In geek news, the blog is moved over to A new hosting provider. I've had really good luck with them so far and their service is good. I've cut my monthly hosting in half and I'm in the process of hammering on my Movable Type templates and styles and plugins and... and... well, you know how it goes. I'm geeking out heavily. I'm just trying to get things up and running such that I have equivalent functionality to the TypeLists feature from TypePad. I liked that a lot, but I'm digging the greater control I have over things with my own installation.

Work goes well; I'm pulling together a white paper on some of the more obscure sections of the database framework we use for our projects and presenting it to the rest of the team. I'm enjoying it a lot, and it reminds me of the days when I did more technical writing. After tweaking it yesterday, I toddled off from work to see Catherine.

Going to her house involves a nice manageable 30 minute drive. Unfortunately, the off-ramp for her city is the last one for twenty miles on the highway. If I miss it, I'm taking a loooooooong leisurely drive. As one might guess, I checked my voice mail and cruised right past it. Conveniently, the gas light immediately went on. When I managed to make it twenty miles on fumes to the next gas station for gas, I discovered that it had just suffered a power failure and its pumps were out of order. Things finally got sorted out after a lot of hoping and praying and calling Catherine to double-check directions, thankfully. And when I finally found a gas station, they had "Krispy Kremes":http://www.krispykreme.com . Rarrrr.

When things settled down and donuts had been consumed, we ended up watching a rented copy of "Garden State":imdb:Garden+State. I've heard a lot about it (who hasn't?) but we never managed ot catch it in theaters. It's really, really good. That good. Catherine loved it to, but I don't think she shares the deep affection for early "John Hughes":imdb:John+Hughes movies and later "Cameron Crowe":imdb:Cameron+Crowe films that I do... Garden State didn't share their style so much as it, like those earlier movies, perfectly captured the heart of my generation's existential dilemma at a given moment. The Breakfast Club? All about authority figures being not-what-we-thought-them and the confusion that results. Say Anything? Post-school ennui and the need for meaning beyond the Baby Boomer career path. Garden State pauses and dwells on the hearts and souls of its genx post-boom middle class twentysomethings. Everyone's treading water -- hurting, a little confused, surviving, broken but functioning. The main character is off his meds for the first time since childhood, navigating strange and confusing waters as emotions seep back in. It's a gentle movie in so many ways, hopeful without cutting anyone slack. No one is beyond redemption, and the first steps are honesty and desire.

You know, this necklace makes me think of this totally random memory of my mother. I was a little kid, and I was crying for whatever reason. And she was cradling me, rocking me back and forth, and I can just remember the silver balls rolling around. And there was snot dripping all over my face. She offered me her sleeve and told me to blow my nose. I can can remember, even as a little kid, thinking to myself, "This is love... this is love."

Good. Very.