Polgara.net: The Official Website

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 (Scepter of the Ancients (Skulduggery Pleasant)) and am about a quarter into my second (Unholy Ghosts (Downside Ghosts, Book 1)). 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 Baby Beanies: Happy Hats to Knit for Little Heads 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 Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog (Smashing Magazine Book Series), 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:
Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog (Smashing Magazine Book Series)

Let’s see…

In July, I took out my bike a few times, hung out with friends, bbq’ed on my new grill, got busy at work, and generally settled in to my awesome apartment that I still love.

In August, I got super busy at work (thanks to Pacific Standard Time!), celebrated a birthday (the towel one), started my own little poker group, and spent a few days in Dallas VISITING MY BRAND NEW NEPHEW who is awesome and wonderful and will rule the world.

In September, I BOUGHT ALL THE THINGS for my nephew (and not-yet-born niece), launched most of my work projects, got my hair cut, had a bunch o’doctor appointments (kidney stones are still there *sigh*), started on ADD meds, joined a pool league (Wednesday nights!), spent a small fortune on a new pool cue, and took an auto repair class for women at Santa Monica College with Michelle (awesome class, I highly recommend it!).

This month, I shall be going home for a week to spend even more time with my totally awesome nephew, and, as all the gods are my witness, I shall lose some weight off my enormous posterior. No really, I saw a full-body reflection today, and it was NOT PRETTY.

I’ve also been reading a lot of The Bloggess, and if you haven’t discovered her yet, you should hie thyself over there ’cause she’s hysterically awesome. Start with this post if you don’t believe me.