Julie Barrett's Blog

I hereby declare today Support Your Local Cheesemaker Day.

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One of the stops on this afternoon's round o' errands was the Post Office to mail some books. I'd placed the books in a sturdy tote bag, intending to transfer them to a flat rate Priority Mail box for shipping. I found a parking space next to an SUV. Two adorable dachshunds were in the back seat and I said something to the lady in the passenger seat about how they were lovely dogs and all that as I grabbed my bag and waltzed inside.

As I placed the bag on the counter to transfer the books to t...

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Yes, I've made more changes to the layout here. Most of them are subtle things involving link colors and some positioning, but there are a couple of new features you may want to play with.

First, the Technorati tags will be going away - sort of. They just won't be visible in the entry any longer. I've become less enchanted with the service over the past year. Along with that, it seemed like a good idea to expand the local tag search. The tag search on the main page remains. But now the new tag...

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What is the oldest thing in your house or apartment?

I think that these pieces of cloth certainly qualify because I know their provenance:


The white cloths date to the Civil War era. The other is a baby bonnet that dates to at least the turn of the previous century (ca. 1900).

However, this may be the oldest thing:


It's purported to be a page from an early King James Bible. That's Job 33-34. Now I've held an actual King James Bible in my hands. The museum I worked with a long time ago had a genu...

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After many hours of wailing and gnashing of teeth, the newi(ish) home page is ready. Pardon the virtual dust over the last couple of days.

So, what's new? The basic layout is very much the same, although I've been tweaking several design elements. Most of what you don't see is "under the hood" changes to make the page render almost entirely with CSS elements and stylesheets. I hope this will work in all browsers.

And the cats? Ah, yes. The home page now features two categories of random pictur...

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Apologies for the cryptic, emo tweets. Something happened that pissed me off royally. For my FenCon friends, it has absolutely nothing to do with you. It's something else. I should have kept my cool, but I didn't. For that, my friends, I apologize. I didn't mean to take it out on you.

I need to stop being a doormat for certain people, is all. It's hard for me to change, and it's equally difficult for them to change, but if I don't take charge of this aspect of my life I'll be miserable.

So I'm ...

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...and it almost works!

Our county is one of several the state of Texas is using for a pilot program.  The gist of the idea is that a county resident can vote anywhere in the county. Now give this a little thought. Normally you have to vote in your precinct to be sure you're voting for the right elections. Our city spans two US Congressional districts, and multiple Texas Congressional districts. The county encompasses several municipalities - which may or may not be holding elections for vario...

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I got sick of looking at the cluttered layout and decided to do something about it.

I hope I haven't gone too minimalist. There's always a danger of that.

If you're reading this in the archive or in the low-res version, you won't see the changes...yet. And of course, you won't see them from an RSS reader, Facebook, or other places the blog gets pushed. In that case, click here to go back to the main journal page.

All the blog bling is now in a pop-up box. Click the link on the right side of ...

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Fiddling around with some admin stuff.

Move along, there's nothing to see here.

Seriously.

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Again, I am watching all of the comments regarding the school boundary discussion on the east side of Plano. Some of the comments show a distinct lack of knowledge about this neighborhood. Here are just a couple of the misconceptions:

They're all Mexican and they get the paper in Spanish.

Hey, we have some good Mexican restaurants here. And some of 'em are darned nice. Take a look at this shot outside of Aparicio's:



While there is a large Hispanic population here, we don't all speak Spanish. An...

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