Whoa! Almost forgot to post a pic. This is the tree I was referring to here.

slowly but surely i’m learning WordPress thanks to Justin at WebbleYou. the links in the header (about, archives, contact) finally work. they don’t look exactly the way i want them to, but that’s fine for now. i need to rewrite the about page anyway.

also took the monthly archives out of the sidebar and placed them on their own page. in its place is a mini-archive with links to last year’s posts, if there were any on the current date. seemed like a fun thing to do.

finally, if you’re looking for the link to Daily Star Wars Trivia, that’s in the sidebar under My Links it’s at the top of the sidebar. so go join the tournament!

i’ve been taking Ritalin for about a week now, and it’s given me the jump start that i need. i shower like a normal human being. i sleep for only 8 hours like normal human beings do. “normal” is relative, of course. i’m not 100%, but i no longer fear that i’m turning into a cat.

the downside is that i’ve had to take trazodone to counter the stimulating effect of the Ritalin. i absolutely hate trazodone. i took it for years and years and years, not for the antidepressant effect, but so i could sleep. my biggest fear was unknowingly running out of trazodone because i was afraid i wouldn’t be able to fall asleep on my own, which i couldn’t. trazodone hangovers are terrible, so when i wake up, i’m still so groggy that i’m a complete zombie. the good news is that Ritalin counters trazodone’s sedating effect on me. so it’s a draw, i guess.

what i find so ironic is all this trouble of finding the right combination of meds that allow me to function and live normally. the irony is that it’s exactly like the drug use in my teens and early 20s: i was always looking for just the right combination of drugs and alcohol to achieve the perfect high.

i’m making more progress than i thought i would. instead of making an album for every Christmas or Thanksgiving, i decided to make one for all of them, with the most recent pictures first. i’m nowhere near finished, of course, but it’s a start.

the other day i scanned in Christmas pictures from 2000 in Columbus and Chicago. the ones from Columbus are of our first Christmas together as a couple, and the other ones are from my parents’ house. on my Flickr page, i created a separate album called Our First Christmas even though those pics are also in the all-Christmas album.

See more progress on scan all my old photographs

speaking of which, i managed to get my Flickr badge up in the sidebar ok. thanks, Dari!

that’s me next to a life-size R2-D2 made entirely of LEGOs. this picture was taken at the LEGO Store in Chicago. you can see a photo of me next to a LEGO Darth Vader here. it didn’t come out as well, though, because it’s kind of dark so you can’t really see the individual bricks. except for his cloak and lightsaber blade, he’s made of LEGO bricks.

a year or 2 or 3 ago, there was a life-size Santa, reindeer, and sleigh made entirely of LEGOs. i thought they’d have something like it this year, but they don’t. i have a picture of myself sitting in the sleigh, which i think was ok to do. not sure though. anyway, it’s around here somewhere so i’ll have to dig it out one of these days.