i guess things are going okay with The Elder and Unknown. beyond sending my mother some pix from her prom, we’ve not heard anything her. so, we assume that all is well (no news is good news, right?)
i had training today for refereeing in the United Soccer League/Premier Development League (the league which governs our local semi-pro team). #1 Son and i have had a good time refereeing this spring thus far, despite several rain-out dates (the most in Sioux Falls history to date, apparently). it looks like i may be able to use my USL/PDL assignments to finally move up a state-level referee grade. i am still ‘suffering’ from the AYSO transfer of game experience and certification, but that was one thing i neglected to mention in writing about the USYSA conference at the beginning of March: i was able to sit down with the USSF national referee coordinator and explain what happened with my transfer (she balked at my being submitted to USL/PDL last year because i was an unknown). the end result being that there is now a strong likelihood that other AYSO referees who transfer in without AYSO national certification but with several hundred games on record will at least be considered eligible for USSF Grade 7 instead of Grade 8 (the USSF grades descend in precedence), based on training comportment and test scores, instead of forced into Grade 8 no matter what.
why the hell my life is spent helping the folks who come after me, instead of helping myself, i’ll never understand….
the Spouse-Unit and #1 Daughter are up at Big Stone Lake this weekend, and #1 Son and i have basically been left to ourselves. unfortunately, i’m getting responsible in my old age and not just watching sports and drinking beer all afternoon. he has even agreed, amicably no less, to spend some time cleaning up his mess of a room. yeah, we’ll see how long that holds up.
the reason why i’m not posting much (and while more gets posted to the otherwhirled, my throughput is down over there as well) is because i have come to like the wordpress blog system so much, and the overall format to blog design in general, that i am working on completely redesigning shadowmoon.com. we’ll be using a custom template from milo317 and today, i am working on retroactive entries for the main blog there, which will be used to announce engagements, weddings, fine art releases, and the like. the rest of the site will be using standard pages, which are offered in many blog formats, but not often used. milo is working some specialized navigation for that. this is the first time in fourteen years that i’ve handed the site design over to someone else. scary, huh? milo’s work is impressive, however, and i am confident we’ll have a good fit.
lastly, i will be going through this blog and doing some name-removal and slight editing, then getting it registered with some of the national and international social bookmarking systems. while i will continue to have personal stuff interjected here, the focus of this is going to turn to the subjects of raising children outside of the Church in a fairly conservative region, and to the several sides of the adoption process with which i am familiar. relatedly, all the blogs (otherwhirled, synthaetica, and this one) may eventually move to hosting under the new server setup for shadowmoon.com. if that happens, this blog will become dawnne.com, synthaetica will become synthaetica.com, .net, and .org, and i will finally begin moving that domain towards the branding we have long envisioned for digographic products. i’m not sure what of my domains would be appropriate for the otherwhirled, but i’ll figure something out.
all right, enough of all that. get back to your weekends.