Busy couple of weeks. I’ve been feeling much better. Was a little traumatized after having, ya know, PINK EYE and all but the doctors gave me good meds and I’m all better now. A little rough-sounding in the mornings but otherwise doing pretty well. I’m hoping all these health problems are behind me because I’ve got a lot going on. A lot for me anyway.

Lots of big changes to tell you about.

If you’re reading this using bloglines or a feed-reader (if I’ve done my job right you can see these new posts using my old feeds, we’ll see) you might not know that I’ve got a whole new big spanking design. After years of futzing around with Movable Type and a few jobs for other people involving WordPress I decided to bite the bullet and convert my personal blog to WP. MT was the top of the line when I started this blog in 2004. I even got the pay version so I could have multiple blogs.

But the years have not been kind to MT while WP has aged like a fine wine. That seems to be the nature of open source - improving as people keep adapting it to suit them. So hooray for new site design! There are now actual functioning cookies for comments again, which means (if your browser accepts cookies) you won’t have to type your name and info in every time you comment like you used to on MT.

I only have one design ’skin’ for this site but having changing skins is a pretty old design trick anyway and has been a pain in the butt lately. Cody made this knitting hedgehog design for me. And he made a special WordPress plugin for me to keep up with my knitting projects on the sidebar. That guy’s pretty cool.

In other news I’ve been doing a lot of work on the Craftistas group too. We’re really getting moving on that. Getting all legitimate and shit. Beth’s working on a fee-free group shop for all the paid members while I’ve installed a Message Board and even made some fun variations on the logo to sell items at Cafe Press. Last night we gathered our squares for Project Compassion and we were all very proud to have 10 squares to send to Mama E.

We’re also getting moving on the Ugly Scarf Project, which should be fun.

You’ve probably noticed the dearth of photos lately. I’ve been on a photography boycott since Xmas. For some reason I just hate taking photos these days. Hate. It.

I haven’t even taken photos of the roof on the back porch that was picked up by the wind last Friday night, flew over our house, knocked the cap off of the chimney, and landed in the street in front of our house. I was out with Ashley and Christie and apparently Cody slept through the whole thing so the neighbors had to ring the bell to wake him up to let him know what had happened. So this mangled aluminum porch roof is sitting in our front yard waiting for the insurance adjuster to come take a look at it. I guess I should get some photos of that. But meh don’t feel like taking photos.

Hopefully that will change soon as I’ve got about ten thousand things to sell. Stitch markers, dyed yarn, handspun yarn, knit items. Even actual jewelry and pottery. Ha! Yes, I’m going to sell some things from the paint a pottery place. I’m pretty embarrassed about that. But not so much so that I won’t do it.

Anyway I hope you like the new design. I’ve still got a few little adjustments to make but it’s pretty much done now. And we’re going to be at Ladies’ Night at Art Attack this Friday night! Come paint dorky pottery with us!

So the root canal pain is totally gone, the sinus infection is still around, I had a severely sore throat on Tuesday so I went to the doctor’s office to get some meds for that and tested negative for strep again.

I had to go back today because I was having trouble with gross goopy eyes. Now I have conjunctivitis. The doctor thinks the tooth, the cold and sinus trouble, the eyes, the weight, and probably the depression are all related to my hypothyroidism and I’m supposed to go see an endocrinologist.

On the bright side I no longer smell pickles all the time.

There was an hour and a half wait in the doctor’s office, even after checking in and seeing two nurses. It was very, very crowded today too. I had a feeling a lot of us had the same cold. We were all coughing and sniffling. They had a television in the waiting room and at one point the tv mysteriously changed channels from msnbc to the game show network.

Despite everyone’s obvious sickness and inpatience we all kind of enjoyed watching Card Sharks and making fun of how outdated the statistics in the polls were. 15% of young boys in a Rhode Island middle school admitted to turning their report card Fs into Bs. 26% of the marriage counselors thought wives tended to be too overbearing. 13% of the high school boys with steady girlfriends admitted that they wished they could date other women. 3 out of 10 women have experienced unrequited love. 55% of the psychologists thought that women would feel more fulfilled with jobs outside of the home. We kind of had fun laughing at it.

Then the channel was changed to some sort of celebrity shopping network and we all went back to being sick impatient grumps.

to mention that last week, January 29th, was my fourth anniversary of quitting smoking.

In that time I would have smoked roughly 51,418 cigarettes and spent about $8,998.15 US dollars, even if I’d been going to the smoke shops on the pueblos. I smoked American Spirits they’re expensive.

I don’t think I’ve spent that much on yarn. Geez I hope not.

Yep. I had to get another root canal. I think that makes it five? At least it was on a different tooth, I’ve had to have three on the same tooth. Melon’s had to be spayed twice and I’ve had to have three root canals on one tooth. We have bad luck.

Interestingly the dentist thinks the abcess that this tooth’s roots had were what was causing my sinus infection. The doctor thought it was just a general sinus infection (although I was cleared on the strep, I found out that I didn’t actually have that). Both put me on antibiotics. The dentist’s antibiotics win the big prize for the nasty smell. They beat the dog’s farts any day, and that’s really an accomplishment. The doctor’s antibiotics were a nice quick and easy dose - one a day for just five days, which made me wonder if it was going to work at all anyway. They also both gave me various pain prescriptions and other interesting things. The root canal pain has subsided for the most part, although my gums are mighty pissed off.

The sinus issue comes and goes. At the moment, it’s here again. So I took the guafinex or whatever it was that the doctor had prescribed for the sinus congestion. Now everything smells like pickles. Strangest thing.

The in-laws had a party for that football game thingy. I got to stay home in bed trying to sleep and watching Puppy Bowl III (with the kitten half time show!) instead. Hey at least I didn’t record it on the Tivo like I did last year.

I hate to be whiny sick blogger but geez I feel like I’ve been consistently sick since Xmas day, just getting little breaks in-between. There are so many things I want to be doing instead. I have all kinds of beautiful roving to spin and I fixed the bobbin for the Lendrum’s plying head - one end just needed some wood glue. I’ve been dyeing yarn like crazy with Ashley. I started a needle felting project at Mara’s house. And I have so many beautiful beads to play with.

I’ve been working on the besotted scarf with little cable Xs and Os for Cody’s Valentine’s present. I hope he’ll be ok with the yarn, it’s red but has some pink tweedy bits.

I’m stumped about what to get for our third annual stupid t shirt valentine’s gifts. He never wore the “No one knows I’m a lesbian” shirt but I have several times; he wears both of our ThinkGeek code shirts from the first year. What to do.