Movies can make me think about many things: my life, my past, my future, my actions, my dreams. Every now and then one comes along that makes me rethink my actions and makes me doubt myself. I watched EDtv this evening and came away more disquieted than the premise of the movie would normally suggest.

Domesticat is my outlet, my creative energy, my place to write and think and design in peace. Yet I make it publicly viewable. I don't actively encourage people to come to the site; I mention it to people if the situation and conversation warrants it, but I do not force people to come here.

Yet…since I started the site thirteen months ago, I've watched quietly as my site hits went up every month. The first time I got queasy and a bit nervous was when I realized that people other than my close, immediate, living-here-in-town friends were reading what I wrote.

Ever wondered what goes on in the head of someone who maintains a personal site of this size?

Currently on my plate: the big evil project I've been sitting on for a few months. Namely, back-entering all of my old entries into greymatter. This is long, boring, tedious, and mind-numbing work. (Did I mention boring and painstaking?) As soon as that is done, a couple more items from my wishlist can fall into place. The reworking of the archives means that all of the archive pages will be html 4.0 compliant.

Geof reminded me today:

"Question: how do you eat an elephant?"
"Answer: one bite at a time."Thus, today, I've been nibbling away at the elephant that is the sum total of my old cat.net entries. I'm trying to get them moved into greymatter format and to make them play nicely with my new ones, but I have to be honest. It's just not happening, and I'm starting to get really frustrated.

"So just what HAVE you been doing?" you ask?

If you looked closely, one could see the echoes of stubble tracing a faint shadow of pattern-baldness that meandered from ear, to crown, to ear. His eyes didn't always match the laughter in his voice, but when they did, the lines radiated, like spokes, from their corners.

When he told stories the words came out razor-sharp. Carnival patois, to match the oversized, indifferently polished black clown shoes he wore. I didn't know how much of his story to believe; after all, he was a balloon artist hustling tourists next to Café du Monde.

While in Atlanta, I took pains to route my schedule around movie showtimes. I've had a couple of people ask me why I'd do that; my initial response is to answer, "The lack of variety available in the Huntsville theatre market."At the current time, there are 4 theatres in the Huntsville area.

You might recall that we took a nice short holiday in Canada a couple of months ago. Now that Jess has made available the last of her pictures from Vancouver, I've got the full set. What I'm posting tonight are the pictures from out on the island (i.e., all pictures taken in Victoria). There are quite a bit more from Vancouver, back on the mainland, but I think I'm going to save those for tomorrow. These are plenty enough for now.

This is a recipe originally given to me by Jeff's mother. He looked at it and said to me, "You know, I always wished there were more tomatoes in this soup, so do you think you could modify it a bit?" So, I did—and what was previously Shirley's recipe has evolved a bit into my own.Jeff's Chicken Stew

• 1 hen (3-4 pounds)
• 3-4 bay leaves
• 1 can cream corn
• 2-3 large baking potatoes
• 1 large white onion
• 1—1.5 cup dry elbow noodles*
• 3 small cans (each same size as corn) of stewed tomatoes, or 1 bigger can and one small can