Special K and I needed a break from the thanksgiving menagerie, so we stepped outside for a cigarette. In the back yard, the auxiliary outdoor kitchen was set up underneath a plastic canopy that my brother and I had bought for my father on a previous birthday. It was intended to be used for car camping, but it worked well to shield the various turkey-deep-frying, oyster-shucking, wine-drinking and cigar-smoking activities from the drizzling rain. It also seemed to serve as the impromptu patriarchal gathering place, the “men’s club” of this particular family event. K and I lit our cigarettes and stepped under the canopy. I re-introduced her to my father, who in turn introduced her to my cousin C, a man who, to put it delicately, often requires some amount of patience. Either that or a matching twisted sense of humor. The ensuing conversation went something like this:

C: Oh, so you two are… (insert vaguely lewd hand gesture, signifying “togetherness” here.)
K: (chuckling) No, no. We’re just good friends.
C: Oh, uh-huh, I see (rolling eyes). It’s one of those things.
K: No, really. We’re very close, but not in that way. We’re just friends.
C: (looking at me) Geez, Zach, are you ok with this? I mean, she doesn’t seem to be taking your relationship very seriously.
Me: Um, what exact part of “just friends” did you not understand? Is it that hard to fathom? Are we speaking in tongues? Wait, don’t answer that.
C: I mean, don’t get me wrong, I understand about denial. But really, you guys should get help or something.
K: (turning to me, smirking) What the hell is wrong with him?
My Dad: So how ’bout this weather were having, eh?

We’d finished our smokes and somehow ended the cyclical line of questioning, and were walking back into the house. The rain was coming down harder now, and the chill in the air was making some serious inroads through our layers of jackets and scarves. “I really like your family, Zach. They’re funny. Your cousin, though…”
     “Yeah, it’s best not to take anything he says even remotely seriously. You’ll get less offended that way.”
     “I mean, why on earth does he care so much whether or not we are sleeping together?”
     “Frankly, I’m more comfortable not speculating about that. I suspect I wouldn’t really want to know the answer.”

So I was at my friend D’s 30th birthday party the other night. Being situated so close to Halloween, one of his favourite birthday traditions is the Jack-o-lantern Totem Pole. This year, after construction was completed, he added a grand finale by digging up some unused fireworks, lighting them one by one and throwing them into the individual pumpkins. Towards the end, I had my camera out and managed to capture the image below. Creepy!

Also: The Froot Loops of the Devil

special k: so, rolling into work just before the crack of noon, eh?
z: yes, otherwise known as “the buttcrack of noon”
z: for the record, i was actually here bright and early at like 10:45. what, you think i’m some sort of slacker? damn.
special k: are you still planning on going to the dinner party on saturday?
z: yeah! you?
special k: nah. i’m kinda sick of eating already.
z: riiiiiiiiiight.
special k: i’m just kidding!
z: your shenanigans are unconvincing.
z: i can see right through your leeetle games.
special k: sorry for the cliche, but : LOL
special k: i’m gonna get in trouble if you keep that up.
z: LOL! :D <3 JK! ROFLMAO! :D :p
special k: c:b
special k: it’s a guy with a hat
z: nice.
special k: what are you doing tomorrow night?
z: tomorrow night… no plans.
z: oh, wait! tomorrow is tax day.
z: yeah, no plans.
special k: you did it again. shhhhhh! too much laughing over here.
z: oh. ok, i’ll keep it down. shhhh!
z: (i’ll type in parens from now on.)
z: (is that quiet enough?)
special k: thank you. in regard to tomorrow night, there is a birthday thing going on at Touché restaurant.
z: (mmkay.)
special k: do you wanna go? we can walk around saying “oh touché” to everyone
z: (hopefully we’ll also be able to get in some “au contraire, mon frere”s as well.)
z: (is there gonna be loads of hot chicks?)
z: (cause if there is, i’m not goin.)
z: (too much pressure.)
special k: SHIT LOADS
z: shhhhhh!!! quiet!
special k: (oops)
z: (geez, yer gonna get us both kicked out of here.)
special k: I’m disappointed I didn’t get a chuckle for the touché joke.
special k: it was kinda cheesey, but hey so are you.
z: (well, i would’ve LOL’ed, but I didn’t want to get in trouble.)
special k: oh yeah.

Well, I’ve just spent the better part of a couple of weeks transitioning the site to a new blogging environment. Protein is now running on WordPress (insert oohs, aahs and polite applause here). I must say that this transition involved a metric fuckton of work, all to get a site up and running that looks really not very different from the old one. That’s why I’m giving it a 1.5 designation. Maybe if I get around to making drastic visual changes, I can unveil those and call it 2.0. Anyway, most of you will likely not notice the change, as it’s mostly back-end. The initial set-up was pretty simple, once I got over fears of mucking about with MySQL and phpMyAdmin. Installation is a breeze, and the admin/posting interface is fast and easy to use. The thing that took so much time was transitioning my old template to something that WordPress could use, which involved first of all beating my brain with the idea of PHP for awhile, and then trying to sort out all the added CSS that’s used in the new environment.

You may be wondering why I bothered. Well, there are a few advantages to doing this. The first is that I no longer have to rely on a third-party service (Blogger) to do my posting for me. It’s all done on my very own hosted server which I’m already paying for. And there’s something very satisfying to me about using more of the little goo-gaws and services that have been included in my hosting package and that I haven’t had an opportunity or reason to use before now. The second is that the environment itself is quite elegant compared to blogger, especially in terms of updating. In this environment, pages are created dynamically as they are requested. So not only is creating new posts much faster, but making changes to the site template is drastically faster, because the software doesn’t have to republish the entire site before the changes can be seen. This is especially good news for someone like me, who is just learning how to design in XHTML, and likes to view what happens to the site after every single little change I make. The third advantage is functionality. I now am able to categorize posts, easily create stand-alone pages, and have much more control over the content in general.

So, kick back and look around a bit, click on some links, cruise around the site and be sure to let me know if something is broken. Thanks bunches, you’re the best.

special k: it’s been awhile since i’ve been involved in something “casual,” so I’m hoping that I remember how to do it.
z: yeah, cuz there are like, rules and stuff.
special k: uh, there are?
special k: i thought the casual meant there were no rules.
z: well, i mean, if you are wondering if you remember how to do it, then that means there are rules, right?
z: because if there weren’t, you wouldn’t worry about remembering because there wouldn’t be anything to remember.
special k: oh, you are right.
special k: there are rules. i just have to recall what they are.
z: yeah. like “no underwear in the dishwasher”.
z: or “always wipe your feet before going into the garage”.
special k: yeah! of course!
z: or “never have more than 5.25 drinks”.
z: “otherwise known as 5 and one quarter”.
special k: cause if you do, you are sleeping on the couch because it’s close to the toilet.