Raising Devils

Things Get Much Better

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 | Connecting the Dots | 9 Comments

Today, we got an upgrade. No more tiny room. No more holey sheets. No more stained wallpaper. I could go on, but I won’t. We’re movin’ on up, and now we have a sitting room, a fridge, a balcony and all the amenities. We also have a date of release: Saturday, at 5:30 am. Why 5:30? Not gonna ask. Just gonna be there.

So we’re bouncing along. At dinner, they had eggplant with pork–my favorite Chinese dish. And as we walked out out with our little plastic trays, my mom and agreed that the only thing we really still wanted was a cold drink (this was before we’d found the new fridge). Since we were eating outside, I asked for water at the desk–and they turned to a big cooler and produced five chilled bottles.

If we could, we’d go buy a lottery ticket.

We’ve made friends. Eric the hotel manager is fine–we’ve been given chips and chocolate, and we shared. Plus we gave him some of the treats we bought for friends–sorry, guys, Eric needs Sour Patch Kids and beef jerky more than you do. He’ll be heading out with us Saturday morning. There’s a family from Chicago and a high school student, and we shared with them, too.

The kids alternate between playing together and totally, utterly deviling one another. We tried to split them up today, and that helped. Lily and I took crayons and paper and sat outside and drew pictures, and for a minute, it felt like a real vacation.

Thanks for listening, everybody. We’re ok. Rob’s still pretty miserable in his cell–I’ll post pictures–but on this side of the fence, we’re fine.

Tags: Add new tag, quarantine, Travel to China!, travel with kids

NHPR: Theo Chocolate

Friday, April 24th, 2009 | Writing Links | Comments Off

I have another NHPR bit, this time on delicious Theo Chocolate.

Tags: "NHPR", Add new tag

Brain-stretching CSS exploration and Erik Reece

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 | Cracking the (CSS et al) Codes | Comments Off

Those two things don’t really go together, do they? Or maybe they do. Perhaps Erik Reece, an author whose new book: An American Gospel I know I’m going to enjoy, also, when he isn’t exploraring the relationships among history, the gospel and environmentalism, likes to get in a good CSS coding session. I heard Reece on NPR this morning–this is a book that’s going to really play into some of the issues that have been percolating in my life and mind of late. So I put it on the Kindle, along with Isabel Gillies’ Happens Every Day. Now, those are books that would produce a juicy, hollerin’ book group session (hmm, more things that don’t usually go together).

Obviously, I’m messing with the blog. Style, code, everything. To make a long story short, my old theme worked with a way outdated version of WordPress, and on top of that I broke the sidebar at some point in the distant past, and now I can’t even remember what I was trying to do when I did that, so the odds of me finding the piece of code I changed–and mind you, it could be as simple as adding a space or erasing a comma–are nil.

So I’m re-coding another theme I like to fit, and we’re having some growing pains. But as an exercise, I recommend it. Rob does crossword puzzles, I crawl around in html and css making minor changes and adjustments. Either forces you to use your brain in unaccustomed ways, which I fully expect to pay off later, when, at age 101, I can program my dvr/jet pack to allow me to watch CSI: Venus in transit.

Actually I would never, ever watch CSI:Venus. But I’m sure somebody will.

Tags: Add new tag, coding, css, wordpress