Work is super-crazy. Not in a ‘I’m always so busy my head isn’t on straight’ way, just that it’s totally insane the stuff we deal with at work. It’s like the underbelly of education and I had no idea it was this fucked-up.

Two

George isn’t doing so well. He’s developed some sort of skin infection and we had to rush him to the vet yesterday. We noticed his skin on his back was red and had a visit scheduled for later today, but when The Partner came home yesterday for lunch he sent me a message that we had to get George to the vet ASAP. They shaved part of his neck and back and holy fuck is it awful—red, puffy, open wounds, puss. I’ll spare y’all the photos of that. Instead, here are some from earlier in the week, after he had been to the groomers but before it got too bad. He’s wearing the cone because by this time he had started scratching his ears like crazy, often to bleeding. We’re not sure what’s wrong, but the vet did use the word “gnarly” at least five times, mentioned hospitalization, and something about health authorities. I don’t know.

You’ll notice (kind of) that we had the groomer leave some head hair. When I asked her to give him his regular cut but leave some head hair, she was all, “Leave the head hair?” And I was all, “Yeah, his head hair. We’d like for him to have some longer hair on his head.” It’s the cutest thing ever. Although George Harrison was a Beatle, we call him Ringo.

We’re hoping he pulls through okay. I’m home with him today—he’s on a lot of meds and pain killers and we have to keep him from scratching himself. A few times a day we have to put him in the bathtub and rinse his neck and back with cool water (“hydrotherapy” the vet called it). He’s seriously so pitiful right now, passed out in a Tramadol coma with socks on his back feet so he won’t hurt himself if he does get a few scratches in before we get to him. Oh, dogchildren.

Three

I’ve been messing around with Tumblr more. My opinion on it is somewhere between afraid and ambivalent. Afraid because this shit isn’t on my own server (they don’t even have native comments) and ambivalent because it is really easy to share what you find online and there’s a good community around it.

Four

Drag Show photos. Oh my god fuck I know. You have no idea the photo backlog on my computer right now. I’ll try to get to them today and this weekend. Don’t feel too bad: there’s a Christlessmas gift I knit for my aunt that I STILL haven’t mailed to her.

Five

The economy. What the fuck is up, y’all? Every day the news reports on something or another that scares the shit out of me. I hope you’re floating.

This new design (theme dubbed ‘Awesome’, semi-tongue-in-cheekily) continues to maintain a single column but features a full-width dark header and footer, within which resides site internals such as navigation and search. Hovering the mouse over the header reveals the navigation, something I’ve been wanting to use since seeing it quite some time ago at Pierce’s Distorte. I utilized the Blueprint CSS framework to provide a clean foundation for typography and have switched to Verdana (Helvetica on Mac) for the typeface.

I chose not to set a specific font size, which lets your browser show you the default size or allows your personal settings to take over. It might seem a bit large at first, but isn’t it easy to read? This decision was based in part upon Sarven Capadisli’s article on typography for the screen and my belief that we shouldn’t have to squint or get closer to the monitor just to read something.

I am also coming away from XHTML and leaning towards HTML(5), after reading many articles on the subject of XHTML vs HTML. This theme’s code is set to easily switch to HTML5 (e.g., change <div class="article"> to <article>), which, although it is in the early stages of development, is currently handled well by the major (modern) browsers (even that bastard IE). My markup is still along XHTML’s vein of strict syntax, as my anal tendencies prefer order in code, and things should degrade gracefully. If not, trial and error.

I’m attempting to adhere to web accessibility guidelines, although not everything (such as access keys or a mobile device style option) has been implemented, yet. I have a to-do list and this is all one giant exercise.

If you come across anything wonky, let me know. I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Was I doing…

1. Housework — because there is no such thing as ‘too clean’
2. Writing my memoir — you should read all I’ve experienced at the age of twenty-seven!
3. Lounging about — it’s been so hot lately
4. Designing websites — there’s a lull in work and then all of a sudden WHAM! you’ve got clients
5. Embroidering greeting cards — combining my love of embroidery with my love of office supplies? DANGER!
6. Cutting my hair — on my own
7. Learning the true meaning of CrackBerry — QWERTY how I love thee
8. Knitting — those three storage containers of yarn ain’t gonna knit and purl themselves
9. Reviewing and editing photos from our vacation — and all the other events since
10. Hob-knobbing with local bigwigs — I am getting CONNECTED!

Consider this a quiz.

My needs and aesthetics have changed and morphed; recently my eyes have been catching on minimalist themes. I started thinking about what I really wanted and how it should look. So I learned some PHP and WordPress template tags are now among my list of friends. I wouldn’t call myself an expert, but I think I’m a few feet over the novice line.

I call this theme Educed, mostly because it’s taken the kindness and sharing of others in the WP community to make it happen. WPDesigner’s tutorial, So you want to create a WordPress theme, huh?, really helped explain the code.

It’s a good foundation for me as I’ll be able to add any features I may come to want and, at the very least, makes for a fun playground.

My previous theme generated errors with the new version of WordPress, and this theme seems to be having problems with the comments — when you submit your comment the box entirely disappears into itself. (Then again, this may just be how it operates now.)

Anything else I’m not aware of?

This site is currently having technical difficulties.

Excuse the mess while I beat my CMS host into submission.

All has been corrected. The site should be functioning within normal parameters now.

Luckily, Rob of Roblog came up with a plugin to put it back.

Preview, I love you hard.

_____
* I currently have only three rough drafts in process, down from five. Go delete button!

I’m aware of the problem, and will be fixing it at some point, once I figure out how to fix it.

Update, 9 May 2007, 2:07am:

Problem solved!

There was a problem with the constants.php file, which is a file pertaining to the Tarski WP theme. That, or I made an error in the code I added to the sidebar.php file. Either way, it is fixed and we should no longer get a blank screen.