It's been way too long since I updated this blog!  So many things have changed!!!!  The big news is that I'm out of work and enjoying the hell out of the hot and wonderful summer that Seattle is having this year!  I am looking forward to new work; and ideally I'll find some that starts in September.

I've been out of work since the middle of April.  It was an extremely busy time, both at work and personally and I feel like I'm still doing a little catch up now.  In April, Tom's "trout" showed up for the first time; or at least we documented them for the first time.  We've been keeping the trout away mostly but every so often they show up.

Our hot tub cover was finally delivered and it works perfectly.  I got our taxes done in a timely manner.

I had stopped running the last month of work because work was too busy for me to take real lunch breaks. I gained back all the weight I had lost when I was running - it is funny how it can take MONTHS for me to take it off, but only a month for me to put it back on.

I couldn't bring myself to hurt my feet like that again - by running with the weight back on; so instead I found another exercise program:  Pilattes for Weightloss.  I enjoyed the hour workouts almost daily for about 3 months.  Unfortunately, they don't work for losing weight.  I'll have to find something more aerobic.

I removed my "mailto" links from the entire site and replaced them with a contact form page.

So much to do, never enough time!  My list of things I want to get to looks like this:

1. Get Mailman working for Seattle LinuxChix
2. Refactor my home page so that the layout is controlled with CSS instead of tables
3. Set up all my links pages so they pull the links up from flatfiles or a database, to reduce work when I CRUD (create, read, update, delete) links.
4. Set up a DNS server

My friends Elic and Sue are moving to Minneapolis.  My friend Robin was recently diagonosed with Multiple Sclerosis.  Her first flare up was so bad she was hospitalized on the stroke floor.  She couldn't talk, chew, had difficulty swallowing; she couldn't walk or grasp things with her hands.  Now she is home with a wheelchair and walker.  I've been helping her out some.

Over the last weekend, Tom and I went together to "Code Camp" at the Washington State University in Vancouver.  Vancouver Washington is an unexpectly beautiful small city and the WSU campus in Vancouver has a similar feeling to me as UC Santa Cruz.  The campus is adorned with interesting sculptures, rolling hills, large expenses of grass and walkways between buildings, and the architectural marvel of the "two mountain fountain"; a fountain in the center of the campus. You can walk into the center of this fountain, and if you do, you can view 2 mountains at 90 degrees apart directly through the pillars of the fountain.

In addition to the magnificent setting, Code Camp itself was LOTS of fun and very informative.  Tom went to see Scott Hanselman's presentation of PowerShell, while I attended Lucas Carlson's presentations of Ruby on Rails and Ajax.  I wished I could have done both!  But this was my first opportunity to expose myself to Ruby and I couldn't pass up that chance because it was highly recommended to me by someone who understands exactly what I like best about programming and what I like to do with it (and he was right).  Now I think I'll have to learn Ruby, too.  There don't seem to be many employers looking to hire people who know Ruby yet (and the few that are looking to hire Ruby coders include Ruby as one item in a list of 5 other languages they want their coders to know), but I think there will be more demand for Ruby coders soon.

If I get a chance, I'll definitely attend Code Camp again.  It was a blast.  Several prominent developers, including Ward Cunningham were there.  It was possible to just listen in and learn a lot about coding standards and upcoming technologies.

Presentations were 1.25 hours long with a 15 minute break in between, which I found to be just about perfect.  After the presentations, there was a barbecue (decent food, and even a vegetarian could find something to eat) and a musically accomplished live band.

The Turkish import store, Olive Farm, closed permanently.  The one remaining store had been in Portland.

Tom and I went out boat camping in the San Juans for the weekend before fourth of July.  We are also planning a van trip to Idaho and other boat camping trip to Desolation Sound.  It has been years since we've been able to do this!!!!

I've observed so much in the past few months I don't know where to begin.  Seattle is having a heat wave that is breaking all kinds of previous records. 

Tom and I went swimming in Gene Coulon Park on Lake Washington.  It was refreshing!!!

We have a yellow jacket nest in our garden and they stung Tom when he was last mowing the lawn.

I carried some mallow seeds home from Turkey two years ago and I have been cultivating the two plants that germinated from them for years.  One of them has budded and I expect it to bloom any day now.

I identified some more roses that I'd like in my garden.  One of them is called Elle, another is Sheila's Perfume, and the third is a climbing rose called Garden Sun.  They are all heavily perfumed peach roses with pink and yellow.

Our garden is in full swing.  Our pumpkins are green with a 6 inch diameter.  Our tomatoes are eating size but still green.  Our cucumbers are still a little too small.  Our strawberries are in full berry.

Our new cherry had cherries but the birds got to them before we did.  Our plum didn't produce this year but it got close enough so that we know it will next year.  We don't expect kiwi fruit for another 3 years.  Maybe we'll see blueberries next year.  None of the apples produced, that will take more years, too.  The grapes are in the ground but they aren't doing much more than surviving yet.  But of course all of this can only get better from here on.