I’ve been home for a couple of hours. I added our donations to TurboTax (which still says we owe $1500), and then I read a few months’ worth of Dooce archives. During all of this, I found myself wondering if I should switch to Linux instead of Windows, and then move my website to Movable Type instead of WordPress. Why? No real reason. I guess something needs to change. And a new template for my site apparently isn’t enough.
Although I do still like the original. I’ll switch back to it in a day or two so I can make a decision (with input, if you give me any) about which version to stick with for a while. Here’s the screen shot:
Now it’s time for laundry.
I was getting tired of that last design, so it’s time for version #5. I think we’re on #5. Here’s the screen shot:
Well?
I’m going to San Francisco in a couple of days, and I spent all day (at work) making sure I have everything I’ll need. Thankfully, I’m not going by myself, but this will be my ONLY supervised trip before we all head out on our own. I’m looking forward to it (I like to go places, I’ve never been to San Francisco, and I’ll have a good time, I’m sure), but I’m not at the same time because John can’t come with me. I don’t mind going places on my own, but I hate going without him. But I still have to go, so now that I’m home, I’m working on my to-do list. I have a packing list, but that will wait until Sunday morning. I just spent some picking up downstairs and I’ve got laundry in the washing machine. I’ll pick up in the bedroom as I do laundry. You know, my list really isn’t that long. Which is why I can take the time right now to write and change the look of my blog again. So here’s version #4:
Not all that far from version #3, but that’s okay.
Oh! I have to remember my camera. No excuses. Camera camera camera.
I just put it with the work stuff I have pack. Yeah, too distracted by trip stuff to write anymore.
Update: One thing I really like about this version is that I can make changes to individual pages (like allow comments on the lists pages (favorite books, favorite movies, etc), and say no to comments on the main books and movies page). Other versions force me to make a change universal for all pages. That’s pretty cool. Of course, if I weren’t using a WordPress template (coding each page by hand instead), I’d be able to do whatever I want to each page and this wouldn’t be such a big deal.
You know, I’m really not even a little bit (okay, maybe just a little bit) interested in doing all of the coding for my website (or any website), but I LOVE that I understand it enough to be able to tweak what already exists. I think that’s really cool. Here’s version #3, which I like better than both 1 and 2. Not necessarily better than the original, but if I go back to that version, I make take some things about this one with me. Here’s the screen shot for future review:
I don’t have much else going on tonight. John got home a little bit ago, and if I can get him to stop playing his guitar, we can eat dinner.
Here he is!
Update (during the State of the Union address): I love Joe Biden’s tie! See?
Version #2. I’m not crazy about this one (the title to the right, on the same level as the post title, is a little weird to me), but I figured I’d give it a try. You may notice a minimalist theme here. Keep in mind that my original design (original in the sense that it was the first one I had, not that I had anything to do with designing it) was black text on a white background with red headers. That’s it. So if you think this one is boring (or if you thought the last one was boring, Mom), what made the original one not boring? NOT a rhetorical questions. Really, I’d like to know. Here’s the screen shot so we can remember what this one looks like later. Let me know what you think!
Deafening silence. Either no one had time to visit today, or you’re so underwhelmed by this change that you’ve all been drained of energy. I’ve created apathetic zombies. Who knew it was so easy?
We just watched a terrible new show. I was ready to quit less than 20 minutes in, but John wanted to finish the episode in the hope that Clancy Brown would do something worth watching. He didn’t. We won’t be watching The Deep End again.
I still haven’t tried that new search engine, Bing, and after the latest creepy commercial (the one that calls on all the scary parts of The Shining), I don’t think I ever will.
I spent several hours today setting up 6 new versions of my website. You’re looking at version #1 right now. And I’m including a screen shot of it at the bottom of this post so we can all still see it when I switch to the next one. I’m not even really tired of the original version, but I thought I’d test a few new ones and see if I (or we – you have some input) like them better.
