June 23, 2015

 Today I had to wake up much earlier than I would have liked after only about six hours of sleep. Then I had to convince myself to get out of bed so I could run on the elliptical for thirty minutes before taking a shower and getting ready. A little taste of what life will be like if I'm still doing the elliptical thing when the summer is over.

The need to get up early was for the mini family vacation of antiquing. We ended up going to two different nearby towns because my mom wanted to find a little table for the entryway. She had seen one she liked a couple years ago but that was before the new house and she didn't have anywhere to put it. There was also another one that a lady ended up taking when my mom went to find someone to help her. There was a lot of cool stuff at the first place we went but no tables. I was tempted by several things but not enough to buy them. We walked down the street to another place but the door was locked and my guess is they were on a lunch break, which is a shame because they lost out on potential sales.

Due to the lack of success in the first town, we hopped over to the next one. The first place consists of three or four old buildings that are connected. It would be badass if it was all one big house, especially with the cool basement. And speaking of cool, in one of the big rooms they had an old bar, inlcuding the main bar and the back bar with the wall mirror. I don't know that I've ever seen a single mirror that was bigger than that bar mirror. It was amazing. But they didn't have any small tables and most of their stuff was really expensive.

So we went to the next place, which is the place I got the Prince Albert can the last time we were there. I ended up getting a book, Bomba the Jungle Boy on Terror Trail, mainly because the title amused me. And I also hit the jackpot. While we were walking around the previous places I had the fleeting thought that it would be cool to find something related to Laurel & Hardy. I think that is always in the back of my mind when in an antique shop because they are pretty much my favorite thing ever. Well, in the very last area I looked at in that final shop, I found a Laurel & Hardy board game from 1962. I opened it up just to see what it looked like and make sure it wasn't totally beaten up, but I would have bought it regardless. So it was a plus that it was in good condition. When I got home I went through it and learned that not only was the board in good condition, it had all the playing cards (which was shocking), and it had the cutout cardboard pieces. The only thing missing were the slider pieces that are used to determine what a player does on their turn. I looked online and they kind of look like Smarties, so I'm assuming any small round disc thing will work. And as luck would have it, I have all the old board games from my grandma's house and in the giant box of games there is a small bag with random game pieces, including a bunch of small round disc pieces. It finally pays off to keep the random bits.

It is kind of hard to describe how happy finding this board game made me. I don't really show excitement outwardly but I am capable of feeling it, and I know this because I felt it when I saw the game sitting there. And now when I think of it, or turn my head from where I'm sitting now and look at it, I can feel the happiness. It's like a little giddy twinge in my chest. I like it.

My mom also managed to find a small table in the same shop. She struggled over the decision to buy it but we finally convinced her that she would probably regret it if she didn't get it. And she would have because she still regrets past choices not to buy antique furniture. No regrets this time.

When we got back into town we stopped and got lunch. We went to the same place my sister and I went to the other day with our dad and brother. They have a big menu but the vegetarian options are fairly narrow so I ended up getting the same veggie sandwich. Something I don't have a problem with because it is a really good sandwich.

I didn't really accomplish anything when we got back but after dinner I buckled down and put some major work into the CSS for my website. I read my textbook and took notes during the drive today so that came in handy. I didn't actually end up doing anything related to what I read about in the book today but doing the reading gave me confidence to just start doing stuff. Normally I would have felt the need to keep reading the textbook instead of actually starting.

Yesterday I think all I managed was changing the color of links depending on certain variables (hover, active, visited, etc.), messed with fonts, and added the banner image. Tonight I added a background image, a container around my content so I could separate it from the background, centered my pictures and videos, and turned my list of three navigation links into a horizontal menu across the top of the page. It really starting to look like a website now and I like it. I still have a lot to do but I've definitely made progress. I ended up getting completely sucked in and lost track of time, which is why it is after two o'clock in the morning right now.

I like what I have done with the menu but I still need to figure out how to make the active page show up as a different color. That is what I spent the end of my time tonight working on. I've seen several different techniques, none of which worked, but I feel that I'm close. I also need to work on the font sizes and line spacing, which is what I read about in the book today. I actually need to make a list of all the things I have left to do so I don't forget anything, which I definitely will if I don't make a list because I'm kind of just making stuff up as I go, working on whatever pops into my head.

So my tomorrow will hopefully be filled with CSS, with a break for Chipotle night. I just hope I don't end up sleeping through my entire morning. It would be nice if I could finish most if not all of the CSS stuff before I go down for class this weekend.