Granted, a road trip by myself isn’t all that fun, but at least I get full control over the music.

I’m about ready to go, except for the packing. I’ve got the cat uncomfortably tucked in at the kennel (where there were way too many dog noises for his taste), I’ve got my clothes all washed and ironed, and I borrowed a soft case for my pistol so I could stick it under the seat.

What?

Oh, and I made provisions for y’all too. A couple of my favorite people (I have lots of favorite people, and these are two of them) have graciously agreed to write guest posts for me while I’m gone. I didn’t get into the whole notification list thing, but if you check in here once or twice, you might be pleasantly surprised. Be nice to them, I’d like to keep my friends!

So, since I’m totally the sort of person who gets way ahead of herself, here’s the new site, bugs and all.

Many thanks to Tami and Kelly for the help and advice. I got the archives moved over, but they’re obviously not quite right yet, so please ignore the construction debris!

So. The DJ thing. Yeah, that really, really sucked. Friday night, I went up to the casino with Big Jeff’s other trainee, and got the shortest lesson ever in putting all of the equipment together. I figured that I could handle that part. I was feeling shy about doing the talking bit on command, but I knew I’d be able to do it once I got started. I’m not so big on talking for the sake of talking, see. I like to have something to say before I open my yap. I left around ten and headed down the road to Eric’s.

And I was on my own on Saturday night.

I got up there and puzzled out the rats’ nest of cables all right. I was a little concerned that there seemed to be two extra, but I figured those must be for the karaoke TV, which I wasn’t using (they were.)

I got the software rolling, and it started to hang. And then it got worse. It wouldn’t open at all, it was running late, and I was starting to sweat bullets. I had managers and waitresses all sticking their noses into it. They called up a cook, who’d sometimes filled in for Jeff. He’d never seen it do that before.

I tried repeatedly to call Jeff, who had said that he would be by his phone, but obviously wasn’t. We couldn’t get it working at all, so the cook set me up with the very basic Windows media player.

This meant that I had no playlists to work from. I had to drag and drop new ones, and Jeff doesn’t exactly have the music arranged well. It’s on the laptop hard drive and two external drives. The catch here was that the management didn’t want me to play country music—it’s not really a country sort of place.

But country’s all I know. I didn’t know how to wing it with other stuff—I didn’t know if the lyrics were suitable, or even if the songs were upbeat or slow. I ended up with a lot of classic old bar songs that I could remember, but I sure didn’t have enough for seven hours of play time.

I was really starting to stress. I was near tears, and had it been anyone else, I would have walked right off the job. I had a couple of hours of music, no more. I couldnt take requests because half the time, I couldn’t find what they wanted and the other half of the time, I didn’t know if the song was clean or not.

Finally, Jeff showed up with a replacement laptop at about 10 PM. If he’d showed up by himself, I totally would have walked, but he had his son, some girl, and her son. So he left me with the new computer. It at least had the DJ software working on it, but I couldn’t access one of the drives, so requests were still out for the most part. I was never so glad to see 1 AM approach as last night.

The hours though, they killed me too, and I’m really not fond of driving home with the drunks on that twisty mountain road. Not getting enough sleep on my only weekends that are free to do my backflow tests would ruin my business too.

I think that if I hadn’t had a catastrophic failure, I probably would have stuck with the job a little longer, but it would have been harder to find an excuse to quit. I feel bad enough for letting my friend down, but at least this way, he still has the summer to find someone else to work for him. I’ll still manage it for him, and I’ll run his water business, but this was too much, and I’m clearly not the right person for the job. So, I quit.

If there’s nothing else that I’ve learned in the past week, it’s that I’m not smart enough to do web design. Well, I might be, but with three jobs and two kids, I don’t have the time to mess with it.

So, if any of you have recommendations for web designers that can work with WordPress, please email me. I really, really need one! I’ve got a few quote requests out with people I found online, but they all seem swamped.

Thanks!

So, my self-publishing friends, if I were to switch over to maintaining my own domain, do y’all have any recommendations on hosts and publishing software? What about image hosting? It all needs to be fairly user-friendly, since I can barely struggle my way through HTML. I’d like the ability to have multiple posters too, since some girlfriends and I are contemplating starting a group blog.

What have you guys used, and what should I stay away from? What else do I need to know?

This might be my project over the next few weeks.

Thanks!

I found a fun new thingy today that totally feeds my nosy curiosity about where readers are from. Well, it could if y’all aren’t shy about pinpointing yourselves on a map.

