The Knitting Fiend

Ever notice the “to do list” grows while you are on vacation?

Some these to do’s are the natural consequence of being away. Of course, the fridge is empty! Of course I need to sit down and pay bills!

Unfortunately, some are unexpected. Those of you who read the post on the oak trees know I was a little paniced. I had to dash to the Morton Arboretum’s plant clinic. The diagnosis was: “Minor, don’t worry!” Hurray! (Thanks to everyone who sent their best wishes for my oak!)

I took a long walk examined the Arboretum’s ornamental gardens. Gorgeous! (I’ve decided I need a Carolina Alspice (for details click: Calycanthus Floridus.) Unfortunately, I forgot a camera, or I’d have taken a pointless picture; you buy those for the aroma. Readers will have to make do with the picture of Cantebury Bells from my garden and pretend they can smell the cinnamony-allspice aroma from some mysterious source.

Naturally, I’ve had lots of weeding to do. Jim doesn’t know which plants are weeds and which are flowers, so I told him not to weed. (Heck, I often can’t tell weeds from flowers, but I’m better at it than Jim because I’m the one who plants things.)

Oh, did I mention I went to Navy Pier and saw“Romeo and Juliet” last night? The performance was wonderful.

But, this morning, I’m focusing on pesky blog issues. Spam returned after I installed WordPress 1.5. It gets moderated and never actually appears on the blog, but I didn’t even need to moderate when I had 1.2 and HashCash working together. I’m trying to fix that pesky problem. I spent the morning today reading about htaccess files and writing a few lines of code to spambots from accessing the file that lets people write comments. Hopefully, the three lines of code I thought up will block spambots, but not interfere with people posting comments.

Spam comes in burst; if I don’t get any in 24 hours I’ll know I succeeded in blocking it. But, I need visitors help to let me know if comments have any glitches. If you have trouble entering comments, look to the right, find my email, and email to let me know comments didn’t work.

I’ll also be working on a few more “blog maintenance” issues tomorrow. The look and layout of the blog may suddenly change! Or not, (if I fail miserably.)

Then, it will be back to knitting. I need to finish Jim’s sweater, which is waiting for me.