Stay right there.

My parents visited this weekend, bringing birthday presents with them. As usual, these gifts were thoughtful, appropriate, kind, and Extremely Heavy.

It all started in a few years ago. I had recently moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan for graduate school, and had increased my distance from "home" by about 30 minutes. Ever-supportive, my parents would pile in the car on weekends and we would all have lunch at Zingermans. However, the holidays revealed an unusual pattern. Instead of the usual paperbacks and gift certificates, I started receiving Very Heavy Things. A leaded glass picture frame weighing about 15 pounds. Hardbacked reference books. Anvils.

My latest move to Ithaca has upped the ante. The trip is now eight hours long, and for my birthday this year I received a pair of six ton jack stands and an iron tea kettle. I suspect this will be followed by an armoire and a set of shotputs.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my parents are slowly building an anchor. Soon I will be forced to remain, tethered to my home by a series of carefully-placed items too heavy to fit in the moving van.

Construction makes me drink beer

List of vehicles parked outside our house:

• 3 Drain Brain vans. Apparently everyone on staff wants a look at our horrible horrible sewage line.
• 1 pickup truck belonging to the concrete guy. Who you gonna call when you pull up some carpet and discover a maze of cracked concrete patching? Concrete guy!
• 1 scary airbrushed van belonging to the floor guy. This guy is the first to actually finish doing something. We've got one room done downstairs and it's only three hundred dollars over budget. You win, floor guy!

Breaking news! The drain guys have gotten their 150 feet of snake stuck! They can't get it out! It's stuck! I'm so glad I came home from work for this. This is exciting. What will break next? Stay tuned!

Makin' coffee

When you grow up and own a house you will discover that houses, like weblogs, hairstyles, pets, and biceps, require maintenance. Often, this maintenance comes in the form of a large man who likes to bowl arriving at your home at 7:30 in the morning to resurface your floors. Assuming you are female and have issued social-class-indicators such as "hey man" and "shit it's early," you will be pounded companionably on the back and asked for coffee.

Herein lies a difficulty. In the hope of being judged as a comrade and therefore avoiding the spurious charges and bill-padding that are the norm for your ivy-covered neighborhood, you have opened yourself up to requests for coffee. However, all of this back-thumping and dude-ing has been a ruse. You are really a cuisinart-owning rhododendron-tending yuppie who only drinks tea.

Tea. You can't offer this man tea. If you offer him tea, you might as well come down the stairs in a ballgown carrying a Persian cat. My god, your very house is at stake. He could use the cheap leveling compound if he thinks you don't know any better. You have to find coffee.

Ohthankgod. You have coffee. Sort of. In the back of the cupboard is some instant that you keep for when your parents visit. Maybe he won't notice. You make it extra strong and dump in a bunch of sugar to mask the taste. He calls you sweetie and says thanks. Sweetie? Shit. Now the girl thing is going to kick you in the ass. He's probably down there screwing up the water/concrete ratio right now.

SXSW

I'm back from webgeek megaconference South by Southwest in steamy Austin, TX. For all y'all librarians out there, SXSW Interactive attracts designers, web standards cheerleaders (closed tags, closed tags, rah rah rah!), and I'm-famous-online types for five days of geek panels and heavy drinking. One of things I got out of the conference was a strong feeling of guilt for not taking better care of my website. So, once my headache subsides you can expect big changes. Big!

Until then, I'm just glad to get back to the cat and my G5.