My birthday was nice. We managed to go to a restaurant for the first time since going gluten free - Maggiano's Little Italy. They have a gluten free pasta option that was pretty awesome. The only goof (that I saw or felt) was putting strawberries on top of cookies for me as a birthday desert. Consideration win, cross contamination avoidance fail. We also made it to the beach and the movies. And Shawn baked me a gluten free 2-layer chocolate and yellow cake with homemade cream cheese icing. Yum!

Emotionally, I'm pretty neutral about turning 30. Maybe I just haven't had time to process, but so far it's just fine.

I've been working a new job for a little over a month. Between that and school, there's not much time for anything else. I knit when I can and have my social Friday nights. I'm looking forward to the semester being over so I can find more time to spend with people, and get more hours in at work. Also, I'm slightly burned out. I'm enjoying math (a lot) but my other class is more debate than anything, and it's wearing me out.

We move in 9 days - email/Facebook/whatever for the new address if you need/want it and I haven't sent it. We are so far behind on packing, but we have two weeks to complete the move, so it shouldn't be horrible.

I'm happy about the national election results. Not so happy about local/state results. Desperately hoping that the ambiguity of the language of No. 2 doesn't cause all the harm I fear it will (the stated purpose is horrible enough). Mostly I'm just hoping people can stop using politics as a weapon against each other so much. It's so painful to watch.

Overall, things are busy, but good. I just wish I could kick the mild cold I've been fighting the past couple months.

Life has been full, lately. And strange. But good, mostly.

There have been a lot of changes. Things learned, things refined, things lost.

One of the things lost seems to have been blogging. I haven't been truly blogging much anywhere. I've been doing more of what the cool kids seem to be calling "lifestreaming". I suppose I need to get my FriendFeed more fleshed out with RSS things. I have a lot, a lot of services I use, and probably add one a week or so to that list, but haven't caught up with putting them all into FF. Mostly I was hoping FF would add them as standard services, but there's no reason not to add them myself for now. I haven't been journaling much, either, which is something I want to get back to (where dedicated blogging I can see myself moving away from), both for stress relief and so my feeble writing skills don't fall away altogether.

As for life, well. Where to start?

School is much different at almost-30 than almost-20. I walked away with a 4.0, but it was much harder to get through the course work with the level of output I expect from myself. Still, I am looking forward to next semester.

I'm always knitting. I've started sewing, though I really need a different space to sew in. For now I'm mostly doing cloth pads and bags because they are small and I can cut them out in the space I have. I've stopped baking, mostly, because I need to learn how to bake gluten free, and that isn't cheap or easy.

Oh, that. I should back up.

Long story short, I found a bit of information about a link between PCOS and gluten intolerance. I pursued it and found that, for me at least, it rings true. I had stopped cycling, even on birth control pills. Now, for the first time in my life I am cycling normally even off of them. And that's just one of a dozen changes in my health since going this route. We'll see where it takes us, but so far it's nothing but good. It explains a lot (including finally explaining how I could ovulate and not have a period during fertility treatments). I am still struggling with fatigue, but my body has a lot of healing to do, so I expect that will be a little while in changing.

What else? In November or December we'll be moving. We let go of the house thing for now. The economy is just too frightening. So we're relocating closer to Shawn's job, to a better apartment complex, and a slightly larger apartment. It's also closer to most of our friends, so, extra bonus.

Beyond that I think I am just focusing more on being and doing than on having. I am taking in information, but don't often feel the need to comment on it. I like to see what everyone else is saying. At some point, again, I'm sure verbal/textual contribution will be more important to me, but for now my energy is elsewhere, and that's not a bad thing.

I'm signed up for four courses now. Astronomy and Sociology this semester -- a math course and a humanities course in the Fall. If we have enough money for it, I might bump that up to finish the two general electives I still need that semester as well. There's a digital photography course that looks interesting, and a graphic arts one.

After that, I think I'll apply for transient student status at SPC. I'm hoping I'll be able to do that for two semesters, as I'll still need two language courses that, obviously, can't be taken simultaneously. I really want to take ASL, which is not offered as a distance learning option at BCC. But if that doesn't work out, there's always Spanish, which is offered, and just going to SPC as a transient for the public speaking class to finish the degree and move on to the next.

It was amazing. Sets, costumes, music, story, were all amazing. It was so worth it. Even Shawn enjoyed it.

There were parts of the story that annoyed me, especially from a feminist standpoint (and especially when people tout it as having a "girl power" theme). Also, there was a bit of cognitive dissonance having read the book - that is so very, very different, in every important way. But I was still in awe, enchanted, and amazed. I got teary twice. And I was buzzing after.

And I really, really want to see it again.

I'm not one to usually get disappointed over not getting something or not being able to afford something I want. But when I found out Wicked was coming to Orlando but was sold out, I was really bummed. I missed it when they came to Tampa last year, and was disappointed then, so this was a double dose of it. But, in the end, I did my sulking and moved on, per usual.

Shawn kept checking Ticketmaster, though, and when they opened up a matinée show on the day after opening night... we got tickets. Way in the back, but still -- Wicked tickets!

That was more or less all of our grocery money for the week (almost $30 in fees), but, really, Wicked > food. I've already started singing Popular around the house when no one else is home.

