Month of June, 2007

Big Weekend Ahead

I should be going to bed. Actually, I should have gone to bed a couple hours ago. Tomorrow is a big day. The entire weekend is big. Chris is moving to Phoenix.

At 6:50am tomorrow, I get on a plane to Dallas. After I arrive, the plan is to load the U-Haul. Hopefully the weather will cooperate, and we won't have any rain. Lord knows Dallas has had enough rain this season (the 3rd of 4th wettest on record). After the truck is loaded, Chris and I are having dinner with our parents, both sets.

Sunday morning is open, I figure we'll do last minute things in Arlington. In the afternoon, I'll be attending Summer's baby shower. She'll be in town for other family activities and the family decided it was the time to throw her baby shower. I feel very lucky that it happens to be the same weekend I'll be in town. I can't wait to see her, it's been entirely too long. I'm hoping she looks at least a little bit pregnant. Is that silly?

Chris and I plan to start driving to Phoenix on Monday morning. The plan is to drive to El Paso on the first day. That should take approximately 10 hours. Dang, Texas is big. The second day won't be as long on the first but will probably be slightly more miserable due to the heat. Coworkers were making fun of us moving in July. I did it two years ago so it seems right for Chris to move in July too. (For the record, I told him it wasn't a good idea to be in Phoenix while it is so hot and suggested he wait. He didn't want to wait.)

Once we arrive in Phoenix, I'm not entirely sure what we'll do. Good thing we've got 15 hours of driving to figure it out. I'm sure it will revolve around socializing the dogs. I'm anxious to see how they get along. Hopefully the dogs are the smoothest part of this transition. Unpacking of the truck is to happen on the 4th with help from friends (thank goodness...I don't think I can help carry a 300 lb table saw off the truck). Then barbecue, swimming, and drinking to celebrate our independence. Wish us luck.

Comments

He Makes Me Smile

Kristen sent this photo of Braydon and it totally made my day. I needed a smile like his. It was a tough day at work. I'm being stretched to learn and do new things. I'm struggling. There's definitely room to grow but the growth isn't comfortable. At least I'm not bored.

Comments

Christy's Birthday

Today was Christy's, my neighbor, 29th birthday. To celebrate, we went to the gun range where you get to shoot a machine gun for free on your birthday.

Yep, yours truly shot a machine gun today. Well, technically, it was a semi-automatic rifle, but it's close enough don't you think? I had a really great instructor at the range who made me feel confident and calm while shooting it. Based on the target, I think I did pretty well. As Christy's mom said, "That guy would be dead."

Later when I was telling my father about my day, he said, "You have such interesting experiences." You know what, I do! I'm so, so lucky. And he talked about shooting fully automatic weapons when he was in the army reserves. He said he was always disappointed by how quickly the magazine was emptied. I totally understand. Twenty-five bullets just isn't enough.

After the big hurrah was done, we shot the guns that Christy and her family own. So today, I got to shoot a 22 and 9mm as well as a really huge revolver. This gun is so big it's almost comical. I felt like a cartoon character.

After the shooting range, Christy, Matt, her husband, and I had a nice lunch at a bakery in the area. I spent the rest of the afternoon catching up with family on the phone and napping. I accidentally took a 3 hour nap today. Hope I can get to sleep later!

Comments

Saturday

Today was a very busy day.

The Doctor
It started off with a trip to the doctor. I've had a cough for the past three weeks and just don't know what to do about it. I don't feel sick, but I have these coughing fits that are difficult to stop. My coworkers started commenting on the cough the second week in. I'm sure they'll be happy I finally went to the doctor. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a mystery to the doctor. She thinks it is allergy related so I've got a steroid nasal spray and an inhaler. It's worth a try.

The Dump
My goal for the day was to clean up the garage. Chris and all his stuff will be arriving in a little over a week and it has to go somewhere. I need the garage cleaned up enough so that we could unload the truck into the garage. After all the work we did last weekend taking down shelves and whatnot, there was quite a bit of trash. So I loaded up the Civic and made a visit to the dump. I was quite pleased that everything fit. Who needs a truck when you can fit this much stuff in the back of a Civic?!

