My Commonplace Book

After not having posted or read for a long time due to depression-induced inertia, I had a hard time coming back even when I felt better.

But thanks to momomom, who's been calling me and getting me outdoors, to lesliepear who sent me a nudge, goingdriftless who sent me a nudge, and to ms_interpret who sent me an email, I'm posting this message, and I'm going to make a concerted effort to go back to regular reading and posting and reconnecting with my LJ friends. It's not that I haven't thought of you all -- I have been, regularly. And it's not that I didn't care -- I miss you all! But I was becoming a hermit in RL also. And I'm ready for that to be over.

Another thing that finally pushed me into posting today is that I had a dream about ms_interpret last night. It was a very encouraging dream, too, and I wanted to tell her about it, so I planned to call her today. I thought about her a number of times, trying to figure out what would be a good time, considering the 3-hour time difference.

So I wasn't really surprised to get an email from her, even though I hadn't heard from her in months. Apparently my thinking about her so much got through to her. (I firmly believe this happens, and that it's not paranormal but some sort of completely natural process we just haven't discovered yet.)  When I called her she thought I was calling because I'd received her email -- but I told her no, she'd thought of sending me an email because I was thinking about her so much today!

After we caught up with each other I told her that it's always hard for me to get back to posting after a long break, because I feel guilty about not having kept up with my friends. "I care about them -- a lot," I said, but how can I possibly catch up with their journals after such a long time? I feel guilty and awkward just jumping into reading and posting comments without having been there for so long.

Shannon urged me to just post that I'm back, that I really want to know how my friends are, and that I should just say that if there's something you want me to know about (which to me is anything important that's been happening in your life, since I genuinely do care and have missed you all very much!) to tell me or point me to an entry. She said, "People understand. I see posts like that all the time."

So here is another post like that. I hope you understand!

I had a very long day yesterday (Sunday), but a very productive one, and it felt good to be productive for a change!

( Morning: Teaching kids about Pete Seeger )

All in all it went fairly well, and it felt good to be doing something for a change. I've been feeling less and less connected to the church, so I've been volunteering much less ... and of course the less I'm involved there, the less connected I feel. It's a vicious circle. This didn't break it, but it did remind me of how good it feels to be doing something.

( Afternoon: Official Photographer )

I think it was a really good service, but I didn't get too much out of it because I was giving most of my attention to what shots I needed to get, where I had to be to get tthem, what was coming next, and so forth. I've only photographed big events two or three times, so I still don't have much experience trying to get good pictures while trying to stay out of the way. But it was a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to getting the album done!

But I was exhausted when I finally got home! Today I had a lot of freecycle work to do, and I spent several hours this afternoon working on the photos (as good as they are, most of them need a little tweaking -- I forgot to set the white balance so the colors need adjusting in a lot of them, a few need cropping, and so on).

I also got a call from the vet's office in the late afternoon to tell my Friday's ashes have come in and I can pick them up any time. That threw me off stride, and I didn't do much that was useful after that. I needed some time to adjust to the idea of getting them, so I didn't go today. It's right near the Tuesday farmer's market, and I didn't go last Thursday, so I'll focus on the market and just stop by on the way to pick up Friday. That will give me something else to think about on the way there, and I'll get something I can munch on on the way home to sweeten the trip.

I ventured out yesterday for the first time since the sleet storm started on Tuesday.

( Chocolate )

( Birdseed )

( Hiking boots and Yaktrax )

I tried them out, and they're great! I highly recommend YakTrax to those of you who get snow and ice!

When I got home I found that my strategy of shoveling two strips in my parking space worked perfectly! I put ice melt in them before I left to get rid of the residue I hadn't been able to remove, and when I came back I backed the car in, and not only did the wheels fit right into the strips of clear pavement, I had a few inches on the left side to walk (well, sidle) in. I was very proud of myself for not only shoveling exactly the right places, but also for backing in so perfectly. I used to be terrible at backing up, especially after I stopped being able to turn my head and had to do it with only the mirrors. But I've gotten much better at it over the years.

The MoveOn.org house party I signed up for was cancelled --  not because of the weather, but because the host said something had come up that afternoon and she had to do something else. I was half disappointed because I really wanted to go, and half relieved that I wouldn't have to go out with the parking lot still so icy and worry about the condition of parking at the host's house. So I just stayed in and stayed cozy.

