The Latest on Lothie

The Catholic Church stumbles into the 19th century. Yay!

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The holidays, spent with Jason and Angela at their house and ours, were most wonderful. We drove to their house on the 21st (arriving very late, or early, depending on your point of view) and left the 26th; they drove to our house on the 28th (again, arriving late) and left the 6th. So basically, we spent about two weeks together with a couple of days' break in the middle. It was very, very nice.

I got a ton of knitting done, finishing three projects. I've got more to do, but it was nice to get my winter coat and my fingerless gloves off the needles (I also started and finished a simple drawstring bag purse, using the same yarn as my coat). I have a bunch of jewelry to make, also, so in my off hours I'll be keeping pretty busy.

I'm really looking forward to 2008!

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I've put much of my web site's content back online. Some of it's edited but it's basically the same ol' same ol'. I'm not putting the old galleries back as I now use flickr for that. Enjoy!

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I took my web site (and therefore this journal) down for a little bit because of some trolls. However, that's calmed down a bit now, so it's back up, albeit changed around a little bit. For instance, this journal is no longer on the front page.

The pics I'd posted from flickr are missing. Actually, they're still there, but because I made them private for a little while, flickr changed the URLS of the images slightly. You can click on the placeholders and see the original photos, but it's not worth it to me to edit the posts at this point.

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Wow, it's been forever since I've posted. Lessee, the basics:

• Had a little health scare this past month, but it turned out to have been a false alarm and I'm fine.
• I'm loving my job; seeing a lot of customers and doing what I do best.
• Gained a bit of weight but I'm starting to peel it off now. Hoping that continues.
• Spending a lot of time in Louisville. :)
• Working some more towards getting published.
• Knitting a lot.
• We found a church (UU of course) nearby and we'll probably start attending in September.

In short, really happy. I'll try to post more in the future.

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I haven't posted anything of substance in a while because things have been in flux and I have wanted to have all (or at least, most) of the details finalized before I said anything. But it looks like that time is now.

Chris and I (and of course Bun) are moving back East. I shouldn't really say "back" because we're moving to a place that none of us has ever lived in before, namely, Charlotte NC. It's a transfer from my company, so relo etc. is paid. We leave 5/9 and it's my hope that Lothie Dot Com will be back online by 5/14 or thereabouts.

It's very difficult to say goodbye to Los Angeles, my home for the last ten years. I really love it here and I certainly didn't foresee, a year ago, a move like this. But there are many excellent reasons for the move and I know that we will (continue to) be very happy.

Onto the next chapter!

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Had a great time at Cherry's. Next time, though, I'm renting a car and getting a hotel room. Still, it was nice to experience her dorm. We did a lot of shopping and I met a good friend of hers and my ex-husband Guy's, which was great. Anyway, I'd like to get up there again sometime this semester.

I do sometimes wish that my family (and other people, but my family is most important) would stop treating my life choices as a phase that I'm going through. If it's a phase, I've been going through it pretty much my entire adult life. It's who I am. But, then, I guess this is what they are too. *grin* Hey, at least I remain able to say about myself that the only people who don't like me are people who have never bothered to get to know me. That is a beautiful truth.

I'm relaxing at home today for the holiday, and then tomorrow it's back to work, whee!

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My friggin' domain's been down for a week. What happened was the cable modem went kaput. Well, when we originally ordered the service, we ordered it from Comcast, but by the time we actually got it, they'd just been bought by Time Warner. We'd already had a minor bobble when TW changed our IP without telling us. When that happens, we lose a day because we have to change it with our registrar and then wait for it to propagate. So we were already annoyed.

But then, they gave us our new cablemodem, changed the IP again, and then it turned out that the new modem didn't work the way the old one did and we couldn't administrate the settings ourselves. Which meant we had to get a router, because we didn't have anything at home that would work. So we ordered one, and it came in Friday, and we reconfigured our servers, and now DNS is propagating and the site should pretty much work again.

This is like the 5th time in a year that our domain has been down for several days, and I am so tired of it I could scream. Before about March 2006, we went a couple of years without any major problems. We thought when we switched from DSL, the problems would stop (our DSL provider was great, but the phone company SUCKS), but just since we made the switch, we've had issues crop up a couple of times. It's enough to drive me to drink. *glug glug*

Other than that, things are good. I'm sort of seeing somebody sort of new. Ha ha, how's that for vagueness? But that's what it's like right at the minute. I've got several performances coming up, starting early next month and running through early summer. I'm still teaching RE, but I'm going to have to bow out of that because I've begun chairing the music committee at church also.

Chris is starting a new job in a couple of weeks, and Bun is doing really well at school. I'm still working out, although this past week was not so great for that because I didn't get enough sleep, so I'm hoping to do really well in the coming week. All in all, we're very busy, and very happy.

Sooo happy the damn domain's back up...

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Happy 2007!

I don't really make resolutions for the new year; there are so many things that can happen in a year to change my life and my decisions about it, and making a resolution is far too concrete for such a fluid situation. But I do have a few plans for 2007:

- I do want to lose some weight. By the end of the year, if not sooner, I'd like to be below 200 pounds, the further below the better. Weight has been my big bugaboo for the past couple of decades, and I don't really hold out a lot of hope that this year will be any different from all the rest, but hey, I'm gonna try. Hey, I made it to the gym today...

- I want to spend this year applying myself hugely at work. I've had some triumphs there in the last year, but it's not enough. I want to live up to my potential.

- I want to write more. Writing makes me happy, and I'm good at it. By the end of 2007, I'd like to have done a lot more of it, and perhaps have sold some of it.

- I don't want to lose track of the other things I love to do, either. Music's gonna be huge in 2007; I better restring my guitars and regrow my calluses. I want to stretch myself a bit more, knitting-wise. I want to start drawing again. I want to cook more.

- I want to suffer fools less gladly. I am way too nice to people who are not nice to me. In the past couple of years I've become much more assertive about the kind of treatment I expect from others, but it's still true that I put up with far too much. I don't need to raise my expectations; where they are is fine. But when someone doesn't meet them, and shows no desire to try, I need to cut the ties much faster and more cleanly. Anything else just causes more pain for all involved.

- I want to read stuff I haven't read before, good stuff. I have this habit of reading the same books over and over again, like comfort food. To this end, I've begun getting rid of a lot of my old favorites, the trashy stuff that is, and I've been reading books that I've never read before.

- I want to (re)learn chess. I learned how to play chess when I was pretty young, but like a lot of things that I learned when I was young, my relationship with chess was very unhealthy and I associate it with a feeling of stupidity and inadequacy. I need to realize that nobody starts out being good at chess, and I could stand to stretch my mind in this way. I don't play well, and I won't for a while...but maybe eventually I will.

I think that's enough stuff to work on for the next 365...

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So, let's see, the boxing thing is working out for me, though it's clear how out of shape I'm in. However, I knew that going in so it's not like a real surprise for me the way it might be for someone else. ;) I'm gonna stick with it, anyway.

SCC is done with holiday performances, I guess. They both went well but I would say that the second one, which was last night, was the better of the two. I'm trying to get the chorale to sing at my church so we'll see how that goes.

Haven't done much to prepare for the holidays because we've been broke. Tonight we have a party to go to for my chorale and then on Thursday is my company holiday party which I'm taking my girlfriend, Melinda, to. I bought a new "little black dress" for the occasion and I am sure we will look smashing together.

Not much else going on at the moment. I am currently in "fantasizing about sleep" mode, but what else is new -- I'm sure it'll all work out fine.

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