The Life of Riley is a weekly post that details my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 238): Different Pages

I got up at the crack of dawn and started making sauce. #1GF! kept trying to help, but I’m a nightmare in the kitchen and I like the kitchen to myself when I cook. That started the whole undercurrent of the day. Because the instructions in my head and the instructions that were written down didn’t match, #1GF! kept telling me that I was doing it wrong. I finally had to ask her nicely to stop telling me how to make my sauce. My sauce is sort of like improv around a central theme.

For the rest of the day, neither one of us could get on the same page. We tried to make decisions for the upcoming renovations, but I kept sending #1GF! in the wrong direction because I didn’t understand what she was looking for. Eventually, we ate some of the sauce, which even after 10 hours, I really didn’t consider done.

Monday (Day 239): Better Blogroll Update

I got out early to clean off the cars and to shovel out the house thanks to a small snowstorm the night before. There wasn’t a lot of snow, so cleaning off the cars took as long as shoveling and salting at the house. The storm was still at sea, so the waves were big and white and rolling in from a good distance. Rather than go home, I headed through town to get a better look. I parked in the graveyard on the hill, where I shut off the car and thought for a little bit while staring out at the ocean. I had a couple of ideas that I thought were so good that I didn’t have to write them down, but I suppose they weren’t that good because I had forgotten them before I got halfway home. On the way, I was going to drive somewhere to find something to do, but I realized that I didn’t have any gas, I didn’t have any money, everyone I knew was working, and there was no point in tooling around for no reason. Instead, I headed back to the seclusion of my apartment and continued cooking my sauce.

I avoided the computer, and finished Magic Man by Orson Scott Card, which originally seemed like it was going to be a great supernatural story, but turned suddenly into the world of faeries and magick. I don’t have a lot of tolerance for fantasy books, but it was interesting to read a sci fi book with an African American hero.

When I finally sat down to my computer, I got an e-mail asking how to show only a single category in Better Blogroll. I didn’t think that the hack would be too hard, so I spent some time figuring out how the guy could hack it to do what he wanted. After hemming and hawing for a half hour, I ended up writing a new version rather than telling the guy how to change the SQL of the plugin. It would have been so much easier to just give him the SQL, but I think that plugins should be easy. So, version 2.6 was written and released the same day just because someone asked. Sometimes, it’s just that easy.

Tuesday (Day 240): FineTune Friday: Sex

I read for a little bit and then went out to get some gas and do some food shopping. I brought a couple of books along with the intention of sitting somewhere and reading, but I never got around to it. Instead, I went home, put away the groceries and put together my FineTune Friday: Sex playlist. I was laughing and having so much fun with it, that I worked on it almost all day.

I talked to the contractor, and we should be getting started on our house in the next couple of weeks. I made #1GF! some turkey burgers for dinner, which I hadn’t done in a long time, and they came out pretty good. After dinner, #1GF! and I shut off the TV and sat around listening to my FineTune playlist (I like to listen to my playlists to weed out any clean versions or songs that don’t fit well). It was funny to watch #1GF!’s eyebrows almost touch her hairline while listening to how embarrassingly filthy some of the songs were. I had a good laugh.

Wednesday (Day 241): Moneymoneymoney Mo-ney

I was going to put the web aside and read yet again, but I ended up getting inspired to write a massive post about money that has become so large that it could easily fill a week of money posts. When I hit the point I couldn’t write about money anymore, I focussed on my own financed and changed up my advertising. The ad style I had last month was modeled after some bigger sites, but I found that people don’t click on ads just because they are bigger or at the top of the page. Ads that blend in with the content seem to work best, and 125×125 buttons work second best. Bigger is not always better

Thursday (Day 242): Not So Odds and Ends

I finished a book called Weird New England before I finished my morning coffee. It was mostly stupid ghost stories and “mysteries” that seemed woefully explainable. It’s a little sad that the only thing that seemed like it might be worth a visit was a grave of Joseph Palmer in Leominster Mass, who has a carving of himself on his grave wearing a giant beard and the words “Persecuted for the Beard” written under it. It’s a long ride for little payoff, sort of like the book. The only thing that I think the book might be useful for is scraping together ideas for a horror novel or possibly leveling a table.

I spent the rest of the day making changes to my site, writing posts, and creating a FineTune Friday logo. The logo can be found on the FineTune Friday page, and if anyone wants to use it on their own sites on Finetune Friday, help yourself.

#1GF! went out to dinner with her friend, so I ended up working late and eating a leftover cheeseburger.

Friday (Day 243): Domain Snake

I went to register a domain that I had been contemplating for a week, only to find that someone had snaked it within hours of me registering it. He who hesitates is lost. I spent a good portion of the day trying to think of other domains that didn’t sound as good. Then, I worked on some logos for the new name which I didn’t register. Will I ever learn?

Saturday (Day 244): Choices, Choices

Went to a couple of kitchen places to decide on cabinets, doors, and windows so that we knew what we wanted before we were asked. I did a kitchen before, and I don’t remember having so many choices. You not only have to pick the wood and the finish, but there are a million ways that the doors can look. Just narrowing down colors and styles to a small range took a number of hours working with some great kitchen people. I had no idea that there was so much to it. Once we finished, it was late in the day, so we had a late lunch at a local restaurant and tried to sift through all of our options.

At the end of the day, we stopped into a grocery store because I wanted some sort of snack, but couldn’t decide on anything while walking through the aisles. #1GF! seemed to know that if I left without something I would be looking for it later. I did leave without something, and later, I made her drive to another store for an unknown snack that I couldn’t decide on. There she witnessed a repeat performance as I walked out with nothing. Eventually, I made her pull in to a third store where I picked up cookies and ice cream. I even put back the ice cream a couple of times, which must’ve been driving her nuts.

In the checkout line, there was a guy buying three 40’s of beer, and rambling on to a cashier who had no intention of making eye contact or engaging the guy in conversation. I hate seeing the harmless drunk. Not because I have some moral thing against them, but because they’re a reminder that any one of us is only a tragedy or two and bad choice or three from the bottom. If you think you’re not, you might not be looking closely enough.

From there, I picked up a sub to eat while we waded through what would be two of the crappiest movies I’ve seen in a long time. When we were settled in and was halfway through the sub, I was sure that I bit into a fingernail. I picked out the object and stared at it being careful not to make a scene and upset #1GF!. I could feel the corners of my mouth turning down as I slowly chewed the bite of the sub, as the sickening realization crept in that the object I was looking at could indeed be a fingernail.

As that sickening feeling started to snowball, I decided that I could think that it was a fingernail, or not that it wasn’t a fingernail. What it was was all in my mind. I couldn’t think of any diseases that it could communicate to the rest of the sub, so the worst case scenario wasn’t going to kill me. Instead of chucking the sub, I decided that I would think of the object as a piece of gristle, and finish the sub off. I considered it a win for mind over matter.

What I Learned

• You snooze, you loose in the domain game
• Mind over matter, baby.
• Emulating the ads of the big sites, won’t necessarily get you paid like a big site.
• Retired people must be bored senseless a lot of the time.
• There are more choices for cabinets and counters than I ever thought possible.
• Panning for web gold has not proven very easy.
• Doing what you love may not be a viable way to make a living
• When you don’t have any gas, any money, and everyone you know is working, and it’s cold out, there isn’t really a point in driving around for no reason.
• I can write about money and movies for a long time without ever considering that I’d run out of material

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Posted in Leisure