This morning eudyptes came over to pick up his Yaktrax, and while he was here he brought in the birdseed and filled the feeders for me. (Thank you, Ken!) They've been empty for months so I asked him to scatter a bunch of it on top of the snow, both for the ground feeders and to show the birds there was something there. Unfortunately the squirrels found it first -- within 15 minutes there were four of them sitting in the front yard going to town on the seeds.

( Good Deed for the Day )

I've been absolutely thrilled with the way my car has been getting in and out over the ice! I was apprehensive yesterday about whether I could even get out of the parking space -- the plow had shoved some snow in the way, and it had frozen solid. But the CR-V barely even hesitated, and went right over the big slippery lump! Backing in was the same, as was going out today, so I felt confident enough to pull straight in tonight instead of backing in. I'm glad I didn't pay the extra $1200 for all-wheel-drive. Since I'm retired I usually just opt not to go out when the roads are bad, and on the rare occasions I may have to (or choose to), it looks like my front-wheel-drive car will do just fine!

So I got a lot accomplished in the last few days and I'm feeling good about that!

This started out to be a request for help, but while I was messing around I managed to do it myself! 

Here's what I had written (except it didn't have the cute little emoticons because I was feeling frustrated):

Can someone help me write a filter for the AdblockPlus extension for Firefox? There's a page explaining how to do it, and it looks very easy for anyone that knows what they're doing ... which obviously doesn't include me, since I'm not able to make one that works!

I was looking at the new additions on snopes.com, but I wasn't seeing any pictures. Hmm. Why not? I tried disabling AdblockPlus. Yep, there they were. I recently updated it, and now it's blocking images there. It never did that before, but it's doing it now. So I need to add an exception. It was easy in my old AdSubtract program, but you have to be a programmer to do it in AdblockPlus!

So I clicked Help and found the page that tells you how to write a filter. Hmm ... it doesn't look that hard. I think I can do this. First, it has to be an exception because I want to permit something rather than block it, so it starts with @@. Okay, now, I don't want it to allow everything on snopes.com because they have ads, so I have to add an option to only allow pictures, not ads.

I studied the rules for filter options, and the example -- which wasn't terribly helpful -- and tried this:

@@snopes.com/*$image

Nope. study study study Hmm ... maybe it has to have the whole URL? So I tried this:

@@http://www.snopes.com/*$image

That didn't work either.

When neither of those worked, I studied the page some more, and couldn't think of anything else to try. I knew my LJ friends would help me out, so I started to write this post. I had already chosen the icon to post with:



But then when I was pasting in the first attempt, I looked at the examples again, and ...

What if I tried adding a wild card in front of the domain name, like this:

@@*snopes.com/*$image

BINGO! It worked!

( Musing about computer skills )

But I did accomplish this, and I'm very proud of myself! It doesn't mean I won't ever have to ask for help writing some other AdblockPlus filter -- or with lots of other computer-related things -- but I managed to figure it out this time! 

What a weekend! It went very, very well, but I'm exhausted.

Still, an awful lot happened and I'm determined to get it written up! I'll start with yesterday and work backward.

This Sunday was the annual music service at church, but I was too tired to go. The UU Passover Seder was taking place this afternoon and I organized it (along with Inge), and I was leading it (using the UU Haggadah I wrote). I was already worn out from everything else that went on and I knew I'd never make it if I went to church in the morning. So, regretfully, I skipped it. I was at the church at 3:30 this afternoon, and was delighted to see Inge arriving too, followed shortly by several others whom she had recruited to help set up. I made a quick trip to the supermarket to get a few last minute things we needed, and we were pretty close to being ready at the advertised starting time of 4:30. I had actually planned to start the Seder itself at 5:00, but by ten of everyone was seated and everything was ready, so I began.

( More about my UU Haggadah )

Considering that it was completely put together in only two weeks (long story), the Seder went beautifully -- even the last-minute details got taken care of! I had forgotten to get quarters to ransom the afikomen, and one person there had a pocket full of them. The woman next to me (who had done the mother's part and lit the candles) said something about Elijah during the meal, and I realized I had forgotten an extra cup for Elijah so I improvised by using the cup I had poured water from for the ceremonial handwashing. When I realized the kids were watching me closely during the meal I got the "mother's" husband to hide the afikomen -- he cagily took his 1-year-old grandson on a stroller tour around the room, just giving him a change of scene to keep him occupied ... and hiding a piece of the afikomen for each child who was there.

