Writing and doing stuff for the website, I mean. Even with my computer desk adjusted properly and the fantastic Aeron chair a colleague of my Beloved's gave me, I still finish the day achy and beaten. If only I could get this stuff done while riding my bike, walking, swimming... something. I need to move. This is starting to get to me.

But, enough of my whining! Today, I am grateful for GeekaChicas because soloreader's article Inkheart:One for the Readers has inspired me to at least hit the video store. A fun adventure for the whole family, with the added bonus of a buff and shirtless Paul Bettany.

***

I'm inches away from posting the next bit of HMOWK to the MA list, which is good. I'm also quite, quite close to the end, which is even better. I'd forgotten how much I love finishing things! The novel is coming along well, too, only I've written a bit at the pool (in notebooks because taking the laptop seemed a phenomenally bad idea), which means transcribing. I hate transcribing. The work is actually improved by it because I edit as I transcribe, but I still loathe it.

I promised the boys some time at the pool today, too, so I'd best get to work.

I was feeling guilty, being eyebrow-deep in pre-moving work, neglecting the website a bit. (We've produced 12-15 bags of garbage, so far, not including what fit in the bin they pick up weekly, plus about seven large boxes and bags of stuff to donate to charity, plus stacks of books to list on Half.com, etc. So it has been an intensive effort, I tell you.)

So I go over to GeekaChicas, planning to finally put in a plug for the excellent Geek Girl's Guide to Travel by our own jedi_diplomat, posting as A Nonny Mouse.

What did I find? The visitor counter was up over 150, which for a Saturday is kind of phenomenal, especially one after a week of webmistress promotional neglect. *shame*

Usually when there's a spike in hits, I can attribute it the self-promotional efforts of of someone on the team. They usually tell me, "I posted a link to [blank] on such-and-such community/forum/bulletin board." I suspect this may be due to the recent coverage of Comic Con and the uproar amongst our target demographic brought on by the clueless and insulting LA Times article The Girl's Guide to Comic Con .

But still. WOW. In the time it's taken me to write this, the "guests" counter has gone up well over 200!

I have work to do, and I'd better get to it, but I'm going to be puzzling over this one. :) Wow.

You may recall some time ago my son hosted a zombie party in order to make his video book report on The Zombie Survival Guide. Well, this is what came of it.

It's amazing how much the kids got into it!

I spent most of the day doing stuff related to the end of school -- volunteering, doing the Field Day thing. Also, I shoveled out Wee Boy's room and it is now clean. He understands that the upkeep is his responsibility now, so I'm hoping he's going to stick with it. Big Boy has ever since about that age, but you never know.

Then, I helped the kids with homework (plus finishing touches on a project for one of them) and fed them. I had to rush out to get the hubby at the airport about ten minutes before my friend who was to sit with them arrived, leaving Big Boy in charge. It went fine, evidently.

I must've had a following wind, because I made it to the airport on time, and his flight was on time. We were a few minutes late to dinner with a lovely HP saleswoman and some other print industry customers.

You know, it's been a loooong time since salespeople have taken us to a swanky meal, so it felt odd, even though it was once commonplace. The food was tasty, and everyone was nice.

Today I have to pay bills and pack, pick the boys up from school early, pick up our friends and then drive down and get the hubby at HP. From there we drive to New Orleans (I hope to be able to edit Big Boy's zombie movie on the way). The company crawfish boil is Saturday, and we hope to maybe take a ghost tour in the evening. Sunday will be consumed by the drive back.

The website is going to be a tad neglected this weekend, but it's just as well since the Azrul folks will be trying to debug the new software update for me.

So, what are you guys doing this weekend?

Whatever the doc gave me sure was potent. My throat and nasal passages are back to normal size (lots of the soft parts inside my head had begun to look like alarmingly over-inflated balloon animals). I no longer feel like I'm swallowing needles.YAY! That was also pretty much true yesterday, but I was still muzzy in the brains.

You know how when you've got a fever you do things that seem reasonable at the time only to go back later and think, "What the heck was doing?" It's kind of like having a split personality. "But I don't remember putting canned goods in the freezer!" Yeah, I know.

***

The software I use for uploading stuff to the website just got an upgrade! That is awesome, and I hope the new interface will be easier. Except the "Write New Entry" button has vanished from the front-end dashboard. I've got a call in about that. Oh, and the feed has been automatically reset to show only the first 300 characters, so that needs to be fixed again. *sigh* It will be fixed soon, I hope. I can always go back to the old version.

