frikkin frustrating stupid computer stuff

can anyone please help me? i'm trying to make my blog prettier. i don't really like any of the templates blogspot gives me to choose from (which is why i keep changing my template. i mean, i LOVE my myspace template, and i've never changed it once!). i have wasted too much work time this morning cutting and pasting html from free template download sites, and it has not worked yet.

pokey

pokey is this cute little virtual yellow lab puppy you can adopt on facebook. he looks just like a real puppy. he has all the mannerisms and facial expressions. he bounces around and wags his tail when you are about to feed him. he rolls over and exudes puppy happiness when you scratch his belly. he bounds after a virtual frisbee (much more enthusiastically than my real dog!) and comes running back so proud of himself when he catches it. he lays down and looks sad but patient when you're about to "leave" him. when you haven't "fed" him for a few days he looks tired and dehydrated when you click open the program. and his eyes have that combination of sadness, hope, and pure puppy gratefulness that you haven't actually abandoned him. whoever created this program is twisted! all it does is create guilt! when i play with him too much, i feel guilty for goofing off at work. when i don't play with him enough, i feel like a bad mama! as if it were really otis giving me that "why-haven't-you-fed-me-in-15-days-but-thank-god-you're-back-i-love-you" look. it's terrible! and worse still, you get roped in to taking care of other people's virtual dogs. if a dog has been neglected for however many days, they go on a list. you can feed them with your own dog's virtual dog food, which will earn you bones (the currency to buy more dog food and toys and stuff) and make you feel like somehow you have done something good. but you really haven't!! it's not a real dog!!! someone must be tracking this somewhere, like some psychological experiment on the capacity of a simple computer program to manipulate human emotions. i almost want to delete pokey, but then i will feel as if i've put my dog to sleep! this is sick.

grandma jean

as some of you know, my grandma jean passed away last month. she had a stroke in january, but she came out of it mostly ok and went home (where she has had caregivers staying with her for the last several years). my dad went down to southern california (where she lived) immediately. the family made sure that all of us cousins/grandkids were in town for her 94th birthday weekend in march. i was not sure if i could go or not--because we were moving and busy and i didn't think i could afford it--but my wise husband told me that it might be the last time i'd get to see her and he didn't want me to miss that opportunity. i ended up going, and i'm very grateful that i did, because a week and a half later, she passed away. she went peacefully, and my uncle tim was there when it happened. matt came down with me that weekend for the funeral, and he was wonderful (unlike a certain nameless "dude" who ran and hid last time someone close to me passed away!).

my grandma jean was an amazing lady. i don't want to go on and on here in the blog, but i'll just say that she has been an inspiration to me. she was the kind of person who made you feel good about yourself (even when correcting your grammar, or telling you to comb your hair and not to eat too many rolls at dinner), and who made you feel good about everyone else, too. she LOVED life, and lived it fully. she always saw the positive side of a situation, and she found joy easily. she had incredible style and and endless supply of love to give. she was always surrounded by family and friends who loved her.

Jean Angier MacDonald, 1914-2008

big day

yesterday was a big day. the biggest thing for me was closing on the house that we bought. it's officially ours now, and we get the keys on monday. signing for it took much longer than i remembered it taking last time i bought a house. and they wouldn't just let us sign our usual signatures--they made us sign our ENTIRE names on each of the hundred or so lines on which we were required to sign. there was even a page where we had to sign our names every possible way we could (marissa beatty, marissa j beatty, marissa jean beatty, m.j. beatty, etc.). for me this was even longer, because it made me go through the whole thing with "macdonald," too. and, weirdly enough, there was one line where i was "marissa c beatty." i pointed out that my middle name has never started with a c, and the lady told me to just cross out the c, write "never known with a c," and sign "marissa beatty." i'm surprised they didn't take our fingerprints and scan our retinas.

the second big thing was that ninkasi went into bottles--to be sold at the actual grocery store! (j, i know. i can't just make up punctuation rules whenever i want like an exclamation point in the middle of a sentence, but i'm doing it anyway)--for the first time yesterday. this dude called the "mobile bottler" came down from washington with his machine (also called the "mobile bottler"), unfolded it like a transformer, hooked it up to the tanks, loaded bottles into it, and voila! ninkasi in bottles! i stood around the brewery (because i took the second half of the day off, knowing i wouldn't be able to sign for a house at 1:00 and then contain my excitement enough to go back to work) drinking beer and taking pictures of the process. i switched my (old, outdated, and with annoying delay) digital camera to the "black and white" setting, and i actually have a pretty good little ninkasi bottling slideshow that i was going to put up here. but alas, after all the excitement, everyone went out to the bier stein to celebrate and i left the camera there. oops.

scrabtastic!

i have recently signed up for facebook. i don't really get it, but a lot of my friends are starting to defect to it from myspace. it seems a lot more complicated than myspace, and also a little more annoying (people poke you, feed you turkey, throw shit at you, etc). but the one redeeming factor that might get me to switch over all together is SCRABULOUS! it's a feature you can add on facebook where you can play scrabble with people! myspace doesn't have anything like that!

right now i'm at home working on an LAR (DHS people know what that is, for non-DHS folks it's a ridiculously long document that you create by basically going through an entire case file and re-writing everything in it onto a form that the department of justice uses in trial to help you terminate someone's parental rights. it takes about a million years to finish), and i'm obsessively playing online scrabble with strangers to distract myself from the fact that it's 9:30 and i really just want to be drinking wine and watching tv.

a little update on the house buying

the seller accepted our counter-offer, and we're in the inspection process. the sewer scope inspection is scheduled for this afternoon. (when i sold the house in portland, the buyers asked for a sewer scope and i guess it turned out that our sewer was shot to hell and just days away from having serious problems, so we had to spend thousands of dollars to fix it in order to still sell the house.) the house was built in 1925, but there was a fire in 1999 and the flooring, roof, windows, and all electrical are pretty new. it's really cute, and has a porch swing! here's a picture:

bloggin' again

i have definitely been slacking off in the blog department, and it has prompted at least one person to call and make sure i'm ok. i am. i'm just not feeling the writing these days. right now i'm sitting on my couch (actually the futon) with gracie and otis, watching "biggest loser" and the snow falling outside. matt's at work brewing delicious oatis otmeal stout. we went to missouri last weekend to see matt's family and eat more meat, mayo, and american "cheese" than anyone ever should. but probably the biggest news is that we have put an offer down on a house. twice, actually. we put in a full-price offer the day it went on the market (there were a TON of realtors and potential buyers swarming it when we went to see it). it was rejected because we are buying with a VA loan (matt was in the navy for a few years after college) and i guess people don't like VA loans. but the second buyer mysteriously disappeared and the seller's agent came back on us and asked if we were still interested. so we offered a little lower (hey, you would too) and were counter-offered. we counter-offered again and are waiting to here. the place is cute: 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, fenced back yard for the doggy, and a block from the brewery in the whiteaker neighborhood, which has all the signs of an early alberta street or mississippi in portland (there's even an art walk every last friday). i'll keep you posted... :)