Frappr is a Google Maps deal. To put yourself on it, you just put a name and a zip code in. I think you might have to leave a comment to get it to show up; I had to on the big map of one of my message boards, and I can’t figure out how to turn that off.

So I guess I’ve busted myself regarding location, but I don’t care all that much anyway.

Anybody care to join me?

I need a new bio page; I realized that the old one was pretty out of date today. A lot has changed in the last year.

I’m still sort of a cowgirl by inclination, but I seem to be missing horses, cattle, and a cowboy to go along with it. Eh, it’s all in the attitude anyway. I’m still a mid-thirties woman living in the middle of California. I live in town, but I wish I didn’t.

I’ve got two boys; John is twelve this year and Seamus is eight, and they’re in a combined elementary/junior high school. I only have custody every other week, which means that on each Friday, I’m either glad to see them or glad to have some time to myself. I try to do something interesting with them every weekend, but life doesn’t always work out that way. There are weekends when laundry is more pressing than interesting, but I try to do the best I can in raising them.

Since I seem to be single again, I’m dipping my toe into the dating pool. Well, it’s more like being unwillingly plunged into it, and not being sure if I remember how to swim. I spent all summer listening to my friends tell me that I needed to get out and get over him, and I think I finally am starting to. We’ll see about that though.

Well, I guess I’m ready to go.

I’ve had my mail held, and I left the dog at Cowboy’s. I installed his satellite radio into my truck so I won’t be creeping over the Grapevine in silence. Laundry’s going, but I’m not leaving until noon or so tomorrow, so there’s no rush there.

So I’m having a shamefully comfortable day all to myself today. Cowboy’s working overtime on an emergency ditch repair, so there wasn’t any point in my staying over there. I did a little grocery shopping, bought some comfort food to see me over the day, and I’m lounging around in sweats playing the kids’ video games.

No kids, no spouse, no dog to worry about, and if I want to take a three hour nap, by god, I’m going to! It’s really quite nice.

I could have had the kids for the day today, but they have a Cub Scout snow trip, so they weren’t too interested in spending the day with ol’ Mom. John is going to be quite put out that I’ve passed him in the video game, but he’ll get over that. Since I’ve hogged it for the last couple of days, he can play until he catches up with me, as long as he shares with his brother.

What a nice day; if it weren’t for the lingering asthma symptoms and the sinus headache, I’d go to the gym. There’s always an excuse though!

It looks like the Diaryland server burp of ought five has been taken care of—Nanamama, I got your comment in triplicate! Thanks though, I forgot to test it after I uploaded the test entry. I hope you’re doing well—I miss talking to you. When are you going to start up a journal so we can keep up? I’ll help you if you need simple tech questions answered, but if it gets too complicated, we might have to run to Nance’s husband or Fred.

So I’ll be out next week. I’m sure I’ll be having major internet withdrawals; last time I could at least get my email on Grampa’s computer. I guess I should have tried a little harder to get my old laptop fixed, but at the time I deemed it not worth the money. And I guess I should make it for a week. If I were in the mountains, I wouldn’t miss it, but stuck in a hotel room with nothing but homework to do is going to get boring.

Someone online suggested I try Dim Sum while I’m down near a good Chinatown, and I think I will. Anyone have any suggestions on particularly good ones?

I’m feeling just a wee bit nervous right now.

You see, I’ve kept this journal quiet from all but my closest friends, and two of those three don’t ever use the internet. So I’ve been writing for strangers, for the most part, which is easier. I like the anonymity; if someone doesn’t like what I say or my writing style, they’re free to stop clicking on me. Won’t hurt my feelings a bit.

But I’ve been thinking about sharing this link with another of my longtime friends. He could have stumbled on it anyway, and I’d rather give it to him up front. I cleaned my archives up a little, because you don’t want friends coming around with dishes in the sink. Mostly, I just locked down a couple of uncomplimentary entries regarding other people in our social circle. I didn’t want those ones googled anyway, but I also don’t want to erase them, as they do truly reflect what I was feeling at the time.

I don’t doubt that I’ll be doing a little self-censoring for a while. This is someone whose opinion matters to me. Instead of pissing off some random stranger, I could alienate one of my very favorite friends. I hope not though, and I haven’t written anything to wad his shorts before. And this is someone that I’ve shared major life events with, so there really isn’t a need to feel so self-conscious. I do feel that though. It’s like standing before someone you’ve always seen in topcoat and tails, and whipping off all of your clothes. Except *ahem*, that analogy doesn’t quite work, after those topless days at the lake, now does it, Big Jeff?