The Garage
After the dump, I pained the garage. I didn't exactly paint the whole thing but touched up the areas where shelves had been previously. It's a huge improvement visually. Then I went through all the stuff and arranged and put away. I can finally put both cars in the garage again! I spent the entire day working on the garage but I'm quite pleased it's complete.

The Pool
To cool off after spending so much time in the hot garage, I went swimming. I didn't have the pool to myself like usual, but I knew the neighbors who were also at the pool. It was nice catching up with Mary and Brendan.

The Shopping
After cleaning myself up, I hit Babies R Us to get a gift for Summer's baby shower next weekend. It was fun looking at the things she had picked out. I'm still not quite in touch with the reality that she and Greg are having a baby, but I'm sure seeing her and her pregnant belly next weekend will do the trick.

I also picked up a gift for Christy, who's birthday party I'm going to tomorrow. We're going to the gun range and out to lunch! Apparently when its your birthday, you get to shoot a machine gun for free. I'm not sure I'll have the guts to shoot a machine gun, but I'm not sure I'll ever have this opportunity again either.

The Movies
After shopping, I took myself to the movies. I saw Oceans 13. It was a fun, enjoyable movie. The cast is pretty darn fantastic. Though the lead female character really annoyed me. I think she was supposed to.

Best line of the movie is when Virgil is trying to hack into the casino's computer system.
Turk: "Are you in yet?"
Virgil: "I hate that question."
I think Virgil is my favorite character. When he's in Mexico at the dice factory, he has that outrageous mustache and he starts a strike to get the workers higher pay. Perfect. I love that when Turk is sent down to get the workers back making dice, he too gets involved in the strike. Ahh brothers. Hilarious.

I think Virgil and Turk Malloy need their own movie. Will someone please write a script for those characters? Please?!

13 Days

Chris is moving to Phoenix in 13 days.
Chris and I will be living together in 13 days.
In 13 days, I will see Chris every day in a row.
In 13 days Chris and I will no longer have a long distance relationship.

I am ready. I'm ready to have him around all the time. He's my closest friend and I can't wait to have him really close. I had the realization recently that I've been fairly lonely the last two years. Due to the circumstances, I never paid much attention to my loneliness. I mean, what's the point of dwelling on something you really can't do anything about? But now that I'm about to have one of my favorite people around all the time, I'm really, really looking forward to it.

Tonight while I was getting my hair done, Loretta, my hairdresser, said something important. She said that it's good for people to rely on each other in a relationship, but you still have to be your own person and responsible for yourself. To me, this means that I can look forward to Chris being around all the time and to his companionship, but I can't rely on him to resolve all of my feelings of loneliness. Ultimately, dealing with that loneliness is up to me. Considering how well I've done for the past two years, I think I'm up to the task. I'm just writing this as a reference in case I slip up and need a reminder.

Chris is giving up an amazing amount of things to be with me. He's changing a significant portion of his life for me. That's something that I should not forget too quickly. It's easy to be selfish and think about what I'll be giving up. Like a ton of alone time, things in the house always being done my way, frequent flier miles. Lately I've been focusing more on what I'll be gaining. I'm gaining a partner, a companion, a shoulder to cry on, my very own furniture-maker, and mechanic. Oh yeah, AND another dog! (Chris has a black lab, Mac!)

Lately I've been having tons and tons of conversations about relationships, especially with my married friends. Admittedly I'm a little nervous. Can Chris and I handle living together? Will we kill each other? Or worse yet, end up hating each other? I certainly hope not. People do this all the time, right? This is a normal part of adulthood, right? I know that living with someone else can be a challenge and it takes plenty of work and compromise from both people. I know that we'll fight. I know we'll disagree. I know we'll have to over-communicate and compromise a lot. I think we'll do OK. And I know for sure, this next step of our relationship will stretch me more than ever. I'm confident it will make me a better person, because Chris makes me a better person.

So, 13 days! I'm excited!

Comments

Yelp

I recently discovered Yelp.com, which is a website where you can review anything in your city. It's a fantastic site! Typically reviews are for restaurants, which is what I've been using it for lately. I recently started adding my own reviews and was pleased today to find one of my reviews was made Review of the Day today.

