July 3rd, 2008 ( 11:19pm ) | no comments
I know it’s way too nerdy.
But this was fun for me. I spent the evening processing wedding photos (almost done, Abby!) on the iMac (center) because its big screen is useful for such things. Meanwhile, I was running maintenance scripts and backing up my personal MacBook (left). And then I brought my MacBookPro home from work (on the right) for the weekend in order to spend some time configuring my development suite to be just the way I want it, and if I have time this weekend I’ll hopefully brush up on my PHP and MySQL programming (php is a common web programming language, MySQL is an open-source database) so as to be more useful at work. I don’t actually enjoy PHP so much. But maybe if I learn it I’ll enjoy it better. So while I waited for photos to open/save/close, I tinkered with that.
Mostly though, it’s just fun to pretend that I’m a super-intelligent black-ops agent in some sort of sci-fi thriller. The more GHz I have at my fingertips, the more realistic my fantasy is.
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July 3rd, 2008 ( 09:53am ) | no comments
Four Friends Coffeehouse is closing its doors next week because they lost their lease.
I used to be a loyal Starbucks fangirl. I still have a thing for their peppermint mochas. But the second day I worked downtown, my boss and a co-worker took me across the street to Four Friends for morning coffee and I fell in love with their shabby-chic vibe, their dirt-cheap sandwiches made with local ingredients and fresh-baked bread, and their economically and socially responsible direct-trade coffees. Their 007, made with hot chocolate, cinnamon sugar, and coffee is a seemingly unlikely concoction, but it became my new favorite…just rich enough, and just deep enough to be a real treat, but not so sickly sweet as your average mocha. And less expensive than Starbucks.
And next week, they will be gone forever. Today, I has a big, huge sad.
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June 30th, 2008 ( 07:28pm ) | 1 comment
Driving home today, I realized something incredible to me: for the first time in at least 2 years, I am totally
utterly
absolutely
caught up.
The Harvest website (http://harvestopc.org) is online, 95% functional, and the church secretary (Hi Melinda!) and I are on the same page where its future is concerned. I have no wedding photo album orders sitting on my desk, waiting to be designed and returned to Kelly Sweet Photography. I have no freelance stuff in queue. No homework (except the Thomas Oden book my boss told me to read). My room is even reasonably clean, and my direct deposit went through today with the extra hours I worked last pay period, meaning I’m less poor than usual. I still need to finish up Abby’s wedding photos, but I have plenty of time to do that later this week before I see her on Sunday. Someday I need to fix my barn roof, but it’s gone all winter so a couple more days won’t hurt it. All of the things that I should have done many, many yesterdays ago are now
DONE.
I seriously have no idea what to do with myself right now. I kind of like just lying here and not feeling guilty about it…
But I like the idea of playing with my herd even more. I think I’m going to go put a saddle on my two-year-old and see how he reacts. Should be fun.
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June 29th, 2008 ( 11:42pm ) | no comments
{expressing my not-so-inner nerd with some friends at a Renaissance festival this weekend - i’m on the right in white}
I was feeling very sad because now that we’re graduated several of my good friends–the kids who I suffered through Greek and Latin with–are scattering to far-off places like Georgia and Wisconsin and the chances that I’ll ever see them again are actually fairly slim. Others are moving to New Zeeland this fall (D.V.)
But today I realized that I’ve made more new friends in the past two months than ever before in my life…good people like Ray, and Tabitha, and Jonathan-my-king-of-awesome-boss, and Dave, not to mention the Samuls, the Minatellis, Shelby, and Drew…
and then there’s all of the old favorites (some of whom are pictured above, the rest of you know who you are)
and I’m excited at all of the new chances to form relationships and learn and bless and grow.
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June 27th, 2008 ( 02:50pm ) | 8 comments
The blog has a new look. It’s a different color palette and different style than I’ve used before–the monochromatic was a challenge and I’m still not sure it works, but whatever. The design is vaguely reminiscent of the series I did in 2006, but I tried to keep it even more minimal.
The photo cred for the header goes to my Mom, who took this snapshot moments before my friend Abby’s wedding (for which I was a bridesmaid) as we waited in the back of the church while the last of the guests were seated. Kudos also go to my friend Tommy who suggested colorizing the dress and flowers (I was originally working with the photo in black and white).
I wanted to include some fun new technologies (ajax and scrip.tac.ulous) that I’ve been starting to learn at work, but a severe case of “designer’s block” and a to-do list a mile long meant I just wanted to get this online and not spend extra time on bells and whistles…anyway, sometimes (especially with blogs) simpler is better. Maybe later.
