the most part, and the stoplights are all back on and the businesses are starting to reopen in force. In general I was pleasantly surprised.


I went to Galveston because I had a check to put in the bank (a very belated estate check) and then my boss kinda did one of those, "Well, while you're going..." things, and I ended up going by the office. Which ended up being rather heartening, too, really. The rumor lately has been that our building wasn't going to be ready to move back into until January, and I'm sure there's some reason for that that I didn't see - but honestly, our office looked fine. The elevators were working (the front ones, anyway - I didn't try the ones in the back of the building and I suspect they are not functional) and the a/c was on and the toilets were working, although the bathroom lights were off, for some reason. And most of the plants were alive, rather amazingly, after all this time. I think a couple of my co-workers have been up there at various times and have watered them.

Well, anyway, I want to be able to enjoy working at home for a bit, before we have to go back, so I'm not trying to rock the boat. And like I said, I'm sure that for some reason the building is not approved to be open. But from the looks of things it's perfectly okay, at least in our area.

I have a new car! Woot! I actually don't go get the money from State Farm until tomorrow but I spent more than we're going to get, anyway - I decided that even with Carmax, who is supposed to be on guard for these things (such as water damage, I mean), I don't feel comfortable buying a used car right now. So I have a brand new green 2009 Corolla with ABS brakes and side airbags and all other kinds of bells and whistles. And a gray interior, yay! (I am just not a fan of beige.) Tight credit, smight credit - the dealer and the credit union were falling all over themselves to give us low interest rates. However, we took the somewhat-higher rate the credit union gave us - still awfully low - and a $500 rebate from Toyota instead.

Pictures of the car to come. Instead, here is a picture of my current workplace:

Alright, they finally posted and said that there will be no classes for at least a week and normal clinical activities will not resume for at least two weeks. That's not to say they couldn't call us back earlier, but at least a week seems likely. So unless we hear something in the morning to stop us, we are probably headed to Ohio sometime tomorrow. We're just going to drive on up there and take our time (going, at least) and kill two birds with one stone. It doesn't sound like the power will be back on in Galveston any time soon and right now there's no water, either, so home isn't liveable even if everything turns out to be okay there. Hopefully they'll give us 48 hours on having to return and we can get back in that time if we really need to. (It's two loooong days or 3 shorter ones, from here to Ohio.)

We went to Wal-Mart and looked at the laptops and as usual with Wal-Mart and electronics, I got frustrated because they were all locked up and stomped out. We'll have to find a Best Buy somewhere, or maybe an Office Depot or something.

It's hard to relax with a hurricane breathing down your neck, as it were. We have been reading up on various storms this morning - this article (which also talks about my place of employment) mentions the 1900 storm, which a lot of people know about. Less well-known nowadays is Hurricane Carla in 1961, a very large category 4/5 which came in at Matagorda Bay and did a lot of damage in Galveston. I knew a lot about Carla, but I didn't understand until now how very big it was. I don't actually remember it - I was a toddler - but it's part of the family lore. I may have told that story before, but if not I'll have to explain later, I don't have time now. I still have to work.


Later: the new tracks seem to be shifting our way. Damn. My boss is gone to a meeting about it so we may hear something new when she gets back.

Huh. An Austin doctor and his wife gave 55 million dollars to the UT School of Music, and the whole school is being renamed in their honor.  (I assume somebody did the math about how much it costs to rename a school - seems like that would be a substantial amount, right there.) I have to admit that the "Butler School of Music" (technically it's the "Hisfirstname and Herfirstname Butler School of Music", but you know that's not actually what it'll get called in normal usage) does sound fancier than just the plain ol' UT School of Music, though. And such things probably have an impact in recruiting and so on. Maybe they've just been waiting for the right donor to come along to give them a chance to do it.