***

Counting today's little blessings:

1). On the MA list, someone responded to my post in the "Remember the Love!" thread like this:

Just to add - I think you are one of the most talented writers in the whole group. I hope you keep posting.

*sniffle* I really needed that today.

2). Also, I really needed help wrestling the ginormous dog food bag into my cart at BJ's. And you know what? A little old lady stopped to help. She couldn't help me with the bag, but she held my cart still so I didn't have to chase it all over. She said, "I've been in that position before, and men just walk right by you." LOL!

3). Went for my long overdue eye exam, in which the doctor once again held forth on how amazing it is that I am able to see so well now. Before my cataract surgery four years ago, my prescription was -17 which he said he'd seen maybe ten otherwise healthy patients with eyesight that bad in his 30 years of practice. That didn't make a big impression on me, because my sister's pre-op vision was even worse than that, in her better eye.

He told me about a colleague of his who started Optometry Giving Sight who met a boy in Africa, who was in a school for the blind, with vision like mine. Glasses made a huge difference in his life. He got an education and earned a full scholarship to University in England, where he is now studying to be an eye surgeon.

I didn't think about it. I didn't realize just how blessed I am simply to be able to see, to drive my car, to have gotten a regular education.

I did not earn any of these blessings, but today I was able to take a moment and appreciate them.

Big Boy was up last night throwing up (poor woobie) and Wee Boy wet the bed. *sigh* It was a rough night, and I know both of them are missing their daddy in a big way. I do, too. We were spoiled or ages having him around all the time, but I do kind of have the hang of flying solo, now. Mostly. When I'm not sick.

Did I mention I was sick? Slight fever, flu-ish symptoms, cough, aches, gastro-intestinal badness. Don't go all "Eeek! Swine Flu!" on me. From what I've read (and what Sara, my BFF who happens to be a physician, has said) I think that may have been the sort of flu William had that scared us all so badly. But he's fine, and I'm fine. I'm an indifferent housekeeper and we live by the five second rule, so we all have solid immunity to a wide variety of things. ;)

In short, I feel sicker physically, but emotionally I'm quite chipper. It's all good.

***

In GeekaChicas news, the new stuff includes an appeal to the entertainment gods for Wolverine not to suck by yourprecious, truly giggle-worthy play-by-play of the Star Trek Captains Poll by abrynne and the next installment of Geek Dance Party: The Phantom Menace -- Pearce's guide to geek dating. (The Phantom Menace is advice to the ladies, I believe.) I <3 her for that, and I think it's something worth talking about.

Oh, and today-- when I was feeling badly enough that I wondered how I could manage to concentrate long enough to upload a bunch of text and do all the fiddling the stuff needs sometimes -- my fabulous friends uploaded a total of FOUR articles. Not all are published yet (so as to give each offering its time at the top), but several even had pictures in them, and links. Those are things I usually do (and rightly so, for business reasons, depending on the nature of the article), but it was a blessing that I didn't need to today. I'd have messed them up if I'd tried.

I will take that as a sign of the benevolence of the universe. It was such a blessing, I could have wept. I didn't, though, because I was happy. I even wrote for a bit, which oddly enough seems to be something I can do feverish and still do fairly well (if you don't sweat the spelling).

Life is Sweet.

So, I've hit my head against the enormity of what I don't know on every thing I've tried to do today. Tried to fix the LJ feed of the website - couldn't even find the place to go to change the settings I needed to change. Found a guide to do it, but my menus didn't have the items listed in the examples. So, I set that aside to wait for assistance this evening.

Great, I'll just work on a video. Well, Premiere pro has a bajillion source settings, and you have to pick one in order to start a project. So half the files I wanted to use can't import into the project because they are the wrong number of pixels or something, I don't even know. Tried Windows moviemaker (not as versatile, but not as picky). Codecs missing for certain files. *headdesk*

I think this is the Universe telling me that today is a writing day, a "Let's not fuss over that, day" a "Website? What website?" day.

Although there is a new article up by jedi_diplomat called "What is with that Penguinn Anyway?" about operating systems. She really knows her stuff. :)

My head hurts, and I'm ... grumpy. Not my usual effervescent self, let's say. I thought it might do me some good to list positives about this situation:

1). I have not yet stabbed anyone with kitchen utensils

2). My dear friend L. took me to lunch and ordered a whole coke just so I could have a couple sips and be something like a nice person for a little while.