Check it out!

Comments

<strike>Bed for Sale</strike> SOLD!

*Update* - Craigslist came to the rescue and the bed is already sold. (In less than one day, I'm impressed...maybe I wasn't charging enough money.) The buyer comes to pick it up on Saturday morning. Now I just have to figure out how to get it apart and downstairs! Why didn't I think to do this while Chris was in town?

I'm selling my bed. If you or anyone you know in the Phoenix area needs a bed + mattress + bedside tables, maybe they want mine!

Malm Bed - $75
Malm Bedside Tables - $25 each
Sultan Fangebo Mattress - $100

Swimming

Today at lunch, I went swimming. I've decided that swimming is the most awesome way to spend lunch and I'm going to do it a lot more often.

The gym is about 5 minutes from work so it's a quick drive. There are two pools at the gym one indoors and one outdoors. I swam in the outdoor pool today, because the weather requires it. When it's this hot and sunny, you should be in the water.

Comments

The Weekend

Chris came to Phoenix this weekend. It was his last visit until he moves here permanently. The move-in date is July 3rd!

Friday while I was at work, Chris explored a handful of wood supply stores. He's got a couple furniture projects he wants to start on when he moves, so it's time to figure out where to get wood. I'm especially excited that he's looking into renewable resources like bamboo plywood and other bamboo products. Friday night we went to Four Peaks Brewery for happy hour / dinner. I was tired so it was an early night for us.

Saturday morning we got up early and while Chris made breakfast, I finished up a few things for work. After breakfast, we went to work on the garage. Chris is bring a ton of woodworking tools with him when he moves and the garage needed some modification for it all to fit. So all day Saturday was spent in the garage taking down cabinets, putting cabinets back up in a different spot, and removing unnecessary shelving. It was a hot day but being in the shade of the garage made it bearable. When we finished, we rewarded ourselves with a swim in the pool.

Saturday evening we went to Keith and Jen's house for a barbecue. It was so cool to hang out with friends and have Chris along. We ate good food, went swimming, and played video games - a lovely evening overall and just the right speed for a couple of worn out remodelers.

Sunday we went tubing down the Salt River with Jennifer, John, and two of John's friends. It was a perfect day to be on the water - hot, hot, hot. The river is a beautiful oasis in the middle of the desert. It runs through a national forest so we got to see an amazing amount of wildlife. We saw numerous fish and birds (including a crane) as well as wild horses. The picnic we packed was excellent. The sun was toasty. The water was cool. The company was perfect. It was a lovely, lovely afternoon.

Chris went back to Dallas on a Sunday night flight. It's going to be a short two weeks before Phoenix becomes his home. I can't wait!

Comments

Quote of the Day

"I'm going to learn how to use a beer bong."
- Young, in a discussion about 4th of July plans

Comments

Comment spam sucks.

Yesterday I received the following email from my host, DreamHost.

Hello,

I'm very sorry but I had to disable comments for ericalucci.com. This file was being hit by a spammer and so it was causing a very high load on the server. Please do not rename the file back until you can install an anti-spam plugin from MovableType.

Thanks!
The super nice, helpful person in customer support

Of course, this is hugely annoying to me. Comment spam has been a pain in my side for years now. I've been running SpamLookup for years. A few months ago, I started using Akismet and was quite pleased with the benefits. The spam being published to my site was significantly reduced. I thought all was well.

This note makes me believe that DreamHost wants me to do even more. They're complaining about the load on the server (which I'm paying for thank you very much). It makes me believe they want me to do something about spammers hitting their server. Hmm, what exactly am I supposed to do about that? I can't help the traffic. I can only deal with it when it gets to me.

Six Apart has a good article on ways to defend against comment spam. There are definitely a few more plugins I can try using. If any of you have suggestions for me, I'd totally appreciate it. Send me an email since you currently can't leave a comment.

*Update* Comments are turned back on...I've installed a couple other things that should help fight spam. We'll see if it makes DreamHost happy or not.

