last weekend, i joined my sister, brother-in-law and niece for a roadtrip to sioux falls, south dakota. we were celebrating hannie’s third birthday!

the hotel we were staying at was very nice and comfortable, but the pool was made for the kids. it’s deepest point was only 3′! so on friday night i spent some time playing in the 1′ deep end with hannie (and bryan). we went down the slide together a few times — we couldn’t quite convince her to go down the slide on her own! maybe next time.

bright and early on saturday morning, we went to the sertoma butterfly house.

“May the wings of the butterfly kiss the sun,
And find your shoulders to light on.”

before going to see the butterflies, i spent some time chatting with the fish.

puffer fish are adorable.

i also pet a manta ray and a horseshoe crab. then the crab flipped itself over and we all went “ewwww!”

from left: dad (trying to find every fish listed on the guide), gramma d, karyn, hannie and bryan.

have you noticed how every clown fish ever will now be know as nemo? i first experienced this phenomenon at an aquarium in salzburg, austria, many years ago (geez, over 8 years ago, actually).

on to the butterflies!

the butterfly room is kept at a certain temperature and humidity level so when we walked in, my camera immediately fogged up. oops! i might not have noticed if it weren’t for all of the owl butterflies near the doorway that greeted us.

this flower is very pretty and quite tall, though i don’t remember what its name is.

there were special fruit-feeding stations every few feet. fun to see the butterflies with their “tongues” out!

“pop-pop” gives hannie a lift to see the butterflies.

then a butterfly landed on dad’s shoulder and it was the coolest thing ever.

and THEN a butterfly landed on ME and it was WOW THE COOLEST THING EVER. i am so easily excited, y’all.

he was a very nice little butterfly, posing with his wings open and everything.

that guy was up on a wall out of reach (and almost out of sight) but i think it might be the moth that had an 11″ wingspan — the atlas moth. he was huge.

and as bryan and i were about to leave the butterfly room (it felt like it was getting gradually warmer in there), another guy landed on me — a blue morpho! he was not as cooperative about opening his pretty little wings, though.

i look stern because i was telling him to just open his dang wings.

bryan readied his camera as i (gently) poked the butterfly’s legs (he poked back at me). he quickly fluttered his wings a few times and bryan managed to get a shot. then it was bryan’s turn!

so pretty. then we finally scared it off and it went and landed in the next’s lady’s hair.

and then it was time for lunch! can you believe all of this fun happened before noon? more about the weekend later.

i got to attend minnewebcon again this year because i’m a lucky girl!

whitney hess was this year’s morning keynote speaker. she spoke about user research, but some of the thoughts i jotted down can apply to any job:

• Empathy builds empires.
• In order to solve a problem, get away from your desk. Get out into the world: explore, learn, understand.
• Talk to people about something you’re trying to understand until you stop hearing new things — then analyze and process.
• See the problems that other people don’t see (and be part of the solution).

when whitney flipped up a slide about soft skills a ux researcher needs to have, i found myself wondering if i have these skills and bring them to my professional (and personal!) life. i would like to think i do, but i could get better in some situations.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
- Nietzsche

after lunch, i attended a session hosted by tonya oaks smith in which she prompted us to think about our own communication networks. we are agents of change, but who do we know as opinion leaders? who can help us get our message out into the world?

this was right around the time that i started to realize that i needed to stop being my usual quiet self and get chatting with folks — networking, man. i often let my antisocial homebody-ness take over my brain and i forget that talking to strangers can be a good thing. then tonya pointed me towards a recent blog post she wrote — networking doesn’t have to have a defined expectation! networking is just getting to know people, finding people who have similar interests as you. maybe someday you can help each other, but at the beginning it is just for fun.

have more fun!

and then i went to abbey tosic’s session about standing out and moving up.

• don’t be afraid to brag — no one will be a better advocate for yourself than you will be.
  (related: always have an answer for that dreaded small-talk question, “what have you been up to?”)
• figure out what’s holding you back — then conquer it! one success brings confidence to create more success.
• don’t forget to include the things that bring you joy on your “to do” list.
• get out of your comfort zone more often.

“If you’re not feeling a little uncomfortable, you’re probably not pushing hard enough.”

at the happy hour that night, my friend, bertine, and i were talking about sessions we could present. what topics are we confident enough about to share with everyone else? because being an active part of a local (maybe someday global?!) team of web professionals makes me feel excited. (even just writing about this little personal journey i had on monday is making me feel excited.)

and then i asked the geek girls for their autographs on their new book and they remembered me* despite brief meetings in the past and i didn’t want to go home because then i was over-the-moon excited. (i can easily get starry-eyed about people i think are amazing, but hopefully i can also maintain composure in their presence.)

