Not much in the way of cohesive news to report. Sean and I went to my favorite local nursery today, because they were having a sale. Today, things were 40% off—tomorrow, they'll be 50% off. I made off with two enormous gardenias—each between three and four feet tall. They bloom white, and are in the middle of blooming right now.

Tomorrow morning, they will join the ranks of the other plants, large and small, in my front flowerbeds. Slowly but surely, the beds are taking shape.We're going back tomorrow to snoop around some more. With the sale, the herbs will be $1 per pot, and that's pretty hard to pass up. I know that I will probably pick up some more chives, and will probably get some more of the mint plants, but I don't know what else.

There's almost nothing better than a 50%-off sale at your favorite nursery—almost nothing except, perhaps, the look of plants acquired for a song sitting prettily in your flowerbeds.

We went back to Exotic Harvest again today, Kat and Sean and I, and we came away with more lovely haul. My front porch is currently so full of plants that I really don't have room for any more. I need to get the ones currently in pots transplanted to the back flowerbeds as soon as they're ready.Sean was kind enough to plant the gardenias for me; the front of the house looks much less bare now that the right side of the house is bracketed with tall gardenias in full bloom. The area of the front porch that, until this afternoon, held gardenias is now taken up by two enormous purple-blooming butterfly bushes. They'll help anchor the back beds, provide some height, and the blooms will match my purple irises.

Yes, once again, it's time for referral madness…time to take a deep look at the dregs of the web stats to find out just how you sick pervs are finding domesticat.net.

Winners for the month of May are:

After working outside, the dragons of web design have reared their head again. The dilemma: what to do about standards?

I've gone back and forth about the dichotomy between web standards and aesthetic design so many times that I'm loath to write of it all again. Yet I find myself coming back to it, because there are some aesthetic problems with this site due to my determination to stay standards-compliant.

Sean, in his gracious kindness, got the first flowerbed in the back yard tilled for us today. It is enormous—more enormous than I'd hoped, but I find that I'm not terribly daunted or terrified by this fact. Instead, I look at the bed and I think, "Ah! Larger than life! I can just plant more of the things I enjoy."

I suppose that's the best way to look at it.Even the large butterfly bushes I bought are dwarfed by the size of the bed.

Jeff took a nap late this afternoon. While he was stretched out on the bed, the cats at his feet, I took the opportunity to tiptoe outside to ponder, undisturbed, on this new flowerbed. After walking outside, I realized I hadn't put on my shoes, so I stopped on the sidewalk and took off my socks and walked barefoot through the grass, newly shorn and still wet from this afternoon's rain.

I stood there, deep in thought, until I heard a tapping on the window from the kitchen. Jeff waved hello and left me to continue contemplating.

So, tonight, I get a bulk email—to my hotmail dropbox—from a sender whose email address I barely recognize.

I have to laugh at this person's gullibility. It was a chain email of the species, "Send this on to fifteen people and you will find the person you're meant to be with!!!!!!!" (Of course, lots of exclamation marks in case you didn't realize how important this was.)

My response: "Well, he's in the living room, reading; shall I go get him for you?"

Silly humans. If they're going to forward me chain email, they should at least forward email that's suited to the subject. I have, after all, been married for nearly three years.

Whoa—brain check there. Yep, three years as of next month. I fear we're sliding past that newlywed stage into old-married-couple stage.

But…now that I think about it, I don't mind. I hated dating with a passion.

In semi-related news, I'm an idiot. You'd think that when I bought that last batch of Mason jars about a month ago that I'd have thought to check the sizes, to make sure they were what I needed.

They are, of course, too small—and I already had four cups of pitted and stemmed cherries waiting to go. At least I hadn't mashed the cherries yet; that would have been a royal mess. (The cherries certainly were yummy to snack on while watching Daria this evening, though.)Tomorrow: back to the store to get the correct size of jars. This time I'll read the labels a bit more carefully, to make sure I get the right ones.

The bags of cherries I bought today are large enough that I can get two batches of jam, if I so choose. I've only pitted half of the cherries; I'm going to wait to pit the others until I know that I like the jam recipe that I've got. If I don't like the jam recipe, it's cherry pie for everyone this week.

While talking with a cable company phone rep this afternoon, I read a post on a weblog that pointed to astrology.com, and for the sheer amusement value I decided to pull up whatever they had to say about me.

(see full version on flickr)

Read on to see what they had to say about me:

You are very strong-willed and proud, but intensely private and not easy to know well. Behind your quiet exterior lies a great deal of emotional depth, sensitivity, complexity, and also fierce determination. When you want something you go after it rather quietly but insistently and wholeheartedly—and you usually get it.

(Side note: the webcam's back up. I'll point it at the cats when they're in the room with me. Enjoy.)

