after a relatively quiet week, the weekend seems to have initiated another bout of busyness. granted, a short bout of busyness, but busyness none the less.

sometime last week the whole dns thing resolved. it turns out my isp was more responsible than the old host. calling them was a pointless endeavor. no one at the verizon dsl tech support center knew what the heck i meant when i told them they needed to clear out their dns cache and somewhere along the line i got disconnected. i gave it up as a lost cause and just waited for them to figure it out.

in the process of trying to get this all resolved i was told that the new server has banned the gm script. tech support suggested mt, a script i've heard wonderful things about but have been avoiding because of its complexity. i looked at mt awhile ago and immediately determined that it was too much for me. contrary to popular belief, not everyone who can do a little coding here and there can speak technobabble. for me technobabble is a language beyond me. if the user's manual were written in more "common" language, i might have a chance at doing it alone. as it is, i have enlisted help. one friend installed the sucker for me and another guru is helping me understand how the templates work. i started working on the journals this weekend, but with 22 of them it's going to be awhile before they're all up and active again. i spent most of the weekend on them, and expect to spend at least most of this week, if not the next two weeks, getting them up. i also have emails to set up for folks. and a few elists.

so, over the weekend i was pretty much setting up index pages in mt for all these journals. i have 9 left. some time tonight i get to start working on archive pages. go me. to alleviate boredom (once you get the "how to" on the coding down, trust me, it gets very tedious - copy and paste does wonders to make it faster, but it's still tedious), i would take breaks by working on my first round of revisions of assassin's choice, my first completed novel (or nearly completed, depending on whether the rough draft counts for you). this week, i get to alternate with round two of revisions on the same novel plus working on class lectures for the dii writing classes i teach.

today all that computer time got broken up by my annual hair cut and a visit to the vet. reason number one for visit to the vet was gypsy. the dog freaks out when books drop, when you smack the couch even lightly with anything remotely resembling a stick, and any other loud booms, bangs, and thuds. unfortunately for her, fireworks started showing up on our block this past weekend. in less than 5 minutes she becomes a huddled, quivering mass of fear under my chair. more than once she has made the attempt to get past my feet and go under the desk with all its lovely pc connections and wires and so on. as of today, lil miss gypsy gets tranqed at about 4 pm and gets to sleep through all the hisses, bangs, booms, and pops of a street active with the 4th of july fair.

our second reason for the vet was to get vagner, the newest feline family member, checked over. he received his first set of shots and goes back for boosters. he also got some drop for his ears because of ear mites. roro gets to share in the medicine since those buggers tend to spread and she's been somewhat of a mama to the baby. doc put his age somewhere between 2 and 3 months, which we already knew. i was hoping for something a bit more . . . specific? last but not least, we also got a new flea treatment for the lil guy.

we have quite a few wiped out pets in the house right now. between ear medicine and tranqs, they just seem to be disgruntled and quite passed out. and, for just a few hours today, i joined them.