Polgara.net: The Official Website

So it turns out I’m not ready for a Kindle. I’ve been carrying around the Kindle from the office with a bunch of books loaded on it, and I NEVER TAKE IT OUT. And that’s with four plane trips in the past month. So, no Kindle for me yet.

Nye's - Polish karaoke piano bar in Minneapolis (on Hennepin)

ION, I’ve been a traveling FIEND. Houston (wedding!), Dallas (nephew is permanently my nephew!), Minneapolis (zombie bars and Polish karaoke piano bars!), I’ve been to them all in the past month, and I’ll be heading to Vegas before the month is out. I am SO OVER traveling, yo. I miss my couch. Where I happen to sitting at this very moment, with a cat attached to my side.

On the plus side, I’ve been making new friends, from lots of places–L.A., northern Cali, Texas, D.C. and even Sweden. Hopefully Facebook will help me maintain and possibly grow these new acquaintances into more permanent fixtures, ’cause they’re all pretty awesome.

Dao, Moppety, Katie and me, on the dance 'floor' at 'stina's wedding

My knitting has been mainly scarves lately–quick, easy, and lightweight, so I can carry them around with me. Maybe I’ll post more on them later.

Saw the supermoon last night, and it was very impressive. No pictures, though, since my moon pictures always come out fuzzy, so I didn’t even try this time.

Saw the Avengers yesterday–so!awesome! Awesome enough to merit a second theater viewing, possibly even in 3D. (I hate 3D–headache inducing and generally not worth the extra $$. Might make an exception in this case, though.)

Let’s see, what else? Work is work. I need to practice more at pool before the tournament. I really need to do some grocery shopping. Oh, and my weight is out of control. Must!Move!More!

Ok, the end.

I have been obsessed with Kindles lately, and it doesn’t help that every time I go to Amazon.com, Kindle promos are front and center right above the fold on the homepage. I have thirty gazillion physical books in my to-be-read bookcase, I do not need to be purchasing digital books too! And yet, I drool over the Kindle Fire every day. Is it the tech of it? The instant gratification of being able to buy a book from anywhere at any time? Knowing I can get to my book from any computer?

I’ve been borrowing my department’s Kindle to try to get the temptation out of my system, and so far I’ve finished one book on it ([amazon_link id="0061231177" target="_blank" ]Scepter of the Ancients (Skulduggery Pleasant)[/amazon_link]) and am about a quarter into my second ([amazon_link id="0345515579" target="_blank" ]Unholy Ghosts (Downside Ghosts, Book 1)[/amazon_link]). I’ve also purchased several ebooks from Amazon, when they’ve been cheap enough that I couldn’t resist.

So far, it’s cool. I’m reading just fine on it. Any more than with physical books? Maybe not so much, but it does help curtail spending in physical bookstores (not necessarily a good thing, though, since I don’t want physical bookstores to go *poof* like Borders *sniff*). But in 2011, my reading volume went down significantly from previous years, and I believe part if it can be attributed to me trying not to buy new books, yet not being particularly interested in the books I’d already bought.

This post is all over the place, isn’t it? What is it even about? Not sure. Let’s try to break it down to bullet points:
1. I’m not buying a Kindle yet because I can’t afford it.
2. I’m borrowing a Kindle, so I can buy books by new to me authors without spending too much or taking up space on my already crowded bookshelves.
3. I’m newly inspired to find new authors.

i.e., I’m trying harder to spend more time reading, whether it’s an ebook or a physical book. (Finished three physical books this year already.) So, there’s that.

Whatever, I think I’ll just go read something now.

Per usual, I spent the Christmas holidays in New England, and the combination of awesome baby nephew and getting [amazon_link id="0823099032" target="_blank" ]Baby Beanies: Happy Hats to Knit for Little Heads[/amazon_link] for Christmas meant getting back on the knitting wagon. Of course, that also meant a trip to Michael’s for yarn, circs and double-pointed needles–always fun!

I finished this hat in two days:

Choc....something hat from Baby Beanies

Riley in the first hat his Auntie Polgara made for him

I made another hat as well–a pointy one in blue and green–but for some reason completely forgot to take a picture of it. Plus I suspect it’s already too small for his head. Obviously this means I’ll need to make another in the next size up!

I also picked up some marbled yarn (don’t have it with me, will try to remember to add the name later) in cranberry colors to make a Big Bad Baby Blanket, which I wanted to get started on a couple of days ago, but I can’t find any of my size 11 or 13 circs. I know I have them, ’cause it’s my favorite size, so I can only assume I have a gazillion WIPs still on needles hiding in the many nooks and crannies of my apartment. Question is, do I go in search of them, or do I just buy more needles? Hmm. I think I see some new Addi Turbos in my future!

Things are mellow at work, so I’m working on my WordPress skills by adding a searchable database of all my dvds to my site. Once all the info is in, I’ll create a template for viewing them, and add them to the nav.

It’s a small thing, and it’s mostly for my own use, but I’m looking forward to being able to search my disks by actor, director, writer, and/or year of release!

I am totally obsessed with WordPress right now. We recently launched this website at work, which was built by a vendor instead of in-house, and yo, it’s amazing. They built it in WordPress, and it does stuff I had no idea WordPress could do, and it’s inspired me to LEARN ALL THE WORDPRESS THINGS. I’ve been reading [amazon_link id="1119995965" target="_blank" ]Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog (Smashing Magazine Book Series)[/amazon_link], and WP tutorials and articles on Smashing Magazine; outlining plans for possible projects; and browsing through plugins for ideas. I fixed a couple of lingering problems on the blog at work yesterday, which was AWESOME.

Problem is, I need more blogs to experiment on. I had some cool ideas for one of my sites, but the stakeholder doesn’t want me making any changes right now because she doesn’t have time to review and approve for awhile, which makes me sad. I’m considering building a bug/ticket tracker for projects at work. There’s no guarantee I could get everyone to actually use it, but it’d be a fun and educational experience, and if I could figure out how to build it as a customizable theme to release to the public, that’d be even better.

Seriously, WordPress excites me like nothing work-related has for a long time. It feels good.

ETA: For some reason this link isn’t working above, so here it is again:
[amazon_link id="1119995965" target="_blank" ]Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog (Smashing Magazine Book Series)[/amazon_link]