Something new! Something different! Because my guestbook was being used as a messageboard, I thought I'd take advantage of a free bulletin board service offered by Greenspun to start a message forum. Go take a look, click on links indiscriminately, make a few posts, and let me know what you think!

In case you're curious, I found the site through Squishy, one of my favorite journals. Of course, Squishy gets enough hits in a day to post a new question/thread every day, which I doubt I'll do. But this system should allow you to answer each other and post questions of your own. If you like, you can be notified via e-mail every time anyone posts, or you can receive regular digests of all postings. I thought it was a nifty system - much better than I could do in a short time - and it was free. Please let me know if you hate it and I'll go back to using the old guestbook!

---

This afternoon Matt and I are going to meet the electrician at the house so he can mark where we want outlets, and we can tell him to do things like put the computer room on its own circuit and put the outlets in the garage at the same level as the rest of the outlets (for when we convert the garage to a den). We're going to make these decisions for ourselves today - draw them on a copy of the floorplan and pass it back and forth a few times - so that we don't argue about them when we get there.

I know, it sounds like I'm just assuming that we'll disagree. It seems a little fatalistic until you understand that we've already had one disagreement about the outlets. (If you're curious, it was about whether or not to use my Dad's suggestion of having the outlets in the computer room mounted halfway up the wall so we could get to them without crawling on the floor. Matt pointed out that we're not plugging any computers directly into the wall anyway - we're using surge suppressors - so that we're going to have to crawl around on the floor anyway. I thought it would be nice to put the suppressors on the desks instead of on the floor - I enjoy having my outlet bank on my desk at work - but it's not important enough for me to argue about. Also, we have to consider that we'll eventually sell the house, and I think it would sell better if the placement of the outlets wasn't weird. End of an entirely too-long aside.)

Really, the important thing for me is that we have lots of outlets. The only thing I think the electrician might possibly argue with me about is that I want two sets of outlets under each front window, which will seem like a bit much for such short sections of wall. I have one reason for it, though: Christmas candles. For approximately 10% of the year I plan to keep electric candles in the front windows, and I want the outlets spaced for it. (If you've got one outlet in the middle, the candles with their short cords have to sit so close together that they look stupid.) I also want several outlets on the outside of the house.

I know, you probably couldn't care less about my electrical outlets. I'm babbling. But it was a late night, an early morning, and babbling is what I do when I'm tired.

Go talk amongst yourselves.