I thought it would be fun(ny) to look back at previous versions of BehindInfinity. Some of them are fairly hideous. I’ve been spewing my thoughts all over the internet since 2004 (although only the archives from 2006-onward are public) and during that time the blog has pretty much been my playground for testing and improving my design skills.
In the early days, my blog had three absolutely hideous designs, involving pixelated GIFS and loud background images which made reading a painful task (oh wait no, it was my horrible and boring writing which made the reading painful…the images only added insult to injury). These three are forever lost–I don’t have graphics, mockups, stylesheets, or screenshots anywhere. That’s probably a good thing, although it would be hilariously embarrassing to see them again.
This design happened in the summer of 2005. I can still remember sitting on the couch in the basement of our old house with my brand-new iBook, learning CSS code (it was frustrating) while I watched Star Trek Voyager reruns.
Fall 2005, a princess-y thing. Apparently I was in a pink-and-bright phase. Yikes.
This was the very first BehindInfinity Christmas Remix, which became a tradition. The cool thing was that the ornament in the corner was different every time you reloaded the page. I thought that was pretty kickawesome.
Winter 2006–”I am a princess on the way to my throne”, right after Alanis Morissette’s song “Wunderkind” came out on the soundtrack to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Still love the song, still think the design is pretty cute. I was a sophomore in college at the time.
April 2006: “Professional Girly-Girl since 1986 / Compulsive blogger since 2004 / Aspiring classicist since 2005/ Crown Princess Forever”
Same layout, slightly brighter take. My, I was a cheerful little thing back then.
This one happened, if I recall correctly, in August of 06.
This was the October 06 variation.
Christmas 06.
Winter Blues 07.
Spring 07–I added another item to the tagline: “Equestrienne since 2006.”
Summer 07, new layout. “About a girl (and two horses and a dog and Latin and teaching and learning and family and faith and God)…about a life.” I like this one a lot.
Christmas 07 — yummy rich layout, my first foray into dark/rich colors (and very successful at that…) I think this one is my favorite out of all.
And the most recent–early 2008.
Which one is your favorite?
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June 18th, 2008 ( 10:18am ) | no comments
….and that’s all I have to say about that.
I just had to share, is all.
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June 14th, 2008 ( 05:13pm ) | 1 comment
Wow. Life just keeps on going.
This week at work was very busy on account of Acton University, which is described as “a unique exploration of the intellectual foundations of a free society.” Basically, it’s an annual four-day conference that we held at GVSU’s Eberhard Center with about 400 participants from 53 countries and many distinguished lecturers.
Being a new hire, I was allowed (and encouraged) to attend as much of the conference as I could, sitting in on whatever lectures, mealtimes, and discussions I wanted. It was a really great experience in many ways. First of all, I really enjoyed sitting with other conference participants at mealtimes. On the first night of the conference, I was seated at a table with people from California, Austria, Argentina, Columbia, and Africa. Conversation was lively and intelligent, because each of the hand-picked conference participants (ranging from undergrad and grad students to pastors to missionaries to government officials to teachers to professors to economists) was passionate about gaining knowledge and then using that knowledge to impact their communities, their countries, and by virtue of this, the world. It was a real blessing–and an eye-opener–to be around so many passionate and intelligent people from such diverse backgrounds: there were people who have access to extreme wealth, and those who have seen and felt extreme poverty. They were diverse in color, in accent, in age, in status, in religious denomination. But we all had(have) the same goals: to be edified, to bring about a more virtuous society by means of right beliefs regarding human dignity and the corresponding economic practices, and to bring glory to God the Father and Jesus Christ. To recognize and understand this was very encouraging and awe-inspiring. After that first dinner, Acton Institute’s founder and president Father Robert Sirico gave an opening address, his Thoughts on Human Dignity (mp3, 28 minutes). It was a very good talk, quite inspiring and profound I thought, and the first time I’ve heard Father Robert speak.
