by Sixer

The Weary Wave

Hello everyone! Just wanted to pop in and say “hi,” and all that. My plots and plans for this blog are bubbling and boilng away on the back burner of my mind at the moment. Instead of sketching blog banners I’ve been drawing page after sticky note after memo pad of rooms, and all this because (drum roll please) I’ve been condo hunting.

Yes, if you bet that we wouldn’t be able to stand each other for more than two years, you win. Come collect your prize money.

Anyway, I know there are a lot of little, but extremely annoying, problems with my current blog layout (no pictures on the front page, post pages too narrow, etc.) and these will be fixed – in August. Hopefully.

Thanks for reading,

––– Sixer

by Sixer

In Which the Author and a Friend Stroll Around

The weather has been a little nippy out now, but three or four weeks ago, a way back in March,  the weather was glorious and warm. We, the Geekette and I, celebrated this by taking the day off and going to the Brookside Gardens. I don’t think words can describe a beauty like that, simply because half the beauty is in the effect it has on the viewer. That a gently sloping hill and a mirrored lake can ease a soul of all its cares is a  magical thing in and of itself.

I took an outrageous number of pictures, so I’m not sure what to show you all. We walked around for about four hours, leaving the gardens at one point to stumble into the adjoining park. We came prepared for the ramble, the Geekette brought a dozen still-warm chocolate chip cookies and I packed bento.

We ate lunch in the back of my car – no picnicking on the lawn, I suppose. Since it was barely spring when we went, being the end of March, I was a little surprised to see so much out. A dozen varieties of daffodils, moslty miniutare; ten or twenty magnolias of varying scent and color, their petals carpeting the ground beneath them; tulips and snowdrops and poppies, filling beds with color and gracing river banks. My favorite were these:

 

Hellebores – The Lenten Rose

Don’t they look like death roses? But beyond that, their shape and color is really charming. I wonder what’s in their bed now. I’ve been to the Brookside Gardens in the summer before (it was summer, right?) and it was much more colorful. The azaleas were in bloom everywhere you turned, and even the bugs were out in brighter array – we got to watch a whole hive of bumble bees dive bombing each other over the pond, and even saw one eaten by a watchful fish. But the best part was the wisteria, awake and blooming over our heads in the covered walk. It’s one of my favorite features, and it was all shriveled and barren when we went this time. But despite that, and the overcast skies, the day was warm and bright and filled with spring hues. Let’s go again soon Geekette, okay?

by Sixer

Fredrick

Yesterday I drove an hour north(ish) to visit a friend in Fredrick.

So what does one do in Fredrick? We’ll, first they see horses. Did you know horses are huge? I read about them all the time, “such-and-such was as big as a horse” and what not. Mentally I acknowldge that wow, that’s big, but then I move on and forget about it. Actually, funny story, a group I was in once spent fifteen minutes arguing over whether a centaur could jump down a twenty foot hole safely, only to have one of its more silent members finally ask if the centaur would even be able to fit through the hole. We all were kind of like “oh, probably not.” I would like to report to you today that we were compeletly in the right. No trapdoor made for humans is ever going to be big enough for a horse. They are big. Their rumps come up to my head – surpass it even. It’s a good thing too keep in mind next time you want to throw around “horse” as a measurement.

We didn’t stay with the horses long (they were at a training barn, so we couldn’t ride them or anything) and soon made our way down to the downtown.
Downtown Fredrick is full of lots of cute shops and funky novelty stores. Boasting two tea shops, two record stores, a soda fountain, and a chocolate store, the city (meaning, the two intersecting streets that make up the tourist section) is packed with things to look at. Because we were strapped for time we didn’t really go inside any of these stores. Instead we entered a Thai restaurant and ordered something to appease our demanding stomaches (it was a delicious and spicy curry that had a name I neither can remember nor spell). Satisfied, we ventured further down the main street, only to find that it was now so late that most of the shops were closing and taking photos was becoming increasingly tricky. This didn’t stop our enjoyment of the city at all, but it did mean we didn’t have time to go check out the historic grave yard. Oh well, there’s always next time.

Please tell me it comes in pints

by Sixer

DecoGear: Official Introduction

Hello all!

Last week I went to Frederick to visit an old friend. It was great (their library? Two stories. With a circular stair case). It’s about an hour away from where I live, so when I woke up the next morning and realized I had left my wallet in my friend’s car . . . . Yeah, it’s been exactly seven days since then, but I’m still feeling really behind.

So I thought, instead of spending two hours making a post about Fredrick I’ll stall by introducing DecoGear! This is actuallly a post I’ve been looking forward to for a while now (read: two weeks). You know that the final plan for PM is for it to showcase all the various aspects of life. As I was planning this site I realized that one of these aspects would have to be my geeky side.

Now, I’m not really a geek. I’m more like a wannabe nerd. My mom is a trekkie and my dad is an engineer and between that (and their love for reading) I really couldn’t help but fall in love with geek culture.

But I’m not a geek. Honest.

Geekdom takes a level of commitment to obsession that I just can’t reach. I’m  a dabbler, remember? Still, for all that, I do partake in a lot of seemingly geeky activities, and said acts must be documented. So when I complain update you all on the progress of this website, or feel like sharing an interesting fact from my Japanese study, I’ll be doing that here. Here at DecoGear (and yes, I already have a logo for that).

That being said, my next step for turning this blank canvas into something is to research The Loop, WordPress’s mysterious post-code-thing. Once I can figure out how to get the front page to actually look like something (sorry, it’s been blank for a while now, hasn’t it?) then I’ll work on the individual category pages, the banners, and (of course) the problems I’ve been having getting my shadows and things to show up in Safari (I’ve been tweaking code with Firefox’s Firebug, but Safari is my home browser). Buckle in guys, this is going to be quite the trip.

by Sixer

Don’t mind me .. . . .

I’m just experimenting behind the curtain. Apparently this kind of post is called an “aside.” This site was actually down all Friday due to a, um, slight misunderstanding. Expect things of a similar nature to occur for the next couple of months. Hopefully, by August at least, you won’t even recognize this place.