Lots of knit­ting. Lots and lots of knit­ting. (If you’re on Rav­el­ry, you can see my fin­ished projects.) My hands ache from the knit­ting, par­tic­u­lar­ly the left, because I knit Con­ti­nen­tal. I think I may have to learn to knit Eng­lish just to swap off on occa­sion.

We’ve been going out to hear more live music — three house con­certs this fall. I love me some house con­certs! In fact, I need to write some music reviews. I’m also in a cou­ple of RPGs each week, one Dres­den Files and anoth­er 5th edi­tion D&D. And I’ve been doing a lit­tle con­sult­ing on the side.

I haven’t found any­thing I’ve enjoyed read­ing enough to write about recent­ly. That takes love for the sub­ject mat­ter. I am still read­ing (it’s like breath­ing for me), there are just more arti­cles, and lis­ten­ing to more pod­casts and few­er books. I’m miss­ing the fic­tion I usu­al­ly con­sume, but I’m sure I’ll be back to it soon enough.

The need to re-do my web sites is present again. Know any­one who does good cus­tom Word­Press themes?

I’ve been look back on my web con­tent, want­i­ng to update it. Much of it was writ­ten when I was­n’t work­ing. I mean, I had plen­ty of work to do, because I was a SAHM to three kids and we enter­tained fre­quent­ly. But I was­n’t work­ing for any­one out­side the fam­i­ly. I love work­ing, but it takes up most of my ener­gy, so I just don’t have it to put into the web any­more. I don’t want to give up the site, though — there’s a lot of his­to­ry in technomom.com, going all the way back to 1995.

Those with sharp eyes might notice that the “ran­dom quote” wid­get there in the right-hand col­umn has changed to a fanci­er one, and a page with all the quotes in the data­base has been added to the site, too. I switched to a new plu­g­in, but was also able to remem­ber some­thing I’d near­ly for­got­ten about SQL that allowed me to trans­fer all 824 quotes from one plu­g­in to anoth­er with­out hav­ing to re-type all of them. I’m so hap­py I did a lit­er­al geek hap­py dance around the house!

If any­body out there knows a LOT about trans­fer­ring posts from an old ver­sion of Word­Press (php 4 data­base) to a new­er one, I could use some help. I’ve got­ten stuck try­ing to recov­er the old posts from Katie’s blog and things just keep error­ing out. All the oth­er sites came across just fine, but the export func­tion on hers would­n’t work so I can’t use the sweet lit­tle importer and have to actu­al­ly much with the SQL direct­ly, and keep get­ting SQL errors with­out intel­li­gi­ble error mes­sages (my only access is through php­MyAd­min).

Get­ting Bet­ter is today’s post. I’m going to be alter­nat­ing between post­ing here and post­ing on my oth­er blogs from now on, but I’ll always at least post a notice here.

A Beau­ti­ful Path­way Lined with Trees … Buy From Art.com

One of the changes I’ve made in the last few weeks is to move the stuff I’ve writ­ten about love, rela­tion­ships and com­mu­ni­ty to a new home, Felis Lunae. That’s a han­dle I’ve used on OKCu­pid and in oth­er places for years, so it’s a domain I hap­pened to have sit­ting around — no oth­er spe­cial mean­ing to the name, hon­est­ly.

Anoth­er is that Heart­song Hand­i­crafts, where my cross-stitch designs live, is now a Word­Press site. That makes it a lit­tle eas­i­er to nav­i­gate, and gives peo­ple the option to leave com­ments or con­tact me through the com­ment form.

I final­ly got all the home edu­ca­tion arti­cles moved over to Acad­e­my Car­i­tas, where I intend to con­tin­ue talk­ing about life­long edu­ca­tion (not just home­school­ing).

I moved a few more arti­cles over to my writ­ing port­fo­lio, and got the safe­ty and pri­va­cy arti­cles set­tled into their prop­er home at Cyber­stalked.

The only site that did­n’t real­ly get changes (yet) is Fibrant Liv­ing, but it will get updat­ed. It’s about liv­ing a full, vibrant life despite chron­ic ill­ness­es like fibromyal­gia and major depres­sion.

I want­ed to go over the list of sites because I’m open to guest arti­cles from any­one I know well here or on the oth­er sites. I know some very good writ­ers who don’t have web sites of their own oth­er than Face­book, which is real­ly more for ephemera. If you’re inter­est­ed in writ­ing an arti­cle or post, please leave a com­ment here or con­tact me oth­er­wise.

I can’t say that I’ve fixed every bro­ken link every­where on the site (I did­n’t go through all the old posts) but all the inter­nal links are work­ing now, thank good­ness. I think I’m done with mov­ing things about to new homes for a while, at least 🙂 I thank you for your patience!