I made a point of it to attend four sessions’ worth of foundational lectures, which covered basic (but important) issues such as Christian anthropology (i.e. every man made in the image of God and the implications of this), the idea of limited government, and some commonly-believed myths about economics and the market. A lot of it was stuff I had heard before in the office or read in other materials, however it was quite beneficial to hear it all systematized and synthesized in this way. I was also able to hear a lecture on Tensions in 18th Century Social Thought by one of my esteemed co-workers, Michael Miller, and two particularly good lectures by another one of my co-workers, Dr. Jay Richards. He is a philosopher and one of his specialties is a Biblical perspective on stewardship of the environment. Personally, I find his perspective to be very balanced and well thought-out–neither too alarmist, nor “in denial”. His lecture A Biblical Approach to the Environment (mp3, 32 minutes) was recorded, and while his talk “What should Christians think of Global Warming?” was not recorded at this conference, it is available on video at the Acton Research website.
There were many, many more great talks I would have liked to sit in on but with so many people to take care of the conference required an “all hands on deck” policy, so I really was lucky that I got to hear as many lectures as I did. During Acton U week, everyone is involved in making sure the conference runs smoothly. In light of this, I was stolen from my boss (the webmaster) and consigned to our IT guy as his lackey-for-a-week. It was an exciting change of pace, to be sure. Together, we were responsible for the technology needs of the conference, which chiefly meant setting up and configuring the bevy of computers and projectors that display the PowerPoint presentations used by our lecturers. It was a lot of hurry-up-and-wait action–our services were generally called for between each lecture session, when we had 15 minutes to switch out about 8 computers and projectors spread across the GVSU downtown campus. When a lecture session ended, we sprang into action, set things up, dealt with picky projectors and screwed-up computers, and then headed back into the war room to wait until it was time to do it all over again. It was fun. In a totally stressful and hectic sort of way. I also helped with book tables and photocopies and whatever else needed doing. Overall, I feel like I got to know several of my co-workers a lot better this week, and I really enjoyed getting the chance to do that.
I’m kind of bummed that I have to go back to sitting in the office all week next week…but then again, it will also be kind of nice to have some peace and quiet…
whatever. I can’t wait until Acton University 2009.
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June 9th, 2008 ( 11:30pm ) | 1 comment
I’ve been reminded by several disgruntled readers that my blogging habits have been less than compulsive as of late. So, this is my attempt to rectify that situation.
Really, there’s very little to report. Life is comprised of two states: working, and not working. One would think that the “not working” portion of life would afford plenty of time for blogging, but my blogging time keeps getting cut into by things like friends’ weddings (more to come on that), processing the photos from friends’ weddings, having dinner at Aunt Rebbeca’s house, and of course, farming. Also, I have another redesign planned for the ol’ blog. It’s shiny and new and has all kinds of amazing technologies like AJAX and script.ac.ulous built in. (I realize 99.9% of my readers have no idea what I just said. I just like to say it to feel smart.) I’m so excited about this new design (that I haven’t had a chance to finish because of weddings and church websites and stuff) that whenever I see the old design, I feel like throwing up a little. So I’ve been ignoring it (like I do to most of my problems.)
As for work, it’s really spiffy. Just when I start to get kind of bored or disgruntled something cool happens to remind me how awesome it is. Last week I was kind of in the dumps with a rather frustrating project, but then on thursday at about 3pm the project came together. This week we have Acton University, which is a four-day conference with about 400 attendees and 20 lecturers. And I basically get to run rampant at the conference and attend whatever sessions I want, as long as I make myself useful and get my work done. *happy dance* In preparation for Acton U, today I got to ride around downtown Grand Rapids in a golf cart with some of my co-workers. Pretty hilarious (and at times, kind of terrifying). Then we had pizza for lunch (on the company) and later I got to drive my co-worker’s sporty little car when we went to pick up some rental cars at the airport. It made me miss having a sporty little car…lately I’ve had a few fleeting thoughts of trading in the truck for something a little smaller, or at least buying a little economy car for trips into town and leaving the truck at home unless I need it, but the reality is, if there’s been heavy rain or snow and the road crew hasn’t come through yet, the roads out here will eat little cars for lunch. I like to think I walk the line between city sophistication and backwoods practicality pretty well…perhaps it could be called “country chic” (Colin, stop rolling your eyes). But this is one area in which compromise isn’t really an option.
The world out here is so soggy and wet thanks to the storms. The ground just goes “squish” when you step on it. On the one hand I really like it, but on the other I wish it would let up and dry out so that people can get their first cutting of hay off the fields.
In other news, I ran 1.5 miles tonight, and only walked a little during the last .2 mile stretch. I know it sounds lame, but it was a surprisingly good run seeing as I haven’t been out in over a year and even then, I could just barely do that much. So that was exciting to me. Probably not so much to the rest of you.
See? It was better when I ignored it.