3). The weather is nice.

4). I have enough articles to post on the website that I can take a little time and deal with my broken head. Maybe. Or maybe I'll just say the heck with you, give me my frakking coffee!

Or not.

I can be strong. :) I almost fell asleep in the car pool line at school, but I know this will pass. Sleep-deprivation, at least, is ultimately self-correcting.

***

One thing I know for sure-- The writing has to be re-established among my top priorities. Sitting on my website constantly refreshing to see how many people were looking at it at once was entertaining for a day, but life must go on. *smirk*

My BFF Sara called me last night. That's not a big deal-- we talk every day or so in one way or another -- but this was extra sweet. She was falling asleep standing up (and when she reaches her "I've been awake long enough today" limit, she literally falls asleep and you can't get her up to the bed without drastic measures -- like she's a grown-up woman version of a kitten, falling asleep in mid-leap), but called me anyway to tell me that she'd reserved the "GeekaChicas" name all over the place. Twitter, various group and list services, stuff like that, which I had not got around to doing.

It was so sweet and unexpected, and me feel all warm and loved. :) I'm going into this web-mogul (har!) thing barely knowing what I'm doing, so it's uber-cool to have savvy friends looking out for me. :D

***

I signed up with ThinkGeek's affiliate program, which is awesome because it's a great site (my boys are always stealing the catalogs when they come, and I find them hidden under their pillows or stuffed in their backpacks). It's where I got Big Boy his sonic screwdriver and psychic paper.

At the hubby's urging, I also signed up to be an affiliate for J-List a site that sells all kinds of cool Japanese culture stuff and gadgets. I will, however, have to be careful what advert packages I use, on account of they do have some "R" rated adverts that, while gorgeous, might put me in violation of the adult content agreements I have with other advertisers. *sigh* I think the yaoi banners I've seen have all been tame enough, but they also sell adult anime video games. (I am aware of the existence of such animals, but I've never actually seen one. What I've heard leads me to believe that most are somewhat demeaning to women, and sometimes involve underage elements and such -- both are huge squicks for me personally.) In any case, they have banners for Japanese snacks, PG manga and gadgets, all of which are very pretty and interesting (plus, their gizmos are crazy cheap).

***

I see my Port-A-Doctor today. I say "Port-A-Doctor" because he's small. It's a corollary to the Port-A-Hottie Phenomenon. ;) Wish me luck!

It occurs to me that perhaps I should have been less cryptic about my health. Both my parents died of issues related to a fairly common genetic disease called polycystic kidney disease. The odds of me having this disease are much higher than the odds of me not having it, and I've pretty much always assumed I'd have to keep an eye on kidney function. There were some indicators in my bloodwork that maybe my kidneys were not doing so hot, which was why I went to the specialist yesterday. I'm going to have some imaging done to confirm the diagnosis, but I'll be way surprised if it isn't PKD.

That said, it isn't as though I have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. It means I'll probably need to make for certain I don't have any more babies, because that is hard on the kidneys, but that was pretty much off the table anyway.

So, really other than confirming what I've already known most of my life, this isn't a big deal. It is a tad creepy to pretty much know the odds-on favorite for how you are going to die, but death isn't the boogeyman. I mean, we're all gonna go sometime. *wink*

***

After having a huge conniption about website stuff this morning, things are back on track. I thought I had uncovered a deal-breaker of a flaw in the blogging module we'd chosen for the website. The interface is designed to ignore copy/pasted code, in order to prevent people from ruining their blogs by accidentally posting malicious code. WTF? That's like making desk chairs with built-in Depends because some of your clients might have bladder control problems.

I had a cow. My head asploded and the neck-stump went "MOOOO!" Fortunately, it seems that the advantage of going with upstart web developers is that they are very responsive to your needs, especially when they realize that an asinine and arbitrary "safeguard" is likely to make their customers' heads asplode.

I believe I have found a work-around, but I am still hopeful that there is another solution that will allow me to make full use of Amazon Affiliates' shiny buttons. For a while there I thought I was going to have to ditch the module and start over with something else, but it looks like we can roll out this weekend -- or at least before the end of the month. That's not bad at all.

Plus, I think the link I put in the Criminal Minds video on YouTube has resulted in some traffic, since Spencer Reid is now well ahead of Alec Hardison in the Favorite Fictional TV Geek poll.

***

In other news, I now have a driver that will let me capture video with my webcam, which means the next video project should hit the ground running.