But as you can see by the grow­ing list of pages on the right-hand side of the site, I’m mak­ing progress. The read­ing, stitch­ing, geek­ery and health parts of the site have been migrat­ed to Word­Press, although not always rewrit­ten and updat­ed. My pro­fes­sion­al site has been migrat­ed com­plete­ly now, too. There are still some pages to be migrat­ed here, but they’re com­ing, then I’ll work on get­ting the pat­terns site migrat­ed and maybe even add more pat­terns. Fibrant Liv­ing needs some love, as does Cyberstalked.org, but that last one is my low­est pri­or­i­ty.

I don’t sup­pose any­one would like to test stitch one of the pat­terns at Heart­song Hand­i­crafts? It would be nice to have stitched mod­el pho­tographs for that site. I haven’t fin­ished the biggest pat­tern that I was test-stitch­ing for the site yet.

There are new con­tact forms up on this site and at CynthiaArmistead.com to offer an alter­na­tive way to reach me for those who might be shy about com­ment­ing.

I hope it was as won­der­ful for y’all as it was for us.

While Dad­dy was tak­ing a nap, I did a lit­tle work on the site here, con­tin­u­ing the process of migrat­ing things from the old for­mat into Word­Press. It’s going to take more time, but even­tu­al­ly all the pages will be uni­form. Real­ly! If you find any­thing that isn’t work­ing, though, please be patient and leave me a com­ment about it?

Plinky asks, “Would you ever take a cruise? Why or Why not? Where would you go?”

And Anoth­er Cruise Ship

Sure. I’d love to take a cruise. In fact, that seems like a love­ly way to trav­el to/through the Caribbean or the coast of Alas­ka. I know peo­ple who have done both who rec­om­mend both trips high­ly.

I think I’d enjoy a theme cruise more, though, like gam­ing (RPG gam­ing, not gam­bling gam­ing) or filk­ing or maybe even an entire SF Con on board a ship. I’m not par­tic­u­lar to any one fan­dom enough to get into any­thing like a Trek cruise, but a more gen­er­al fan cruise could be fun. Com­bine love­ly sur­round­ings and pam­per­ing with fun? Sure!

Such a word that is, indica­tive of choic­es big and small. I’ve faced more change than choice in the past 30 days or so, thanks to a major rela­tion­ship change.¹ But there have been choic­es, and there will be yet more choic­es in the future—choices that I will be mak­ing alone, for the first time in many years.

Choice, reflect­ed in that word, is the NaBloPo­Mo theme for March. And I’m mak­ing a change, by mak­ing a choice to return to blog­ging.

I’ve been jour­nal­ing pri­vate­ly these past weeks as a spir­i­tu­al prac­tice and have found it reward­ing. I’m not quite doing writer’s pages à la Julia Cameron, but per­haps I’ll return to that dis­ci­pline at some point. To be hon­est, my spir­i­tu­al life has suf­fered great­ly in the past six years, and my writ­ing has suf­fered along with it (as well as my music, needle­work, and every­thing else).

So, per­haps I’ll write about choic­es this month. Or about changes. Or about any­thing else that strikes my fan­cy. I’m just mak­ing a com­mit­ment to post­ing a bit each day, for now.

The NaBloPo­Mo prompt for today:
What was your favourite part about return­ing to school?

That’s not an easy ques­tion. It was­n’t cool to acknowl­edge being hap­py to return to school each year, of course, so while I was glad, I did­n’t real­ly acknowl­edge it to myself. As a result, it is more dif­fi­cult to access those mem­o­ries.

Even though I knew there would be end­less amounts of review each year, I was always excit­ed about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of learn­ing some­thing new. After we left Gads­den, I was able to look for­ward to school library access, too. (The ele­men­tary school I attend­ed in Alaba­ma did­n’t even have a library, and back then, the Gwin­nett Coun­ty Pub­lic Library was­n’t the award win­ning facil­i­ty that it is now.)

I also had a secret hope that maybe this would be the year when I would meet some­one like me. Some­one else who did­n’t fit in. Some­one who pre­ferred books to most peo­ple, who either did­n’t go to church or was only there because his or her par­ents forced the issue, who would be will­ing to dis­cuss the ques­tions brought up by all the con­tra­dic­tions in the Bible and var­i­ous church’s teach­ings (and how preach­ers and oth­er church lead­ers actu­al­ly lived). Some­one who did­n’t think it was bad to be intel­li­gent, maybe even some­one who would admit to day­dream­ing and mak­ing up new sto­ries about peo­ple they’d read about, or com­plete­ly new sto­ries of their own. The kind of peo­ple you did­n’t run into just because your par­ents bought hous­es in the same neigh­bor­hood, or went to the same church, or worked for the same com­pa­ny.

I did meet some­one who became a dear friend in the first week of my Junior year, on the bus, in fact. She even lived in my neigh­bor­hood! I con­tin­ue to be amazed by the fact that I said some­thing to her first, as she’s far more extro­vert­ed than I have ever been. Dorothea is a trea­sure, and I will always be thank­ful for meet­ing her.