Joshua Zamrycki’s Weblog

I voted today. But let me tell you: it wasn’t easy. Voting by absentee ballot is a daunting process and they certainly don’t go out of their way to make it any easier.

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It’s official: summer is over. We all thought it had ended about a week ago, but this past week has been beautiful beach weather all over again. Then last night hit. The temperature dropped 10 degrees and it started to rain. Yahoo just told me that it’s supposed to continue raining for the next five days. I might as well pack up my bathing suits… and dust off my snowboard!!

Looks like I’m going to be in the house for the next few days getting this new web project up and running. It’s for this huge “awning fair” that happens every two years here called Ibertoldo (“toldo” means awning in Spanish). Not the most exciting client, but the site is looking sleek and professional. I’ll post a link when it’s up and running. I’m currently trying to replace my normal table-driven layout with a brand new one based on cascading style sheets. Don’t you wish you were me?

I really messed up today. We had our one-and-only brush-up rehearsal for the educational theatre company that I work for before a big show tomorrow. The play is The Government Inspector by Gogol. But I have been so busy this past couple weeks that I never got around to looking at my lines. I thought that I’d be able to more or less get by with what was stored in my long-term memory from performing the play last year. I was wrong. I don’t know which was worse: standing on stage and hopelessly grasping for my lines or imagining what my fellow actors were going through while I stumbled about. I’ve spent the rest of the day going over my lines and I am very comfortable with them now, but this morning was a harsh wake-up call. I don’t ever want to go through that again.

Jan said that she saw a grey hair on my head the other day. This doesn’t bother me (though I think Jan would love for me to someday catch up to her in the White Hair Department). On the contrary: I have been waiting for almost a decade for this to happen. My dad told me that he started going grey when he was 19 – before he started shaving! And now he’s got this great head of silver-white hair. A thing of beauty. But unfortunately, the theory of male-pattern baldness has dictated that I follow in my maternal grandfather’s footsteps. You remember my grandfather, don’t you? “Granpa the pilot”? The cue ball? Well thanks, grandpa!

I bought my tickets today for a holiday trip to the USA in which I plan to teach Jan all about the beauty that is Chanukah.

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It’s like we were watching two different debates! God, it makes me so angry. But worse, it makes me feel helpless.

I live in Spain and so, as can be expected, the news on TV is in Spanish. To watch news in English, I have to turn to satelite television. Unfortunately, the only news channel available here is Fox News. Probably because it was the cheapest channel to purchase.

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Changes are being made here – little by litle. I worked on the new look of the site for four hours yesterday. I think I finally found a snazzy image for the banner (waddaya think?). Now I just need to slice it up and make it interactive. Then I can create the subpages of the site. I’ve got so much stuff I want to add to the site, but I wanted it all to fit in four simple pages. A challenge! And I’m still learning the whole technical side of this Movable Type thing. I know I don’t have everything configured just right, but I’m learning more everyday.

Six months ago, I ordered some Mexican Sativa marijuana seeds from an online merchant in Holland. I don’t smoke pot nor do I plan to in the future. This was simply a learning experience. Since then, the seeds arrived by mail in a descrete CD case, I germinated the seeds in moist paper towels, planted them with care in tiny pots, watered them religiously, shifted them across our terrace daily to make the most of the sun’s path in the sky, replanted them into larger pots when they outgrew their homes, and picked the pesky caterpillars off the buds with some tweezers. And today I had to kill them. It made me sad. It was bad enough when I had to sacrifice the male plants to prevent fertilization. They were so beautiful. But the ladies have come to the end of their growth cycle. We clipped back the excess leaves and chopped them free to hang and dry. Since they need a dark place to dry and since we have such a small apartment, the only place to hang them was in our bedroom. And there they hang, filling the entire apartment with the sweet smell of Mexican Sativa. After about a week of this, we’ll finally be able to take them down and wash our clothes and bedsheets to prevent people (and employers) from thinking we’re junkies. Want some brownies?

After months of research I have finally found a way to win my independance. I have created my own online journal so I am no longer dependant on LiveJournal. If they go bankrupt or lose power or if some 5-year-old runs past their server with a kitchen magnet, I’ll still be here. And i’ve learned a LOT about the internet, programming, and the future of the web in the process. I will hopefully integrate my new blog into my current webpage soon. But in the meantime, you can find my new journal at www.joshzam.com/weblog/