Several months ago, I stopped questioning why I was writing for this site and simply got into the business of writing for it. In the end, I think it was the right thing to do; instead of wondering about my motives and my variously interesting neuroses, I decided to do what I enjoy most: the arranging, scattering, and recombination of words.In the almost-365 days since I started writing for this site last year, I've written about a little bit of everything. From dealing with marriage and death and joy and confusion, it's all here, in varying shades of clarity and obfuscation.

In my way, I had my own Walden-esque goals: to write about the things that mattered—and not just the things that matter today, but the people and events that will still matter to me ten, twenty, forty years from now.

After returning home in the early afternoon from a quick shopping trip with Kat, I came home to find a business card shoved in our door. It was a card from the Athens Police Department, with a handwritten note on the back that said, "Please call," and gave his direct line.

Now, granted, I'm a good little law-abiding citizen, but the first thing that popped into my head was, "Wait. Even if I had been bad, I haven't been through Athens in months!"So, I returned the call and got the bane of current-day corporate-America: voice mail.

Approximately an hour later, he returned the call. (So as not to be a total jerk, I'll not print the name of the person he was asking about.)

"Do you know a person named C.A.J.?" he said?

I have to wonder if Pla-Mor Lanes loves or hates us. We're loud, we're really loud, we don't take our bowling seriously…but we're incredibly profitable for them. After all, we buy beer. So here's snippets of our typical Thursday night madness:

(images link to larger versions on flickr -- or see the full photoset)

Chris Frost getting his wondergeek kiss.

Geof can do both floor bowling and sumo bowling.

This is a typical group picture.

I cannot explain Heather's nor Jessica's expressions in this picture.

Nor Sean's in this one.

Bowling inspires munchies.

I really wasn't kidding when I said that I had a backlog of pictures. This should just about catch me up, except for the goofy vacation pictures.

Jeff's graduation from UAH: in line for diplomas, getting his diploma, and looking up at the crazy people who were yelling at him.

Waiting in the wings, life is waiting to interfere again. With a batch of cherry jam and cherry-spearmint jam completed, I have re-cleaned my kitchen and am prepared for the next onslaught. This afternoon, Kat and I are going to tackle peach preserves, and afterwards, the kitchen shall need to be cleaned again.

Tomorrow: Sean attempts to rototill the other enormous flowerbed (on the other side of the patio and of the same size as this one) while the ground is still sodden from this week's rains. While he's doing that, Kat and I will probably make a run out to the Huntsville Botanical Garden, which offers free mulch for the hauling. Since we have a lot of bare ground, we could use a lot of mulch, and this appears to be the cheapest way to handle it.

We'll place the mulch and then it'll undoubtedly be time for everyone to take a break.

My current writing output seems determined to increase, no matter what I think about the subject. Currently on tap: a short rhymed piece I've had in mind for some time, installment #3 of the 'scribbled travelogue' series, and a short story.Writing here, via keyboard, is a bit of a relief for my writing hand, which cramps after long sessions of scrawling. I had forgotten about this particular plague of my collegiate years, until I realized recently that my best writing was still best drafted with pen and paper before being transferred to digital form. Slower, more methodical, and a more precise finished product resulted.

Thus my big spiral notebook has been seeing a lot of eye-time lately.

The rhymed piece is more painful going than the prose; the effort to concatenate meaning and image into the smallest number of words—without losing meaning, intonation, or allusion—is time-consuming to say the least.

Sushi leads to somnambulatory domesticats.

A day of chores and errands shifted course at four p.m., when the phone rang. "We are craving sushi. You should come with us." I hung up, made quick arrangements, and met up with the crew for a 5:30 dinner date.

I only know of two places in Huntsville that serve decent seafood. Both are, in essence, equal quality. However, in the past, Edo's has taken over 45 minutes to bring me a simple order of nigiri sushi. On the other hand, Miyako is less glacial and has dollar sushi nights on Mondays.

To Miyako we went, where I downed variously small and tasty tidbits of barely-deceased tuna, salmon, shrimp, and other fish I shan't name in the name of decency. Plus rice, and miso, and plenty of ice water.

It was the cherry-time of the summer season,
and you were gone—and back—in the breath of a year.
The posters on the walls warned of spies, and treason,
and the sins of idleness. You spoke not of fear,

of loss, but instead: dancing, drinks, shore leave -
of when we could be like other couples again,
sedately married, with no need for Navy reprieve.
I bobbed my hair in eager anticipation

of reunion, and opened your letters with knives
kept sharp to protect the flimsy paper inside.
In May, the letters stopped coming. Were you alive

Sorry about vanishing abruptly on everyone. Our cable line (including our cable TV and cable modem) line was cut without our permission, thus leaving us out of the loop for about a day or two.

