Thursday, June 30, 2005

Home Sweet Homepage

I am trying to remember when I first 'published' a personal webpage. It was an awfully long time ago - when it was a pretty major accomplishment. I worked so hard at learning HTML and I thought that I was pretty hot stuff. Who would have known that in a few short years, it would be strange NOT to have some kind of presence on the web. Blogs, photo albums, emails, blah blah blah.

Tony - you and I used to talk webstuff all the time! You had a great website.... do you have one still? I know that your old one is gone. But is it really? Check this
out! See, nothing is gone forever, is it? It's not complete - graphics and stuff are missing. But the Wayback machine has it preserved anyway! Amazing, isn't it?

I became interested in building a page around the time that chatting at the cafe became stressful and combative. And it was soooo much fun! Geocities was a thriving community back then. Guestbooks were the best way to meet other residents and cultivate visitors to your own site. The web was so new and fresh and exciting then. Now it's all about the $ isn't it?

I am so glad that I managed to save my page from being deleted. Don't know why I lucked out, because several others that I worked on were trashed, including the cafe1 site. But one day I checked and it was still there, so I make sure to log in now and again to keep it going. It's a shadow of it's former self (no pun intended, Tony) but every so often someone will 'find' it and then I get an email or else they show up here. To me, that's the beauty of it.

We all had so many friends back in the day, but really, how many do we keep in touch with? I have one or two (yes, Linda, I'm looking at you, dear ) But it's so nice to hear from someone out of the blue. That's why this blog is so great, I think. It's more interactive and I love getting visitors (even if they only show up once, but I wish they'd visit more often!)

Oh, and Linda, I was on Donner Path the other day. My son was visiting a friend over there and locked his keys in the car. Had to go bail the kid out..... I thought of you. That's one ritzy neighborhood, let me tell ya!

Oh, 104 here today. Summer sucks!!!!!!! Last month, my electric bill was $350 and we hadn't even hit 100 yet! This month I'm sure it will be at least $400 and my water bill... Yikes. Texas is just a lovely place to be in the summer. NOT.

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

YUCK!

I have a phobia about bugs..... and since I've been living south for about 12 years, I thought that I'd seen it all. The size of the tree roaches here in Texas is really scary.... If one ever got in my house, I'd have to move. Seriously. They are hoooooge. I've seen them out and about, and they are nasty.

Today, though, I saw something that I've never seen before. Went out on the backporch to have a cigarette. There. On the flower pot. The ugliest thing I have ever seen. The weirdest thing I've ever seen. The scariest thing I've ever seen. It was at least as long as my index finger, but the antennae were longer. It was some kind of beetle. It was white with black stripes. It was creepy! I yelled for my son to come see it. (This was after I retreated back into the house behind the screen door, mind you). He says he had seen one like it before, but didn't know what it was. He wanted to get my camera and take a picture. I told him Noooooooooooo!! I don't want that ugly picture on my camera! Okay, so I'm really a chicken. Don't even want a picture of the ugly thing.

Curiousity got the better of me though. I searched on the web for it. I found it. It's HERE. The Cottonwood Borer. There are no cottonwood trees in the neighborhood that I know of. But my next door neighbor has a big willow tree in her backyard. And apparently they also like willow trees. I have ALWAYS hated that tree. I think willow trees are gorgeous next to a pond or a creek, but I know for a fact that their roots can do major damage to foundations and underground pipes. Now I have another reason to hate that tree! I'm NOT going to tell her about these critters because hopefully they'll kill the damn tree.

I'm a bad person, aren't I?

Oh, the fugly bug is gone. I don't know where it went, but everytime I open the backdoor, I am compulsively checking to make sure it's not on the porch.

I'm a wimp......