This morning we say “welcome” to Rant Cafe, which is written by a 32-year-old woman in Queensland, Australia. Unfortunately I don’t know her name, only her profile alias of “vavavoom” and that she likes X-Men. (I caught the first half of X-Men 2 on TV last night before falling asleep, fortunately the first half is the good half.) Anyway, Rant Cafe was one of three bidders, and the easy winner. She’s only been blogging for about a month, but she’s got a snazzy design and an easygoing writing style. I especially like her header graphic!

I have to admit it. I love Wil Wheaton. I had no idea the geeky teenager on TNG was a geek in real life, and I admire him. I have read his blog off and on, and I see all the comments, so I know a lot of other people feel the same way I do. Oddly, I feel like I want to be his friend - his writing is more human than that of most famous bloggers, and it feels so accessible…which is even more impressive because he’s a legitimate celebrity outside of geekdom.

There is one thing Wil Wheaton has got that I want: his autobiography, Just a Geek. Now, of course I could buy it on Amazon - but I want it signed. I wanted one the last time he sold them on his blog, but I didn’t get one then, and I’ve regretted it since. Unfortunately he hasn’t offered them recently, so I’m at a loss. I wish I could figure this one out!

I feel like sharing with you all my nominations for the 2006 Bloggies. As you may notice, I got bored before the end.
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Today was a rather LiveJournally day. I didn’t sleep well, so I was kind of out of it for most of the morning and just goofing off. I suddenly realized I was late for tikva’s birthday lunch at Oriental East in Silver Spring. Obviously dim sum is not a favorite treat for me due to the few vegetarian options, but I do like sesame balls and pineapple buns so I didn’t mind going - I figured I could always get something after if I was still hungry. I got there about half an hour late but I wasn’t the last one there, although I was the only latecomer who was late due to carelessness and not previous engagements! Anyway, I got to meet three new friends, bringing the total number of people on my friends list that I have met to 56! (That’s about one-third if you drop out the duplicate journals and the journals written by cats, even though I have met both of the cats with journals.) I really enjoyed these people - zaph and I seem to have a fair bit in common in terms of personality, if not necessarily interests; I found him quite interesting to talk to. antuvschle was kind of quiet compared to the rest of us chatterboxes, but she seems really cool, she lives in the town where I grew up, and she gives hugs the first time you meet her! (Now that’s cool.) I was a little bit intimidated by sskipstress, probably because she is both pretty and intelligent and I always wonder how people who impress me are perceiving me when we interact. It was a very good lunch overall - I did get enough to eat! - even though I missed seeing tikva’s guide dog Brodie, who was at home.

Tonight I spent a while completely revamping my LiveJournal design. I decided to go back to S1, the style system that I actually understand, and I used a design from Open Source Web Design to make a unique look for myself. Returning to S1 means I don’t get attractively-formatted talk pages, but I will probably stick with it for a while. If you want to see the new design, check it out here. I was pretty pleased with the way the Flickr badges came out; you can’t use the usual badge generator because Livejournal won’t allow Javascript but rd84 created a scriptless badge generator!

There’s a meme going around asking people to include a picture of themselves in comments. I realize that some people may not want to publish their picture for everybody to see, but I still want to see everyone! So I’m asking readers of my regular journal to either post a comment with your picture (if you’re comfortable doing so) or e-mail me a picture of yourself, and I’m asking LiveJournal readers to post a picture in the comments (which are screened). If you’re comfortable sharing your picture, please say so and I will unscreen the comment; I will probably post a list within this entry of people who have sent me pictures so far (even if it’s not public).

So far:
fairerhiannon, crazedyote, fbartho, mariann, beerjudge, allah_sulu, thebestmarkever, Tocs, etoilepb, roooof, moiety_, crayonbeam, hikaru, hwar, hereinnyc, pecunium, filkerdave, pixielust, someone I’m keeping anonymous, FellowEskimo, amanipanda, sewcute (and eyes_of_cyrene), donnakat

Oh my…I found what apparently is my “keepsakes” box, which hasn’t been updated since about 2001. There’s the spiral notebook I was planning to fill with hand-copied poetry and give to A (never got very far), there’s the little note that came with the flowers she had sent to my work on my 20th birthday, a sad weird note from A to me when we were going through a rough patch. There’s the vinyl catsuit photos (back when I was skinny), the naked posed Polaroids, and an album full of pictures of MOOers. (Some of whom now have LiveJournals - perigee, neschek, firesign3000, gilmore427, crayonbeam, indyanney, eeyorerin, rockwrok, misia, entelein, and trism.) Definitely amusing to browse through!

Okay, back to work. Bags are stashed, still working on the Stuff/pajama swap.

I haven’t been doing much online at all lately because I’ve been throwing myself into genealogical research on Ancestry.com for a couple of days now. I’ve collected a lot of different names - multiple marriages will do that - but I haven’t traced back any further than my great-great-great-grandfather. I realize that’s further than many people can go, but I don’t actually know much beyond my great-grandmother’s generation. I know a little about her and her sisters, and I know my great-grandfather was naturalized in 1913, but I don’t know when they came to the U.S. or even where they came from. Family lore says Russia, so it was definitely eastern Europe, but that’s as far as I know. The easiest people to find are the dead ones, of course, because they show up in the Social Security Death Index. I’ve confirmed a lot of dates of death that way, and thanks to California’s death index I’ve found a few people that I didn’t know existed - my stepfather’s grandparents, mostly. The tree is a mess of course! A narrative would probably be easier…maybe I’ll try writing one.

Swiped first from preppyperv and then fromfairerhiannon. Not sure why the former showed up multiple times and the latter not at all. Weird. Actually, given that I have met many of the people on my friends list, I’m not sure why so few showed up on here.
1. Go here. (If you have a LiveJournal account.)
2. Pass it on.
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It occurs to me that there are some people I haven’t heard from in a while who probably don’t realize I’m still thinking about them often and wondering how they’re doing.

preppyperv	aleja	Halsted
gwenzilla	Gilmore	boiswillbebois
oh_chris	zille	Richard
DustyWolfe	Becky	dayzeeedogg

…they are but a few of the friends I miss.