Star Shaped

Yesterday I cut my hair and dyed it blonde red. Do you want me to get into the horror that is attempting to dye your own hair blonde? I didn’t think so.

Hey kids! I can’t smile when I take my own picture!

(Actually, I will tell the blonde story. I bought a home bleach kit, mixed it and applied it correctly, yet my hair turned out ORANGE. I remembered why I went to salons when I kept my hair blonde last year. I ended up running to the store at 9:45 last night to buy the red dye, and crossed my fingers to hope it would look all right. Thankfully, it came out pretty good! Oops. Lesson learned, at least.)

Can you spot me in this picture? (taken by misselizabeth.)

This weekend I attended my first nerd Drupal camp; Drupal Design Camp Boston! When I first heard of this event I figured only locals from the New England area would make the trek to Cambridge, but as more and more people signed up, I found that people and companies from all over the country (and world!) were willing to make the trip to this area to meet up with fellow Drupal geeks. This made me think about just how community oriented this framework really is…

I’ve not been working with Drupal for long; I built a couple sites using it about a year ago, but I followed no set standards or practices. (My coworkers now would absolutely cringe over some of the things I did. I know better now, guys. But don’t worry; even back then, I didn’t hack core!) When I started my current job about a month ago, I knew I needed to get up to speed on the system. I know CSS, I know PHP; I’m just not familiar with Drupal functions and the theming system. I figured this camp would be a perfect opportunity to learn more about this CMS and to meet a few people in the community. I was not disappointed.

On Saturday morning I woke up at 6:45 (yes, in the morning); way, way too early for this late riser, to make my way down to Boston from my apartment in New Hampshire. After debating taking the train, I decided to drive, only because the commuter rail I wanted to take wouldn’t have gotten me to the conference in time. “I’ve driven around Chicago tons of times,” I thought to myself as I loaded my things in the back of my car, “Boston shouldn’t be much different.”

Oh, how I’d eat my words (thoughts?) just an hour later as I circled the same stretch of road multiple times, anxiously searching for the correct exit after getting off the wrong one more times than I could count. I took one too many wrong turns and ended up driving over the Tobin Bridge to Chelsea, cursing as I paid the $3.00 toll for my mistake.

Somehow, after aimlessly driving around Cambridge for 45 minutes, I came across MIT and the venue, parked my car, and made it in time to converse with my coworkers for a bit before the keynote. Whew.

On to the camp. I attended a few great panels during the day on Saturday, my favorite being mortendk’s “Mothership: To End All Bloated HTML” session. I am a huge, huge proponent of clean, minimal HTML and CSS, and one thing I’ve noticed since starting with Drupal is that everything gets its own div. Everything. Nested divs make me want to throw things across the room and curse repeatedly. (Well, maybe not that extreme, but close.) Morten’s Mothership theme interests me mainly because he strives for the same thing I do; for yummy CSS and HTML and nothing extraneous. In his words, his goal is to “to get so clean html you can wipe youre ass in it!” I like that. And I liked his presentation.

I also enjoyed my coworkers @sethcohn and D’s session on “Adding Wow, Bam, and Poof to your Design” (of course). I’m glad I came to work at a company with so many talented and intelligent people, who also like to have a good time!

Speaking of a good time, Drupal geeks love their beer. Just sayin’.

In all, I’m happy I attended my first of what I hope to be many more Drupal meetups. I met a few new people, including @zarabadoo, @thescaryclown, @timeril, @mortendk, @bedsheet, and at long last, after years and years of being friends through our blogs and other online forums, I met @nikkiana in person for the first time! The Drupal community consists of a lot of funny and intelligent people, and I look forward to meeting more of them in the future.

From my window at the Cape.

It’s been strange, in a way, readjusting to a life I lead for my first twenty years of existence. Until I moved back east, I hadn’t realized how much I had adjusted to the midwestern way of life, and how certain things differ from one place to another.

Everything I ever wanted to do in South Bend was a quick 10 minute drive away. Bars, my place of employment, friend’s dwellings; I hopped in my car, drove the short distance, and enjoyed myself. However, in this area, things are a bit more… spread out. I recall this when living in western Massachusetts, and I’m living it again. I drive 45 minutes to work each morning and 45 minutes back that evening. When I bring my car to the dealership I’ll be bringing it to a dealership on my drive home from work, not the one in the town I live, only because the one on the drive home is more convenient for me. It’s strange to get used to this, as everything I ever needed in South Bend was right there. It is strange.

It hasn’t really sunk in yet that this is my home. I feel like I’ve been dropped here out of the sky with no prior knowledge of the life I lived before the second week of May. Maybe I’ll feel more at home here once I get my ID and license plates switched over (which will be fun; my car does not have a front license plate mount, so I will need to figure out a way to get that on my car before I get my New Hampshire plates. Oh, the little things I don’t think about when moving to a new state!), or maybe it will just come with time. I do recall not feeling at home in Indiana when I first moved there back in 2001, and here I am, still mentally considering it my home base.

I do love it here. On my drive back from western Massachusetts on Sunday I drove by the marshes and ocean near Hampton Beach. I rolled my windows down all the way and breathed in the salt air, something I missed living in a land locked state. I still have yet to see the ocean in New Hampshire, but I figure summer’s only beginning, and I will have many chances to walk on the beach. I am excited.

• I am in New Hampshire.
• I love my new job.
• I love living near the ocean.
• I went to Cape Cod with my mom and aunt last weekend and dug for clams for the first time in about 15 years.
• My last two weeks in South Bend were filled with crazy, memorable, wild, and incredible times. I wouldn’t trade those memories for anything.
• Moving to a new state is hard.
• I miss my friends in the Bend, of course.
• I’m sort of beginning to settle into my new routine.
• I keep on forgetting I live on the east coast now.
• Though it’s been an adjustment, I know I made the right move.
• I am so, so happy to be back in New England. I know this is where I belong.

Okay, I am finally ready to announce my huge, huge news.

In approximately three weeks I will be moving to New Hampshire!

Yes, I am moving home to New England after spending the past eight years in Indiana. I can’t believe I’m doing this; I have a new job lined up, of course, and I am planning on living in a small town right on the coast. I’ll be two hours away from my family, three hours away from Cape Cod, an hour away from Boston, and four hours away from New York City. I’ll be surrounded by Red Sox fans and shrimp pizza and people punctuating their sentences with the word ‘wicked’. To say I am excited would be an understatement.

Of course, I will miss the fantastic people I’ve met while living in this state. I never thought I’d ever make the friends I’ve made here, but I am confident we will all remain friends, no matter where we are located. Plus, they’ll all just have to come out and visit New England sometime, right guys?

The next few weeks will be busy; apartment hunting, coordinating movers, and, of course, getting together with all the people I will miss so much and eating at all my favorite restaurants before I leave. Still, I am very excited and am looking forward to what the future will bring for me.