So this is what I’ve been doing for the last 5 hours or so. We slept in (’til about 10:30) ’cause we stayed up late. We watched Adaptation and then had to follow it with Modern Family ’cause the movie was so weird we needed to cleanse our mental palates with something light and funny. And easily understandable. It was after one before we went to bed. We got up late, watched the first two-hour episode of Caprica while eating breakfast, and then we set up on the dining room table with our laptops again.
I was supposed to go to the grocery store today, and when I have to stop there on my way home from work tomorrow, I’m going to be really annoyed I didn’t do it this afternoon. But right now, I’m very happy I didn’t go. All we have to have before dinner tomorrow is stuff for breakfast (we have plenty for lunch), so when I go out to pick up dinner for tonight (yeah, we don’t have tonight’s dinner here, either, so I guess what we really have to have is breakfast AND dinner), I’ll swing by the Giant right next to the Indian place (’cause we’re having Indian for dinner – yay!) and pick up some cereal.
Then we’re in for the night. And I’m getting pretty hungry, so all of that is happening very soon. After I shower. We did one of those lazy Sunday things and rolled from bed to couch and breakfast, and from there to the dining room and our laptops. Didn’t shower, didn’t get dressed.
And Roxy just threw herself at the sliding glass door, so I should go let her in. Enjoy the new site (and let me know if something doesn’t work)! I’ll leave it this way for a day or two and then switch to the next one.
Today was a really good day. Most awesome, I might say. Mightn’t I? I dare say I might. 🙂 For reals. Seriously, I spent the day BUYING USED BOOKS (Hello, my name is Zannah. I don’t believe we’ve met. I read.) and hanging out with my very best girl friend, and THEN I got to spend my evening with my very best boy friend.
I got up before the sun (maybe not as awesome as the rest of the day) and was on the road by 8am (with stops for gas and Starbucks, so really on the road by 8:15) to meet Jess in Maryland for the B.I.G. book sale. B.I.G. (Books for International Goodwill) has a book sale every six weeks, and this is the first one we’ve managed to get to since Jess told me about it sometime last fall. It’s held in this big warehouse – you know, I don’t even know if they use the whole building. The sale part was only in one corner. A big corner, but not even a quarter of the warehouse. The books were well-organized, and the place was pretty crowded. We quit after about two hours, mostly because the place wasn’t heated and our hands were frozen. I will definitely go back.
We left my car in the lot at the warehouse and drove to Chesapeake Beach for lunch. I had an ulterior motive for choosing Chesapeake Beach, though. Dad was stationed there – wait. He worked at the Pentagon then, right? Why did we live all the way out there? Anyway, we lived on the base, right on the cliff above the bay, just south of Chesapeake Beach, and I wanted to see if we could get on the base and see the house. Didn’t happen. We found the base, parked outside, walked up to the security guard at the gate, and got turned away. She wasn’t even nice about it. Not rude exactly, but no hint of sympathy. We drove north through Chesapeake Beach again (took about 3 minutes – that place is tiny) looking for lunch. Found it in North Beach. I have no idea what the name of the place is (Something Seafood Pub), but lunch was really good. Lunch was over, but we weren’t done hanging out, so we found another cafe and had some coffee. We still weren’t done hanging out (when are we?), but it was after 3 and we needed to head in opposite directions to go home.
John was studying for his new class when I got home, but once he finished, we both camped out at the dining room table with our laptops. He started working on the database he’s building for our books, and I backed up this website’s database and all the files so I could upgrade my version of WordPress. It took a while (the backing up part), but I’m running the latest version of WordPress now, and I plan to spend some time messing around with the look of the site tomorrow. Oh, I got the parent/child page thing to work, so if you go to my Books and Movies page now, the links on it should work. And I’ll get better about updating those pages.
Don’t forget about the Name Our Bookstore contest!
I updated my blogroll (now called “Places I Go”) with most of the websites I actually check daily. I also started to go through some of those blogs I bookmarked to see if I want to read them regularly. I immediately rejected the first one because in her most recent post, she used “prolly” instead of “probably” THREE TIMES in four paragraphs. Twice in the last one. I can’t handle “prolly” even once. Makes me cringe. So she’s out. One down, lots more to go.