Stay tuned for more entries about more interesting things and someday, a shiny new design.
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May 26th, 2008 ( 09:35pm ) | 2 comments
Jezebelle had another big day. I’ve always wanted to ride in a parade, and today my wish came true. Jezzie and I rode in the Jenison Memorial Day parade along with Paige V (a little girl from my church) and her horse. I was a bit nervous last night at how Jezzie might react to the chaos…large crowds of people and sirens and marching bands and jet planes don’t generally make for a very horse-friendly environment. But she jigged a little for the first block or so, but then she just kind of realized, "i guess we’re in this for the long haul…" and settled down to walk quietly on a loose rein. As we passed by, I would hear the crowd shout, “Horses!!! Look at the horses! Look at their sparkly feet!” My favorite parts, of course, were when we passed people from church and other people I knew.
I think the horses looked great…I was up at 6 am to braid Jezzie’s mane and tail and put glitter polish on her feet. It’s so fun to dress them up…the stars we painted on her rump reminded me of "My Little Pony" toys 
Now I have my very own BIG pony.
her tail…
glittery feets!!
I’m hoping acrylic paint washes out of horse fur…otherwise we’ll have red and blue stars on our butt for our next show…I dont’ think the judges will like that.
Here we come…
Walkin down the street…
Paige’s horse is the most adorable little old Arab gelding. He was a little handful today (didn’t settle down as much as Jezebelle) so her Dad Steve ended up leading her the whole way.
Isn’t she adorable?
Jezzie is such a honey. This picture makes me want to kiss her all over.
Wavin to some friends
Dad is yelling at me to turn around so he can get more pictures.
So we did…
After the parade, we headed over to DeRuischers’ house (in Jenison) for their annual post-parade brunch. I had several requests to take the horse back off the trailer and give pony rides, so I ended up giving rides to a bunch of little kids…
…and one big kid. “I want to take a photo of me on this shining steed, in front of my ranch,” Jim said. I’m pretty sure he was more excited about the horse than most of the kids were.
So all in all I ended up walking around the D’s backyard about 50 times. It was kind of chaotic and nerve-wracking…everybody wanted to touch the horsie and I was constantly chanting, “stay away from the horse’s feet! Don’t get behind the horse!” The kids really enjoyed themselves though, so it was worth it. The adults thought it was pretty funny to have a horse in the middle of the subdivision…a lot of the neighbors even came over to see the fracas.
Then, we loaded up (with nary a fuss or refusal!) and headed back home to the farm.
b
*munch*
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May 24th, 2008 ( 10:55pm ) | 2 comments
…but if you try sometimes, you’ll find you get what you need.”
Timeless wisdom from the Rolling Stones. It’s kind of deep, when you think about it.
Anyway, today I was kind of hoping for a blue ribbon, which I didn’t get. But what I did get was pretty kickawesome anyway.
I realize I’ve not logged on in some time. Shame on me. I’ve wanted to post but I have so much to say and so little energy to say it with–life at the moment is great but tiring. (And more great than tiring.) So I’ll try to post more now. There are some things I really want to catch up on–I’ve been meaning to write about my violin studio recital that happened two weeks ago already.
But for now, I’ll just ramble on about horse showing because that’s what I did today. Jezzie and I and Brenna packed up and headed out to our first show of the year, the WMAHA Spring show.
Brenna and I rolled into the showgrounds at around 8:30 and after registering, we set to work on grooming and getting our stuff out.
It still kind of astonishes me how much work goes into preparing a show horse for the ring (especially a grey one). I spent 3 hours on Friday night bathing, detangling, whitening, and clipping Jezzie, and another several hours polishing equipment and packing Jezebelle’s “beauty supplies”. At the show grounds we comb and detangle some more, polish the feets, and apply product to make her coat and face gleam in the sunlight.
Soon after we began the beauty treatments, my dear friend Jen met us there to help out as groom, and her sidekicks Eric and Lucas hung out with us, too.
Our first class of the day was my all-time favorite: Arab Native Costume. Brenna got some pretty spiffy pictures and video:
as the video starts, we are the grey horse on the inside in the blue (not the one in red on the rail.)
How awesome is THIS photo?
After that class, we had to scramble back to the trailer to quickly braid Jezebelle’s hair and change tack and clothes for the rest of our day.