I've felt a little bit of wandering for a while now. We're not doing fertility treatments. Freelancing has come to a standstill. We've been focused on house-hunting the past few months, but the house we fell in love with fell through, so we're signing another 7 month lease.

So I've been thinking about "what next?" a bit. I pondered signing up with a temp agency and seeing what popped up, that way I could just take day jobs and not worry about missing days off with Shawn. There's transportation issues, though, and it's not really necessary, or what I really want. It'd just be a job. Yarn money and paying of credit cards. I still might do it at some point. But for right now, I'm doing this instead:

I was going full time when we moved. I filled out a bunch of transfer forms to go to SPC way back then, but I figured out the amount it was going to cost me to apply and send all my transcripts, I could pay for a class or two, so I never went through with it. Then I was going to do virtual classes with BCC and just drive over there for whatever tests came up over the semester when we got a car. Well, that was a year and a half ago, and I kept stalling over the "what about the public speaking requirement?" issue, and finally this week I've just decided I'd put that last and figure that out when I came to it.

Seems a good use of a tax return, eh? Only a gazillion credit hours away from my MLIS.

We had a really long, nice day out yesterday, and made some great finds:

Fortunato's Italian Market, Central Ave., downtown St. Petersburg has the best pizza I've found yet in Tampa Bay. Mario's in Clearwater is good, as is Azzuro's in Largo, and Gino's in Palm Harbor. But Fortunato's? I was in heaven.

Schakolad, just a block away from Fortunato's, has some amazing chocolates. Their white chocolate pretzels are perfect. I was less impressed with the chocolate peanut butter cups, but I've yet to really love those had out -- my great aunt's version spoiled me. There's a Schakolad in SoHo Tampa if you're on that side of the pond.

Prime Outlets Ellenton is not much father south than going over the Sunshine Skyway, and just off the highway. We went to get Shawn some new sandals, and for me to check out the Lane Bryant Outlet. No joy on one, much on the other. I found a lovely bra that fits me perfectly for $9, and a pair of sleep shorts for the same. There were tons of great deals, and I happened to walk in on an extra 10% off day. It's very worth the trip if you generally like LB clothes. We also stopped at Kilwin's -- I hadn't seen a Kilwin's in two years! Not since Lin, Shawn, and I went to the art fair in Downtown Melbourne. I love, love their lemonade. Their chocolates not so much. I will have to try their fudge at some point, though. It's fun enough watching them make it to be tempting.

Our last point of interest was far in the other direction -- the Jo-Ann Etc. at Citrus Park up Veteran's in Tampa. It seemed like a sewer's heaven to me, and the scrapbook section did seem a bit larger than ours in Dunedin (or the St. Petersburg store), but the knit & crochet section seemed just the same -- much larger in space, but that was because everything was more spread out, not because there was necessarily more variety in the yarn or needle selection. They're all much bigger than the pitiful University location (on Fowler), though. I did find some Moda Dea superwash wool that I haven't noticed at Dunedin, but it could be I don't specifically look for yarn there anymore. Hopefully I'm not so disappointed by the AC Moore in Tampa Palms when it opens.

Also, Crazy Buffet is crazy expensive. Shawn seemed to really love his food, though. (I don't do Chinese, so I just knitted and watched.)

The waves off the Sunshine Skyway were gorgeous, and the sound of the Grand Prix in St. Pete was just disorienting. Tampa Bay? Is amazing.

I twittered that my MT upgrade actually went through without a hitch, which was true, and it wasn't. I didn't realize until posting yesterday that I had a bug. I could still post, but I was getting an error -- something about being date_based and unblessed. So, feeling insulted, I searched for a fix.

Luckily, Dan has the answer. So if you're slow to the upgrade party but have been an MT person for a while, you may get this bug, but it's extremely painless to solve thanks to people smarter than I am.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled monthly updates....

I have seven Toluu invites. Contact me somewhere with your email address if you want one.

What is Toluu?

Toluu is a utility that makes it easy to discover the feeds your friends read and find your new favorite feed. You import your feeds and then your friends can easily see what you actually read. You can also find others who have similar tastes in feeds as you do and discover feeds you may find interesting. It is quite simple.

So far I'm not impressed, for three reasons: I'm only matching with one person, probably because of the overall lack of members. Secondly, it emails me updates from people who have contacted me, but who I have not contacted back. The only way to get rid of this appears to also get rid of the updates from the people you have contacted back. And lastly having to manually import every time I add a feed is a drag and I'm not much of a bookmarklet person. I'm assuming the first two will improve over time, and the third might be less of an issue for most people whose feeds remain fairly static.

I guess I might also be less impressed because I already share articles from feeds I like, and that I think my friends will like via Google Reader, which is further aggregated to FriendFeed and from there to Facebook. So, mostly I'm just wanting to use Toluu to find new feeds, but no joy... yet.

The St. Pete Times is running a vote for the best local bands (Rebekah Pulley) as part of the the tbt "Ultimate Local Music Guide". You can vote (for Rebekah Pulley) once a day between now and May 10th with your phones by texting your choice (TBT5) to 78247. You'll get a "half off entry" to see the Showcase at Skipper's message back.

If you don't already have a favorite (Rebekah Pulley), now is a good opportunity to familiarize yourself with the scene.