It's always frustrating to try to write entries for cat.net when my mind's more occupied by the code of Quarto. It's difficult to come up with interesting things to say when your mind's current definition of 'interesting' is "oooooh! Now a quarto siteadmin can edit the general text message that's shown on the main Quarto admin screen!"

The plan: drive from Huntsville to Atlanta. Obtain Gareth, whose current sojourn in the States has not yet produced the need for a rental car. Drive Gareth back to Huntsville, so that he can have some face time with the locals over a three-day weekend.

Message window, Gareth, yesterday afternoon: "Greg has proposed I-20 exit 51a at 7:30pm EST - there's a McDonald's there apparently."

This was my world, supposedly; but as I looked around me I realized that suddenly my long reddish hair and casual jeans marked me as the outsider.

I called it "Shopping With The Muslims."

Jeff would laugh every time I mentioned it, with that rich, cackling, my-crazy-spouse-cracks-me-up laugh that means both "I love you" and "You're insane." It's a laugh that reminds me of why I like my occasional flashes of eccentricity; while there is one kind of satisfaction to be found in living up to the expectations of others, there's another kind to be found in occasionally turning those expectations on their collective ears.What's the fun in living when, from day to day, you do nothing but exactly what your friends, spouse, and family expect you to do?

Nevertheless. The story, Amy, the story.

When Viet Huong opened in Huntsville, we celebrated: at last, Eastern food that wasn't a) Thai or b) buffet Chinese (which, we might add, has the approximate China Content of a porcelain teacup made in Mexico). Therefore, we visited, and we ate.

We weren't the only ones. The ricers showed up too, as they are wont to do, driving around and doing their business and unwittingly provoking howls of laughter among the rest of us who have far better things to spend our money on.

Day two, Quarto coding extravaganza.  We are coming to you live from the same chair that 98% of most cat.net entries are typed from; the only difference is that today I've spent most of my waking hours in this chair and not doing actually productive things.

Jeff wins the Write Amy An Import Script So She'll Shut Up™ award; we tested it tonight against the entries of geek-chick.net and guess what?  It worked.  No complaints, no quibbles - once I remembered to tell it the correct server paths to grab the files from, it imported in less than twenty seconds.I'm just...flabbergasted.