My dog isn’t vocally expressive. Sure, she can let out this adorable howl when she gets excited and just really wants to be a part of the action. But her expressiveness is most seen in her actions. Like when I let her sleep with me in my bed, sometimes she plops herself down near my pillow, buries her furry face in the crook of my neck, and let’s out a deep, exhaustive sigh as if she’d just spent the last 12 hours carrying the weight of the world on her tiny shoulders. Evidently, life is tough for a dog as cute as her.

This month has been that exhausting and more. It’s been the climax of a series of exhausting months actually and with September just around the corner, I’m hoping for the denouement.

Last night I had a crop night with Jenn and Lisa from my scrapbook meetup group and had a lot of fun. We took a brief excursion out to Joann’s in the afternoon and picked up dinner at Pei Wei before heading back to Jenn’s for more cropping.

I’m beginning to enjoy scrapbooking. I realize I’m not a layout genius since that oftentimes seems to be my downfall, but I’ve learned there are resources to take care of that problem. Right now I’m sticking to the ritual of creating one layout a month. Any more than that and it becomes stressful. But the great thing about this is it forces me to take pictures every month and become more comfortable using my camera.

On top of scrapbooking, I’m playing around with Drupal. I love Wordpress and will still keep using it for small projects, but I also want to become more comfortable with a robust content management system like Drupal. I’ve heard good things about it so I thought I’d give it a whirl.

I’m also in the middle of redesigning this website. It’s been over a year since I touched the code which was thrown together pretty sloppily. I think I can do better if I just put the effort into it. That reminds me… can you believe I used to put a new design up like EVERY MONTH before? Yeah, clearly I didn’t have anything else to do back then. And now I can hardly scrape together enough energy to change my layout once a year. Ha!

Ok, day 2. By now I still wasn’t adjusted to Pacific time. In fact, I was sporting a mild headache most of the day probably because I was still waking up at 5 a.m. Also, I had experimented with a different sleep number the night before and learned that 30 was my real sleep number, not 45. So, on to the session summaries…

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Proscuitto-Wrapped Figs Stuffed with Blue Cheese and Drizzled with Honey, originally uploaded by krisalis903.

I saw Tyler Florence make this on one of his shows several years ago back when I was a poor college student in Denton. For some reason, I remembered that recipe probably because it seemed so "gourmet" and sounded like such a complex mixture of flavors that it intrigued me.

So last week I was at my favorite asian market and I saw they had brown turkey figs on sale for 2.99 a container.

And seeing as how I’m near an affluent part of north Dallas, picking up proscuitto and blue cheese from my grocery store is as easy as finding ham and cheddar.

This appetizer was very easy to make–so simple and with very few ingredients. What did it taste like?

It really was very good though. The second you pop it into your mouth, you get the saltiness of the proscuitto followed by the sweetness of the fig and honey, and finally finish with the tanginess of the blue cheese.

It was a complex mixture of intriguing flavors

Tyler Florence’s Proscuitto-Roasted Figs

40 small fresh mission figs
4 ounces manchego or blue cheese
20 prosciutto slices, halved
1/3 cup honey
Freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Make a small slit in the side of each fig and stuff a raisin-size piece of cheese in the opening. Wrap a piece of prosciutto around each fig to enclose it. Stand the figs on a baking sheet. Bake until the prosciutto melts slightly and forms a skin around the figs, 12 to 15 minutes. Transfer to a serving platter. Drizzle with honey and season with lots of pepper. Serve hot or at room temperature.

Scrapbook.com was having a 40% off sale on the Fiskars Threading Water border punch last week so I jumped at the chance to own this hot new scrapbook punch. At the same time, I decided to get the Fiskars Lacy Days of Summer border punch since I wanted to get that one anyway.

The punches are a little awkward to use at first, but once you do a couple test punches you start to get the hang of it (view the finished layout using the Threading Water border punch). Also if you don’t already have a self-healing cutting mat, now would be the time to get one especially if you want to get one of these border punches. And if you’re wondering how a border punch like this works, you can actually see a demo video of the punch here at Scrapbook.com.

I heard through the Twitter grapevine that Google was releasing their Google Suggest feature.

While I really like the fact that Google is taking the initiative to help users find what they want, I wonder if this would be considered artificial influence on users. Or would Google actually be improving user input (avoiding misspellings, etc.) by suggesting search topics. Hmm…. Thoughts?

Work in Progress, originally uploaded by krisalis903.

I can’t take complete credit for this layout. Huge thanks to Jenn for introducing me to the wonderfulness that is Becky Fleck’s Pagemaps. I just about died when I saw that there were pagemaps available for download for FREE. I’ll never create another scrapbook layout without them.

I was actually still working on my 2007 scrapbook when I looked at a calendar and realized 2008 was almost halfway over with. This is my layout for July. I’m going to have a layout for each month. Or at least I’m going to try to. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about the earlier months though.

Seeing as how this is my first year to attend Search Engine Strategies, I may not be able to provide a good comparison between this year’s SES San Jose and the conferences of years past. However, I can provide a rundown of the major points from the sessions I attended this year (major thanks to The Boss for giving me the opportunity to attend). Since I’m an unbelievably slow writer and I have a lot of blogging to catch up on, I’m going to have to break it down day by day.

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Our flight ended up being delayed on our way back from San Jose due to a “miscalculation of fuel” and we had to stop in Lubbock, TX for a refill. So rather than coming home around 12:30 AM like I had expected, I came home at 2:30 AM. Not only that, I get to go to work tomorrow. Yipeee! But it’s not so bad. The Boss gave us permission to come in late tomorrow.

SES San Jose was a great experience. I have some photos to post, but I’ll have to upload those tomorrow when I’m not typing with my eyes closed.

G’night all.

Just to let everyone know. I’m really not lazy at all. I’m sitting in an SEO and blog feed session at SES San Jose realizing I don’t blog enough. I promise I will have a huge update when I get back.

BTW the Google Dance was awesome.

Precious Cargo, originally uploaded by krisalis903.

C’mon. Did you honestly think just because it’s a business trip that I WOULDN’T take Portable Izzie with me?

I’m going to be at Search Engine Strategies this week. And it’s the bigg’un. My bags are sorta packed. I have my carry-on almost packed–complete with my session itinerary, a couple books, and of course Portable Izzie. How could I leave her at home?

My flight leaves tomorrow morning and I’m really excited. I’ve reviewed the session details and am looking forward to attending some of them. Oh and I’m bringing my camera with me of course.

So, first priority: Get a photo of either The Boss II or D. with a lampshade on his or her head.

Or a makeshift, hotel-sheet toga. Whichever comes first.