Other news: today marks a year of domesticat. Who knows, maybe I've learned something. Now I just have to figure out what that something is. Cheers!

When in doubt, take the jeep.

I've been going on a sonic binge of David Gray lately. I'm finding that the more I listen to his album White Ladder, the more I'm impressed with what I'm hearing. What I'm hearing—how to describe? It's rare to encounter an album that that wears its soul as a badge. All albums, novels, songs, and poetry are about creativity and expression, but it is much rarer to come across a piece of work that proclaims, as deeply and as intrinsically as warp and weft, that this particular creation is the result of an artist putting the totality of their creativity into a piece of work.

It's a particular sound and smell, that totality, that is a hair's-breadth away from desperation. It's a completeness, a frustration, a lack of holding back, which shows in everything from words to instrumentation.

On Saturday, we teamed up with friends and drove out to the local Scottish Festival / Highland Games, which were held in a local park. Our discussions on the way home took an interesting turn.

Do we, as a society, find our current lives so drab and boring that we find a need in ourselves to dress up and play make-believe with the past? Have our modern conveniences cheapened and sanitized our lives to the point that we have to turn to the simplicity and rusticity of the past to find meaning and enjoyment?I walked around the Scottish Festival and felt myself somehow out of place in my t-shirt, worn sneakers, and denim shorts. Around me were people decked out in clothing that we now perceive as regalia: kilts, swords, hip purses (for men as well as women), knee-length stockings, highly polished shoes.

It would be a grave error if I did not mention this:

A good pair of male legs certainly isn't hurt by encasing them in a kilt. Better ventilation too, I'd dare say.

It is a bit of a pity we can't resurrect that particular bit of clothing. I think it would be a boon to the species. (Not to mention that they've got to be easier to fit than men's dress pants.)

Discovered in a quiet and rather reticent corner of the web: Journal of a Writing Man.

Discoveries like this one tell me that perhaps I'm not the only person taking the literary path. Or that I'm not the only person attempting to create a personal site for, more than the immediate gratification of a blog, but instead of the quieter and more contemplative gratification of a journal.

I've added this page to the list of links. I suspect I'll be back to it rather quickly.

I think this exchange might hold some interest for more people than just the original person it was intended for. Ever wondered what books I consider favorites? The letter:Amy,

I've a question for you. While in Europe I plan to read dense classics that I never would read while doing school work at the same time since that stuff is dense enough.

Some collections of words that people apparently searched for—and encountered domesticat.net:—edmund the kitty cat
—arkansas preteen pictures
—cat eating chick picture
—i live my life and images
—i want to get rid cats sleeping on top of my car
—i'm still on the pill after ten years and i don't want to go of
—idiots with webpages
—lump under toe
—signs of impending death from pneumonia

Erm, okay. Whatever. (I'm skipping the standard pr0n stuff and just including the genuinely weird this time.)

Doesn't seem like I've been paying much attention to my site lately, has it? There is—fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint—much more going on behind the scenes than just a post here or there.

Oh, dammit to hell.

I am so close. I wanted to finish up the skin code for the site tonight and to call it a weekend and walk away. But, instead, I'm stuck with half-working code (the half that works is courtesy of Gareth) and a sick spouse who will probably beg out of our movie plans tomorrow.Lesson: what I attempt to do in thirty lines of code, Gareth can do in twelve or so. Ouch. Guess I got a bit of a reminder of why he's a coder and I do graphics stuff.

Guys, it's been six months of work. It's over. domesticat.net is finally skinnable.

First off, I owe two people massive hugs, thanks, appreciation, and probably a dinner and a few drinks apiece:

Brad.
Gareth.They each know why, but I feel like telling the world anyway.

I am making the PHP code I used to make domesticat.net into a skinnable site freely available.

It can be found here.

Comments, questions, problems, and kudos can be directed to comments [at] domesticat [dot] net..

Today I got one step closer to getting back to work on my latest work of fiction. For the past two weeks, I have made the conscious decision to put my fiction work aside in favor of making good on some website/graphic design debts owed to some friends.

Admittedly, I haven't hated the work. I enjoy graphic design, site design, and all sorts of artistic conundrums. But after finishing a logo (for Brad), site designs/layouts/greymatter implementations (Kat's and Sean's sites), and another greymatter implementation (for Jessica), my brain is just about worn out.Not only have I not picked up my pen in a few days, I haven't even wanted to. The lack of desire to write tells me what I need to know; the creative portion of my brain is zapped, and needs a recharge.

First, a small definition. Ever noticed that on Velveeta there's a note that says it's "pasteurized processed cheese food." Remember—it's not cheese, it's cheese food - what cheese eats!

As Gareth's workload didn't ease up on him today, I ended up driving alone down to Birmingham to see the 3:50 showing of Memento.