There has been an ongoing discussion in my department about the phrase "herding cats" - most of my co-workers weren't familiar with it, which is a bit odd because it seems like I've been hearing it for years. It's an interesting concept to try to explain - "Well, cats aren't herd animals, right? So what happens when you try to herd them?" I forgot all about the Super Bowl ad from a few years back but one of my co-workers came across it. I'm putting the link here because it's still a funny ad. (And it worked for me so hopefully you won't get rickrolled.)

Oh, I'm about to find out for myself about the health of the Houston real estate market - the townhouse is going on the market in the next few days. If they post pictures online I'll put up a link. It's just a little two-bedroom townhouse but it looks pretty good. (mslilly- who I think is the only person on my friendslist who lives in that area - you know anybody who's looking for a townhouse in Clear Lake?)

I really like this one a lot. Apparently this has to do with a Japanese folk story about wisteria turning into butterflies, or hatching butterflies, or something like that. I'm not sure what those hourglass-looking things are supposed to be, though. (Anybody got any ideas?)




And I think I linked to the pictures the other day, but I'm linking again, because there are more of them now, and besides, I put a lot of work into taking them, and attempting to match them up with the right names, and all that. I'm not nearly done yet, either.


The cold front finally came through about noon today. It didn't really get cold at all, although you could tell the difference - but I think it will be pretty cool in the morning, by south Texas standards, at least!

I have been working on a Spreadsheet From Hell at work - 60,000 lines or so that have to have things done to them manually. The end of that is finally in sight, though - I've been working on it sporadically for about the last 10 days. Now I just have to find my boss a nonstop flight to Pensacola that doesn't cost $900, which may be a harder job than the spreadsheet.

1. We watched Shawn of the Dead tonight. And a commentary that I dont think we had listened to before.

2. I have an optometrist appointment in the morning. I also have to call the lawyer and find out about the tax ID business. And we have a candidate coming for lunch with the group, and I am normally included in those lunches. So I will be busy. I'm probably going to have to take a day or part of a day off to deal with the estate stuff, but I think tomorrow is too soon, anyway. Wednesday or Thursday would be better. I need to do it this week, though, because next week the big budget push is starting at work, and it'd be much harder to get the time off.

Well, I'm back at work again. I can't say I'm totally thrilled to be here, but at least it's quiet and there's not a ton of work piled up on my desk like I was afraid there might be. My back's hurting a little bit but not too bad.

Rob & I went Friday and met with the credit union's investment guru - we couldn't do anything concrete since we don't have the damn Letters Testamentary, still, but it made me feel better just to talk it over. The credit union guy said the same thing that the lawyer did, which is that we'll probably come out better in the end if we leave the bulk of the money in the trust. They can set up the trusts at the credit union, which will work well for Paula, too, since the credit union we belong to is the UT-affiliated one and so they have branches all over Austin, anyway. She can either leave her part of the money in the trust fund or take it out, as she desires, but at least it'll be convenient for both of us to get to.

Saturday we went over to Mom's and I started putting labels on things that I wanted or various people have told me they wanted. I think next week I'm actually going to have to start putting things into boxes that I want to keep, since Art's daughter/daughter-in-law are still on the garage sale kick -- and I don't really want to stop them since it's making things easier for me, in the end. We went to the grocery store after that, and I was totally exhausted by the time I got home, so I decided I'd better stay home and rest yesterday. And I did. (Assuming playing Auto Assault half the day counts as resting.)


(Almost baseball season! yay!)

Inaya with horns
Originally uploaded by Mellicious.

One more GuildWars picture, because I spent half my day collecting these: the hats for the end of the Wintersday celebrations. I particularly like the reindeer horns. There was also a jester hat, your normal santa hat, and a "Freezie Crown" - which was a whole snowman head, complete with top hat. (I got up at 8:00 this morning to get that one, and I can't say I was thrilled with it. I should've bothered to research hats first!)

The other things we did was go see "Happy Feet" - which was cute. It had sort of a ham-handed environmental message, but it wouldn't be so obvious to kids, who are after all its intended audience. I expected something more... cartoonish, I guess. The penguins were very realistic, for the most part. You know, except for the dancing.