I’ve been agonizing for months–and still am agonizing–over what discipline I ought to show Jezzie in: saddleseat or huntseat? Perhaps the implications of this require some explanation for the uninitiated. Saddleseat horses are show horses. They’re supposed to be all full of flash, dash, pizzaz, and spirit. They pick their feet high and have a positively electric way about them. In saddleseat, you wear a fancy 3-piece suit and tie. It’s all about the lookin’ good. And that’s it.
Does she look very electric in this picture??
Didn’t think so.
Hunter horses, by contrast, ought to be dependable, steady, and quiet. They carry themselves forward and low, in a businesslike way that would be useful and beneficial to a horse and rider spending hours out in the hunting field with the hounds. Hunters are the traditional equestrian look, wearing English-type field jackets and tall boots and velvet helmets. Hunters are practical.
Saddleseat is my favorite to ride, although it’s the more difficult of the two.. And while Jezzie can do fairly well at it when she’s at her peak of fitness and has the right shoes on, she really seems to favor hunters with her quiet nature and thick, low-set neck. Frankly, she’s kind of lazy, too. (Like owner, like horse…) So, I decided that this show season, we’ll work on some gaps in Jezzie’s training, and while we do that, we’ll see what we can do in the hunter ring.
And I have to say our first crack at it wasn’t too bad. We did get second place in one of our classes, and sixth place in the championship class.
Of course, being that it’s Jezzie we’re talking about, there were some pretty goofed-up moments, too. Overall we put in a few really good rides and came home with a lot of things to work on and improve.
Generally a set of hunter attire, from head to toe, will cost upwards of $300, and that’s for all off-the-rack stuff. I couldn’t actually afford that, so it was time to improvise, and while my look isn’t Nationals-perfect, I think it turned out OK. The helmet was something I had already. The tall, all-leather boots I got in like-new shape on eBay for $20. The breeches, shirt, and hunt coat were all pieces from Goodwill, and I stayed up until 4 am last night working on them. The coat was originally a men’s blazer, which I took apart and totally re-made. In order to make it look like a hunt coat, I had to take it in, add bust seams, convert the center back vent to a double vent, and move the collar up. It’s not perfect, but for a three-hour makeover, I think it turned out pretty good
When I’m up at 4am sewing on Goodwill blazers after having spent 3 hours bathing a horse that definitely did not want a bath, it’s pretty easy to question why and how I ever thought horse showing was a good thing to get into. I mean, really. Who decided it was fun to pack up more supplies than are generally required for an arctic expedition, dress up in layers of wool and/or polyester suits, and hang out around a sun-drenched riding arena for the better part of an 80 degree day (or a 40 degree rainy day)? And all for a lousy scrap of ribbon? Pretty lame, right? Not to mention how easy it is to covet thy neighbor’s horse (or at least thy neighbor’s horse’s long, hooky neck), thy neighbor’s saddle, thy neighbor’s trailer. Why subject oneself to such?
I do it for the chance to gallop around the ring in an outlandish costume while Sting’s “Desert Rose” plays over the loudspeaker and the crowd whistles. I do it because it’s a valuable chance to be tested, to benchmark my progress as a rider and my horse’s progress in her training, and to see how we stack up against “the competition”. A chance to push “harder, faster, stronger.” It’s good to have goals and events to work up to, otherwise there would be no motivation for progress. I do it for the chance to meet and hang out with other crazies (and wow, some of them are CRAZY crazies. But some of them are really nice.) And for the chance to admire some fine specimens of my favorite one of God’s creatures. And….yeah. because for some masochistic reason, I think it’s fun.
We didn’t bring home any blue ribbons today, but something did happen which was even better. Ever since I’ve owned her, Jezebelle has given me crap about getting on the trailer. First it was a fear thing, because my trailer is fairly small. But since then it’s become just a bratty behavior problem thing. She loves to think she’s boss of me.
Well, today at the show when we were loading up to go home, I just flat out didn’t put up with her “Trailer trash”. Anytime she took a step back, I went all crazy lady on her, smacked her with the rope, and backed her 20 feet. Well, apparently that got old quickly because she was on in less that 10 minutes.
When we got home, I unloaded her. And then asked her to climb again. Here’s what she did.
pardon the post-show clothing and my spazzy demeanor–I don’t usually sound this flaky but this is just what happens when I get 3 hours of sleep and I’m just home from a show )
I could not believe it. I know I sound crazy in the video, but this was the first time she’s ever willingly loaded for me. It was such a huge step to get over this issue–no more fights when it’s time to go somewhere! That moment was worth more than a slew of blue ribbons.
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