Gayle's Blog on GayleHerring.com

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What irritates you most about computers? Snort! Okay, so the list can go on and on forever.

Right now I'm snared on the never-ending trail of constantly having to learn something new which is replacing something you beat your head against the wall to learn in the first place. That is CSS and trying to keep a website that meets present-day standards and will be found by search engines.

A fine example of my confusion is that I put this file in the wrong folder and thought I had it uploaded for the last two days. I put in the folder I've made to play with while I learn.

Since I haven't done much selling lately, nor been inclined to wax eloquent about the trivial things which mean so much to me, I haven't kept up as I should. What a mistake. I am self taught in html and can make your basic page. It's a little heavy on code, cuz that's the only way I could find to get some things to work. No huge problem. I knew CSS was going to be the up and coming new thing a few years ago but had no clue how it was going to take over. Man alive, have standards outpaced me.

So now I have a website that seems to have every bad html-concerned thing to do in the world of websites. Geez.

"But, Mama, I don't wanna go to school today!" I cry as I head off to try to figure out how to convert to CSS.

On the fiber front, the sun's out and it's a perfect day to dry wool. There must be 3 pounds of fleece still to wash, so some of that will get done today. I almost have enough spun to make the cardigan I'm hankering after.

On the bead front, I'm working to get back in the swing of things - reviewing present trends, bought a tutorial on Christmas icicles and ornaments, reworking the studio for better working space, and getting the website up to date.

Wow! What beautiful weather Memphis has had for the last two days. After weeks of rain and the summer heat, it's wonderful to have sunshine and temps in the 60's.

Okay, so exactly what is it with cats and raw fleece! Oh, yeah, it's that lanolin thing, and dirt, and raw animal smell. Go figger! I pulled out a lovely 7 lb chocolate fleece from "Peaches" that I bought from Martha at Coneflower Farms in Wisconsin. Sob! She's gone out of business. I'm heartbroken. White Fish Bay has such a waiting list for their fleeces, and it's been so long since I bought from them, it'll take me ages to get back up on their list.

Anyway, I laid the fleece out to do some sorting, picking, and washing. Uh, oh. Siren call for cats. First Mikey came along. He got that evil look cats get whilst rolling in fleece. Then Julian Beshear came trotting up. "Hey, youz in da fleece. I want in, too!" I internally debate the wisdom of removing my feet from the vicinity. Mikey played the gentleman and gave his spot up to the Julian the Jerk. After a few minutes Julian got thrown out by Mama the Bully, determined to wash some fleece.

Max and I went to see "A Chorus Line" at the Orpheum in downtown Memphis tonight. My first time at the Orpheum, and what a gorgeous old theater it is. The show wasn't was I expected; guess I expected a little more set dazzle, but it was quite enjoyable. We had a great time, and even (roll thunder) ran into someone Max knows from work. In Memphis I never expect to run into someone I know.

We snuck into Paducah over the holiday for a little "us" time. In all these years, Max has never had a chance to properly visit where I grew up. All of our visits have been to visit family for holidays or just a weekend. Coming in from Oak Ridge, TN, there's never been time to show him the city and the area. So on Friday we stayed at Moor's Marina on Kentucky Lake. Wow, it's changed a lot. Not all for the better, IMO. Since I don't know anyone with a boat there now, sadly we couldn't stroll the bays. New cabins have been added in piggly wiggly, and it's awfully jammed. The restaurant sits farther from the shore without that wonderful clear view of the lake.

We ate at Patti's 1880 Settlement that night. Rather felt like I was in Gatlinburg. The meal was okay, but the desert, which I usually don't get, was scrumptious. I was a grump cuz I ordered the Beef Oscar, and rather than "3 medallions of meat," I got some unidentifiable piece of meat cut into about 6 pieces. The baked potato felt like it'd been microwaved and was hard in places and wouldn't melt the butter. Okay, tooooo picky, I know, grump grump. It's just that it wasn't an inexpensive meal, and for those kinds of meals, I really expect the food to be as described and the bloody potato cooked. Grump. The Boo Boo Pie for desert, however, wasn't too rich, and hit a sweet tooth I didn't know I had. Yum.

Saturday we drove around the lakes a bit and then drove down to Murray State University. OMG, has that city ever changed. The school has grown so much. I'm so glad to see it apparently doing so well. I'd hoped the art gallery would be open, but, alas, no, it wasn't. We walked around a bit and then tooled on. On the way out, we stopped at a farm truck and bought some tomatoes. Ain't nothing like Kentucky maters! Poor old east Tennessee just can't grow 'em like west Kentucky can.

Towards evening we drove on into Paducah. No surprise the torrential rains began again. Guess we'd been lucky for the last 24 hours (BEG). So we just got a hotel room and enjoyed some TV that night. I don't even know what are the good restuarants there anymore. Josh was aghast that we ended up just ordering in a pizza. Sunday we went down to the flood wall and enjoyed seeing the murals. Then we drove around some of my old haunts. It was evilly nice to get Max as lost in Paducah as he always got me in Knoxville.

Towards noon we headed on down to Columbus Belmont Park. It's a nice little park in Carlisle County with a Civil War history. Every time we'd visited my parents, my Dad would take Max out for a drive, drive up to gates and point at it and say, "Well, there's the park, but we can't go in because it's closed." So Max finally got to walk around, see the huge anchor and read the plaques. Lastly because we wanted a couple of totally lazy days over the holiday, we simply took Hwy 51 back to Memphis.

Okay, I haven't kept up with the blog since moving to Memphis. So I'm going to go back to August, write a bit about some weekend trips we took and simply stick it in here. But I've been on this blasted computer all day and will do it sometime else :-)