Turns out we don't have to go to work tomorrow - national day of mourning and all that. I don't remember getting that when Reagan died, but maybe we did and I've just forgotten. My boss said we could go in or not, but when I talked to her again she said nobody else was coming to speak of, so I said I might just go in for a while and read my e-mail and stuff. I live closer to work that most of my co-workers do. (And if I work, I get to take that much time off later!)

I made black-eyed peas after we got home, so we damn well better have good luck this year. I think we deserve it.

It was actually chilly outside today. It was around 80 a couple of days ago, but it's somewhere in the 50s today, which means I actually wore a coat this morning. In Galveston, this is a big deal, the first coat day of the season. (Some years it comes considerably later than this.)

Galveston is due to be invaded by some 300,000 bikers this weekend - it's something called the Lone Star Rally and it's been going on in Galveston for several years now and seems to be growing exponentially. Coincidentally, I am going to be out of town a good chunk of the weekend, which seems fairly fortunate. I have no problem with bikers but any of those times when there's an extra quarter of a million people on the island tend to get a little crazy.

I am going up to Houston for the International Quilt Festival, which I do every year, but this year for the first time I am spending the night. A couple of years ago they built a Hilton adjoining the convention center, and the temptation to book someplace to be able to go and collapse was just too much.

I know most non-quilters seem to have trouble even imagining what a quilt festival is like, but let me assure you, a lot of you artier types would like it a lot. They have literally thousands of quilts on display - both traditional and art quilts, and even a certain amount of clothing and dolls and so forth. Then there are the vendors, which go on for 20 aisles or so. They sell fabric, yes - but also antique quilts and all sort of sewing stuff and beads and gifts and well, you name it. If they think it will appeal to women - because a good 95% of the attendees are women, I would say - then somebody will be selling it. There are also classes and lectures and things that go on all week, and which usually fill up way, way early. I have never bothered with those.

So it's huge and really tiring, and I have developed this habit of taking hundreds of pictures to post online, so spending the night and going for two days sounded like a good plan. Last year I spent a whole day taking pictures and never even really looked at the vendors at all - I didn't really need to buy anything, god knows, but still I felt like I missed an awful lot. So - two days. Expensive (well, sort-of-expensive) hotel room. Camera and lots and lots of batteries. I'll get to test the limits of my memory card at last - maybe. (I have a really big memory card. That might be another one of those things I couldn't really afford. As is the camera itself, probably!)


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We are going to start having the option to do "compressed schedules" at work - things like working 4 10-hour days every other week and having a day off. No way I am doing 10-hour days - it doesn't make any sense for my job really, anyway - but my boss & I discussed a modified one where I would have a half-day off every week, which would be nice. I'm trying to decide if I could manage to get to work at 7:30 - then I could work 9 hours and still get off at 5:30, which wouldn't be bad. (I could also theoretically switch to 30-minute lunches, would be another option.) All that is still up in the air, though. We're not even implementing it till at least after Thanksgiving, it sounds like, anyway.

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I mentioned Holidailies yesterday - it makes me a little sad to look at that website. There's nothing sad about Holidailies, you understand, it's my entries there's a problem with. I'm up towards the top of the list of participants because I actually did update every day - but all those entries are gone. They were on Diary-X, and Diary-X blew up, for those of you who don't already know the sad, sad story. There was some sort of incident with a crash and bad backups, and everything that was there is just gone, gone, gone. (I may have drafts of some of those entries. To be quite honest, I haven't really checked. But I know that I would tinker with my entries after I put them up and I never would bother to save them again. So there's definitely no record of exactly what I had up over there. I even tried to look in the Internet Archives - whatever they're called - and nada.) I guess I should have learned from that. Do I have good copies of what I've written on Livejournal? Heck no.columbinahas an echo of his entries on his personal website, and I really should do something like that, but the odds that I will are pretty damn low.