Cowboy’s on his way home, and the last stop turned out to be the one that did it. He’s dragging home a five-year old red roan gelding. Somehow, I knew he was going to bring a roan home, and before he left, I teased him about it. Sure enough, he says this one’s a ringer for Jack. But the only name that comes off the registered name is Frosty, and I don’t like that without even seeing the horse. Sounds too much like a kid’s pony with that name. We’ll have to see if that sticks. We may end up with a “Roany” after all, although that’s like naming Palomino horses “Yellow”: boring.

He should be somewhere in Arizona or Nevada about now, but he’s not in cellular coverage, so I really don’t know. I expect him back late tonight.

So, we were minding our own businesses in chat last night, and some asshole comes in and completely shut us down. Strange and stupid MIDI music came out of my speakers, and when I exited the room to come back in, I was banned. What the hell? I shut down the computer and tried to restart it, but it took a couple of tries. I was afraid that somehow this dickless wonder managed to hack into my computer and mess with stuff, but I ran a scan and everything seems to be normal.

I didn’t know this could be done, but what’s more baffling is why? It’s about on the same level as telling people who can or cannot get married, or what they can do in the privacy of their own homes, as far as I’m concerned. I guess some people are just stupid that way.

Still no truck either. I got a sad phone call from the service guy—I guess the mechanic had locked the invoice in his toolbox and left for a training class on the day they had promised me it would be done. That service guy seems really nice, but that might just be the contrast to the mechanic. I should get it today at least. I’m so looking forward to paying that bill.

When my Mom had the boys for their annual spoiling, she bought them some sugar cereal for breakfast. Fine with me; it was their vacation, after all. But she sent the box back down with them because she doesn’t eat it and it would just go stale.

Now, I don’t usually buy them sugar cereal, but part of the reason is because I eat it if it’s in the house. So guess what I had for breakfast? You got it. And now I’m on a sugar buzz so bad that I can’t stop my hands from shaking like a crack addict, and I feel a little queasy. Of course, that could also be the antifreeze I spilled on my hands this morning topping off the green truck. That stuff absorbs through skin, doesn’t it?

(Crap, I just looked up ethylene glycol in my book—yes, shaking and probably this morning’s asthma attack could be due to that. Duh! But I feel better now; it was only a little bit anyway.)

OK, enough disjointed ramblings for now. I get lazy on Fridays.

OK, Nance, a bio page, just for you. Smartass!

My name is Jules, but you can probably figure out what that derives from, and which I usually go by anyway. I’m 35 at the moment, divorced, with two kids, and options on two grown kids.

John: he’s ten, kind of a skinny squirt, and smarter than he really needs to be.

Seamus: he’s six, and my Irish throw back kid.

I have them every other week. On the opposite weeks, Cowboy (my wonderful boyfriend) has custody of me. I say I live in two places because for all practical purposes, I do. I get mail at both houses anyway. I just don’t like the idea of moving the kids in with a boyfriend, and besides, then their commute gets doubled. We’re happy with our arrangement.

Cowboy’s got two boys too: Chris, who’s 20 and lives with us, and Chad, who’s 21 and doesn’t. They may not be mine, technically, but they’re family anyway. Well, at least the one is; I don’t know Chad all that well since he never comes around and is always fighting with Cowboy.

We do a lot of horse stuff as a family, although my kids aren’t really into it. Chris and Cowboy are both roping on the State rodeo circuit, and do a lot of jackpot team roping the rest of the time. I don’t rope yet, although I’m starting to get the bug. I do a lot of support; rodeo-mom type stuff. Yeah, it’s like a soccer mom, except there are cattle to feed and horses to warm up and cool down. They don’t really need me to do it, but it keeps me entertained and moves things along faster with more hands.

Besides the horses (of which there are many, but not always the same ones every day), we’ve got three dogs; Bailey, the red heeler that belongs to Chris, and my two border collies, Angus (at the top of the page) and Jessie. Jessie’s pretty useless, but the other two are good dogs. Oh, and the goat, Elvis. He’s slightly less useless than Jessie, because at least he keeps the grass down in the backyard. And the shrubs.

I’ve got a full time job doing a sort of constructiony-environmentally inspectory type thing. Also, I have a teeny, tiny small business of my very own doing sundry water related things. No, I’m not a plumber. I don’t have the ass for it!

There! You happy?