prince andre’s world

prince andre (named after the handsome prince of war and peace fame) was my husband’s pet iguana until he passed away in the summer of 2003. when i first met my husband (KP), i told him of my intense fear of snakes and i saw him wince a bit before he dropped the bomb on me, “how do you feel about iguanas?” i didn’t know how i felt since i had never been in close proximity with one, but that was all to change. prince andre, i soon learned, was a free-roaming iguana. he basically had rule of the house without a cage to close him in. KP had given him a tree to sleep in next to a window and a radiator that was warm in the winter.

i spent a good deal of time being equally enamored and frightened of PA. he really didn’t do much.. slept a lot in his tree and came down to use the bathroom on the weekends. most days he spent on the chair next to the tree, on the radiator in the winter, or on the window sill when the sun was warm. occasionally, he stopped off at the full length mirror to check out his bad self. two years went by before i even touched him. he was scaly and dry and not what i would call appealing.. in fact, he really could have done with a good facial peel and intense moisture therapy. ah, but he grew on me. i looked forward to the nightly feedings of grapes, bananas, kale that he would come down from the tree for or sometimes he would get one wiff of our chinese takeout and just have to have a veggie dumpling. when he got sick and passed away last summer, i could tell that KP was really hurt. we both cried for days. PA was a family member and he would be sorely missed.

about me

in 2000, i left my entire life behind in michigan and moved to new york and have not wanted to live anywhere else since. now, i’m installed in brooklyn with my wonderful husband where we spend most of our time on our big black couch. i then worked for a large media/entertainment company in midtown where i coded for the corporate website. in 2007, i left my job to be a stay-at-home mom.

when i started this blog, i didn’t have much to talk about. i really only installed the darn software so that i could experiment with it for a freelance client of mine. really, i thought blogging was sort of weird. who wanted to know my opinion anyway? you know what they say about opinions and assholes right? well, i’ll be damned! blogging ain’t so bad! in fact, if it weren’t for blogs, i think that the internet may have stagnated. an immense amount of interesting and cool technology has come about from blogging and bloggers.

the content of this blog has changed considerably as well. though i still like to talk about my interests and, well, me, i have really started focusing on my creative side. a year ago, i hit a real slump. being on the computer is a lot of fun, but when you do it all day you don’t necessarily want to jump on your computer when you get home at night. i’ve never been good at drawing or painting and my sewing skills were meager but i wanted to make things! things that did not involve my computer! i learned to knit and it changed my life. really. it did. i made a scarf, then a hat, then jumped on the sock bandwagon and the entire time i had my blog to show it all off on (see? my computer and my knitting could work together! it’s nice they get along.) through my blog, i met other bloggers who knit both here in the states and abroad. then, through a lucky turn of events, i met some cool girls in new york who blog and knit as well! the rest is history (or it’s in the archives, at least.) so, though the blog has been taken over by knitting, it still includes stuff about TV, books/reading, crafting (all types of fun stuff), photography, cooking, and all other personal interests. sorry if that bores you but, hell, it’s my site anyway.

i do not capitalize. in formal letters, i do. in company briefs, yes. internet and email get none of that from me. i’ve become internet lazy.

for those of you who are interested, i spend a lot of time working on this website and keeping it fresh and new. i change the design when i learn new techniques and many of my choices are based upon the designs that i see on other blogs. how many other blogs do i read? well, as many as i can, though i find the time lacking.

this site is constructed with a Mac (Powerbook G4 running OS X) mainly in BBEdit. for my photos , i use iPhoto with flickr (though some old images are hosted on my server.) i primarily use my brand new canon rebel t1i camera (with my trusty ol’ casio exilim 7.0 megapixel camera as backup.) i’m a serious photoshop user. been using it since 1997 and it gets better every year. the blogging tool is now wordpress which swayed me over from MT.