While I'm working on finishing up Quarto's admin interface, I thought I'd toss out this unfinished little mini-tutorial and let the world throw some commentary its way.

For lack of a real title, I've called it "I've Got This Little Site…"—it's supposed to be geared toward the casual website creator who is thinking about putting a bit more effort into their site. It's four pages of snips and tidbits and things I've learned along the way.

Well, it would be, if I had one left. Really. Last I saw of it, it was marching out the door with a suitcase and a beer, muttering an obscenity-laden set of phrases that sounded like "See you later!" and taking my code with it. That was after the cats napped on it for an hour or two this morning.

It was, apparently, squishy and warm. The cats like that.

In better news, I have something that, if you squint, is really starting to resemble an admin interface. Never mind the fact that Noah still managed to make it implode the first time he tried. (Sotto voce to Noah: don't be afraid to log in again! I swear it won't always be like that!) We will not discuss how depressing this was, and will instead note that his crash-testing led to the first bugfix.

The list of things to do before moving on to the display functions is growing shorter:

My grandmother never expected me to stick with yarn work. When I asked her to teach me, I think she was surprised, and even moreso that I persevered and became good at it. Later, I added knitting to my repertoire, but was never able to master the art of tatting (using carefully-crafted knots to create delicate lace).

We all have holes in our psyche to fill, you see. Holes that sometimes we talk about, and holes that sometimes announce their presence because we can't (or won't) bear to mention them. Sometimes, given the fortuitous combination of personality and circumstance, another person comes along. Another person with holes in their life. Given the right time of day and phase of the moon (or kindly guiding force, depending on how your world works) their emptiness lines up with yours.Sometimes the holes of one cancel out the holes of another, forming a stronger fabric.

Few things are more difficult or more tiresome than trying to come up with something halfway interesting to say on a Friday night when you're tired, quite possibly coming down with a bit of a cold, have nursed the beginning twinges of a headache for several hours, and can't think of anything else better to say than "Hey, I made chicken stock tonight."

Yes. That's it. That's the full extent of it: another two figures accomplished on Kat's scarf (each figure is approximately four inches long) and a nagging, throbbing pain centered square in my forehead, like a third eye. The good news is that the chicken stock, given time to cool and solidify, will be strong enough to stand up under its own power and … well … do whatever chicken stock does whenever it's strong enough to stand up under its own power.

Ahab had his whale.
Quixote had his windmills.
I have a content management system.
But I will finish mine.

A year ago, this was a quixotic task; something to be talked about in the realm of what-if with Jeff on a trip to Birmingham. A movie—one or another—after all, we see many."What if," he said, after listening to me go on for quite some time, "you wrote something yourself? Have you given that any thought?"

Clenched between my kneecaps was a notebook full of just that—code dreams. In pen, in scribble, with question marks and doodles on the side. Scribbles that, in the right slant of light, might look like the beginnings of a schema. Dreams, translated through the medium of ink to the permanence of a printed page that no one but me would ever read.

"A little. Every now and then." If you translate 'every now and then' to mean 'you should see the pages upon pages I've got written out about this' … that is.

Today, arriving in an airport an hour and a half south of me: Monica, for a visit that's been in the making for several years now.

It becomes difficult to explain a friendship when you realize that you can barely remember why you became friends in the first place. A quick bit of mathematics tells me that we were off just a bit when we did some phone calculations the other day; we were fourteen when we met. She might have been fifteen. She had the neatest handwriting I'd ever seen, had far curlier hair than I did, and she knew the worst puns in the world. Loved them. Gloried in them. (All these years later, I still remember the punchline "Kicks are for Trids!" even though I cannot remember the joke itself.)