* i should note that meghan remembered me because of my twitter name, @pork_chop, which actually pleases me even more after all of this inspiration. it just reinforces that my personal brand is working! i’m doing something right so far, antisocial or not.

last weekend i finished cutting all of the pieces to put together my first quilt with the circa 1934 pattern. they are all laid out and ready for sewing! one of these days…

until then, i’ve become a little obsessed with my itty bitty stash. i’ve been buying a lot of fat quarters from my local quilt shop and i’m not always sure what the pattern name or collection is. thanks to google, though, i’ve been able to find a lot of names and label everything i’ve used so far. this is probably not normal behavior, but it feels good to know where everything came from — especially if i ever want to try to track down more!

anyway, i am very glad that i did some quilting work on saturday, the final day of national quilting month, because on sunday i woke up to a very awesome tweet:

at first i was excited because i never win contests! but then it occurred to me that it was april 1^st and what if it was a joke. but of course it wasn’t! i’m so excited to go shopping (online) — but i have no idea what to buy!

many, many thanks to seamedup and the fat quarter shop!

i’ve been wrestling with my blog for the last couple weeks. one day i logged in and my dashboard looked like this:

which is really not right.

i contacted my website host (dreamhost) for support right away and, yes, i panicked a bit. the rest of my website seemed a-okay, however. i did a database restore from my web account and the next day it seemed like my little ol’ blog was back to normal.

then i logged in again a couple nights ago, and blog was sick again!

chrome was giving me the same warning it had given me a week or so ago, so this time i took it all much more seriously, with tips directly from wordpress. i backed up my SQL wordpress database and all of my wordpress files from my website. i changed passwords everywhere. i downloaded and ran the recommended virus-finding software for my mac. i reported the attack to dreamhost again. i changed my wordpress keys. i reinstalled wordpress from a .zip download and from the wonky dashboard. and i considered deleting everything — but luckily, this time, i don’t think it’ll come to that.

it turns out that macs can get viruses! who knew? after running the clamxav software, this report popped up:

i didn’t do anything about it right away (yesterday morning) because i had to go to work. however, when i got to work — my dashboard (via windows 7) looked a-okay and back to normal. what had changed? i wasn’t sure. when i got home again last night, the dashboard (via my mac) was sick again. i was getting so frustrated!

but then i remoted into my computer at work — and the dashboard was still fine there. so the problem must’ve been with my mac. so strange! i couldn’t see any other ill effects from the viruses the scanner found, except for on my wordpress dashboard.

so, last night i ran the scan again and opted to move the yucky files into a folder on my desktop. this time it only found the trojan.java files. i moved them to the trash and did a secure empty — and now my dashboard is a-okay again.

so that was very bizarre. i hope the drama is over now, but today i will be working on beefing up my wordpress’s security (and running the virus software one more time), just in case. i would be so sad if i lost my blog — it holds so many memories!

✓ practice with the rotary cutter

✓ remember how to do basic embroidery

✓ use the new-to-me antique sewing machine

(new, low-shank ¼” foot purchased at glad creations.)

i’ve had my eye on this pattern from the purl bee for quite some time — i’m so delighted that i was finally able to use it! it served as my reintroduction to the sewing world, forcing me to find my only embroidery hoop and to ensure that my sewing machine was in good working condition.

i can still sew a straight line: hooray!

purl bee instructions read:

To make sure the pillows corners are neat you will want to sew a curve instead of a right angle. Mark this curve by using a juice glass as instructed below.

a wine glass works just as well, i’ve found. (maybe even better at times.)

everything i learned in home ec. class came flooding back with that familiar sewing machine hum. it feels so good to craft!

the finished pillow cases! they make me happy and there’s another bonus: an item on my 101 goals in 1001 days list is complete.

can’t wait to get to sewing some quilt blocks — i am currently in the process of cutting many squares. i am nervous about cutting up all of my lovely fabrics (worried i’ll do something wrong) but also really excited to finally be making some progress! i hope i can get a lot more cutting done this weekend, so i can start laying everything out by sunday night. (i’ll just have to find a good, cat-free zone for this…)

i received a wise reminder from my friend, bertine: “measure twice!” (so far, so good!)