Comments

Dinner with Jennifer

Jennifer is finally back in town after her month long adventure in Costa Rica / Panama. So last night we got together for dinner. It was so great to see her again! I missed that woman a LOT. Plus she makes an incredible dinner - tuna steaks with avocado with a luscious salad.

You Never Know Who's Out There

It's been a long, long time since I've gotten creepy email. Ahh, gotta love the Internet.

:: Hi Erica

I love it when you take pictures and of yourself very
nice..You have beautiful friends and family...I love the
pictures that you take of yourself....P.S. I hope you don't
mind me asking but the picture of you in the bathing suit
WOW I would love to see of that.You have a beautifuk\l
smile and body...Have a great day Raul....

Comments

Chris's Birthday Weekend

Last weekend I was in Dallas to celebrate Chris's 30th birthday. He finally caught up to me in age. We're now both officially old.*

Friday night after work, I flew into Dallas. Chris picked me up and we went to Hooligan's, a bar in Arlington. We met up with Chris's roommates and Jeff, who was in town from San Antonio for the festivities. In typical Arlington fashion, we ran into people from high school. Mostly we just drank. Good times.

Saturday I was slow to get started. Maybe a little too much gin the night before. The rest of the day, Chris and I got ready for the birthday party which started around 4pm. In addition to celebrating Chris's birthday the party was to celebrate Jimmy and Katy's too. It was definitely a party worthy of three birthdays! It started off as a barbecue and went late, late, late into the night. That might have had something to do with the two kegs of beer and the margarita and daiquiri machines. I called it a night around 2:30am. Chris and a handful of friends were up until 5am. (Now that Chris is 30, I bet that's the last time he's able to stay up until 5. Getting old has its consequences. Heh.)

Sunday morning everyone who spent the night got up and went out for breakfast. We tried to ignore the state of the house until sustenance was found. After breakfast serious cleaning took place and then the drinking began all over again. After all, there was still beer in the keg and strawberry daiquiri's in the machine! So we spent the rest of the day and night enjoying the most gorgeous Texas weather in Chris's backyard.

Monday morning I flew back to Phoenix on a 6am flight. Needless to say, I was completely worn out after a weekend of party. But you only turn 30 once. (Unless you're me and plan on being 30 for the next 5 - 10 years.)

Go see the entire set of pictures.

*But don't think for a minute we're going to start acting our age!

Comments

Leia & Jim's Wedding

On May 26, 2007, I had the distinct pleasure of seeing Leia get married to Jim.* It was a small ceremony in their backyard with the most laid back and fantastic reception afterwards. I loved that both Leia and Jim seemed to really enjoy themselves during the reception. They were comfortable and relaxed, which can be an unusual thing for the couple during a wedding.

For me personally, the wedding was a great chance for me to see friends I haven't seen in a long time. It was great catching up with the DFW Bloggers and blogger friends from other cities. I swear, this was the biggest gathering of bloggers since SXSW!

A quick list from memory...

• I especially enjoyed hanging out with Christine and Lyn who are wonderful women that I miss having in my life on a regular basis. (We spent plenty of time talking about AB who just got a dream job in LA!)
• I learned that Roger and Ashlee are expecting a baby! It's coming around Christmas.
• I finally met Tina's fiance, Brad. Their wedding is just around the corner!
• Ru & Nicole as well as Brian & Lyn talked about the difficulties in buying a house.
• John has a hot job at a law firm who apparently loves him. Unfortunately, he's got another surgery looming in the future.
• Kristin was in town all the way from San Francisco.
• Julie and Jason came from Denver.
• Christine and Mike came up from Houston for the event. Christine was the official photographer.
• Journalism Josh showed up and made everyone jealous with his Harvard fellowship. (OK, maybe not everyone, maybe just me...Congrats, Josh, I'm so happy for you!)
• Matt sounds very happy at Yahoo! which is a blessing.
• Movie Julie and Chris had a good conversation since they are in similar industries.
• Chris was a wonderful date in that he was very patient as I caught up with all my friends (and people he met for the first time). Plus, he helped take a bunch of photos.
• See photos of all these lovely people. Set of pictures.

*Dubbed to be the blogger wedding of the year.