Everything else went perfectly! I explained ahead of time that they should follow the directions in the Haggadah and not anticipate -- for example, just because you pour a cup of wine doesn't mean it's time to drink it yet, wait until it says to drink it -- and they did beautifully! There were enough people who were familiar with the Seder to carry the songs -- even on the Hebrew verses of Dayenu there were a few people singing along with me, and nearly everyone lustily sang the chorus.

The meal was delicious, and a number of people had brought traditional Jewish dishes like herring in cream sauce, herring salad, tzimmes and kugel. There were coconut macaroons and bread pudding made with matzo among the desserts. I deliberately made the part of the Seder after the meal very short, because nobody wants to go back to having a long ceremony with a full tummy, and the children are getting very restless. It's not much more than the third cup of wine, opening the door for Elijah, and the fourth cup of wine. Then the Seder ends, we sing two short songs, and it's over.

I was really worn out by the end of the Seder, and I wished someone would say "Sunny, just go home, we'll take care of things." But nobody did, so I was one of the last to leave. I didn't push myself to work that hard, though -- at one point I stood halfway between the sanctuary and the kitchen with the three water pitchers in my hand and had a ten-minute conversation! I parceled out all the leftover wine and grape juice from the table and all the leftover juice and soda we had for drinks, so everyone who heeded my request to stay and help clean up got a partial bottle of something to take home.

But it was a good thing I stayed to make sure everything got taken care of -- someone had loaded the silverware in the dishwasher and washed it, but nobody had taken it out, dried it and put it away! The building is shared with a number of other congregations and groups, and we can't simply leave the dishwasher full of our stuff! I asked Inge if anyone had taken the silverware out of the dishwasher, and she said, "Huh?" She and Joel were the only ones left, and I left them with the pile of wet silverware to dry and put away, and went home.

The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.
                  —Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975), British historian and author

I just spent a few hours working on my photo site, and I now have several galleries updated and several "To Upload" folders on my own computer cleared out! The albums and sections that I worked on tonight are:

• Animals: Wild Creatures
  
• Art: Art in Nature
  
• Art: Patterns
  
• Birds: Swans, Geese and Ducks
  
• Birds: Waders and Raptors
  
• Cats: Val and Friday
  
• Family
  
• Friends

Next I have to start on Gardens, and see how far I can get. But I'm quitting for tonight.

That still doesn't get the galleries up to date -- there are still hundreds and hundreds of photos in the New Photos section, which means I uploaded them from the camera to the computer, but that's as far as they got. They still have to be sorted through; the good ones chosen; the chosen ones cropped, color corrected, or otherwise repaired if necessary; uploaded to the photo site; captions written and keywords added; and put in the correct order. I know I don't have to do all that, but that's the way I've been doing my photo site, and that's the way I want it to be, all nicely organized and captioned. And I haven't done any of that for the better part of a year.

But I want to clear out all the To Upload folders first, and at least I got a good start on that tonight, so I'm proud of myself. The To Upload subfolders I still have to clear out are:

• House and Gardens (about 25-30 photos of flower dating to =sigh= last April. They'll be seasonal, at least)
  
• Miscellaneous (around 30-40 photos of ... miscellaneous things -- this one will be really time-consuming because they all go in different places)
  
• Nature (I don't even want to know how many there are -- lots -- also dating back to April 2005)
  
• Travel (only 3, yay -- but I haven't been anywhere, so I don't know why they're in there ... but I'm not going to look now ... yes I am, two are of the Mormon Temple in Kensington and one is of the beach in Seaside Park, NJ)
  
• My church (about 30, from around Christmas of 2004)

Some of those may have already been uploaded to the web (some of the ones I cleared out tonight had been), but that actually makes it harder because I have to sort out which is which so I don't end up with duplicates, and some of them won't have been captioned or keyworded or anything.

And after all that, then I have to go back and work on the New Photos section. But I got started again, and that's the important part! I hope I can keep it up -- I love doing it. It's just one of the many things I enjoy that I've been too depressed and/or busy to do. Of course, doing that meant I didn't read my friends page since the weekend, and even then I was way behind. But I'll try to catch up tomorrow!

Good things: Today I had lunch with my longtime friend SC (who is moving to Florida this summer ); tomorrow is the quarterly church Women's Luncheon Group at a Chinese place; Thursday I can clean the house because Friday afternoon CW is coming over and it's the first time she's ever been here so I want it to look nice.