Comments

Refresh Phoenix - Demo Night

Last night was the June Refresh Phoenix meeting and it was another demo night. The turnout wasn't quite as impressive as it was the last demo night, where we completely packed the coffee shop. Yet, there were plenty of people in attendance and a couple of lively discussions came out. Aaron used a timer and limited the number of people presenting so this demo night ran smoother than previous sessions. It was a great improvement and made for an enjoyable evening.

Earth911.org
Jason Ayers, the CTO from Global Alerts, showed the redesign of Earth911.org. Earth911 started as a hotline in 1991 in Arizona and was later adopted nationwide. It has the largest database of recycling info on the web. The goal of the site is to provide easy access to recycling and hazardous disposal information for household consumers.

Jason demoed the site before the redesign and talked about the teams' process. Earth911 is built on a customized version of WordPress which makes it easy for the non-technical staff to create content. Jason also shared Global Alerts' experience with the Oprah Effect when Earth911 was highlighted on the show on Earth Day. Most impressively to me, Jason highlighted the team of people who worked on the redesign - Josh Gomez, Dave (whose last name is escaping me at the moment), Matt Bob Jones, and Larry Cummings.

Ajaxm
Jason Shipley demoed TenShip's domain management tool, Ajaxm. As a web development shop, they found the need to manage all their customer info and created Ajaxm out of it. It looked to be a handy tool and since its so new, they're offering free accounts to Refresh members.

Red Wrangler
Tim Slaven who described himself as a "web professional," demoed a tool he built for his clients and one that he's thinking about allowing other web developers to use for a fee. It's a tool for the customer to manage all things relating to their website. It holds usernames and passwords for web services so that he never again has to remind a client how to get to their web host or stat counter. It also is a content management system to make it easier for his clients to update their sites. Tim eats his own dog food and uses the same tool to manage his customers which saves him a lot of time.

JumpBox
Sean Tierney, COO of JumpBox, provided the most interesting demo of the night in my opinion. First off, Sean is a great public speaker, very comfortable and engaging. Second, JumpBox is an amazingly useful tool and this was my first time to see it demoed. JumpBox's mission is to take open sourced Linux apps and make them dead simple to use. So instead of spending days setting up tools like Subversion and Trac, you can install a JumpBox and be up and running the app(s) in under 5 minutes.

JumpBox is a virtualized server which has all the necessary components to run the applications. It can be easily moved from machine to machine without losing any data. Currently, JumpBoxes run on VMWare, Parallels, and Zen images. Right now JumpBox provides 9 different applications for free, but plan on implementing fees in the next month. The Refreshers pointed out how much time would be saved and flexibility gained by using a JumpBox. It was clear that people would pay for the product.

Social Media Cards
Chase Granberry started this service because he believes bloggers need business cards. At SocialMediaCards, you can get a business card for yourself that has the same design as your blog template (if you're using one of the default themes). Currently, the system supports a number of WordPress and Blogger themes and they look great. During beta, Chase is offering 100 cards free, you only pay for shipping. Discussion with the group made it clear this idea could take off in a number of different directions so I'm sure Chase went home with lots to think about.

ShareEver
James Able demoed the tool he built with Peter Thatcher called ShareEver. It is a tool which allows you to share files across the internet with all of your PCs. The files are saved on each machine so when you disconnect from the network, you have them locally. The app easily creates a network between your machines without having all the fuss of setting up a real network. Sounds handy, though their website could certainly use some design (so I might want to actually look at it).

Comments

Things End

Heard a Nelly Furtado song on the radio this morning, "All Good Things (Come to An End)." It occurred to me that everything comes to an end but we seem to only care about the good things ending. No one wants to hear a song about how that really, really horrible situation just came to an end and you're so relieved. We'd rather hear about the sadness around something good coming to an end. Humans are weird. But that song is still really good.

Comments

Happy 30th, Chris!

Happy 30th birthday to the man who can still act 16 with me.

Comments

At the Airport (Again)

It's the third Friday in a row that I've found myself in the airport. I'm going back to Dallas again this weekend to celebrate Chris' birthday. He's turning 30 on Monday! It's going to be a BIG party tomorrow night. I'm so glad I get to be with him to celebrate.