THE LAST FIVE ...

Closing up shop
- Wednesday, Aug. 02, 2006

It may be time for a change
- Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Entry in the air
- Friday, April 21, 2006

Still here
- Thursday, April 20, 2006

Music of the moment
- Wednesday, March 1, 2006

Or ... BE RANDOM!


GOOD READS

101 in 1001
American Road Trip, 1998


OTHER PEOPLE

Chupatintas
Dancing Brave
Fugging It Up
Kitty Sandwich
Mister Zero
Sideways Rain
Ultratart
Velcrometer


THE BASICS

My crew
Latest
Older
Notes
Our host
Profile

Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2003 - 11:04 p.m.

Time to change

I'm not quite finished with the new design, but I'm happy enough with it to put it up for you. I'm still working on the older pages and whatnot. What I'd ultimately like, is to put some of the links across the top, with images, like Sidewaysrain has, for example. I'd also like a little more space between the left column and the text, but I can live with these cramped quarters for now.

I was basically tired of the white background and the road sign graphics. I haven't given up on my road theme design (I saved it) and might come back to it, but this certainly maintains the feel of journeys and adventures. He literally wrote the book on it. But I wanted a change of pace, and I figured a darker, more subdued design with fewer colors (because they were getting out of hand there) would go over well. I am, for the most part, self-taught when it comes to HTML. I asked a few friends with some knowledge of it when I first went and changed my template from the basic blue I chose when I first signed up with Diaryland. I also peeked at the sourcing of various diaries that had elements I liked. I, by no means, stole anything from anyone; I just said, "Oh, so that's how you make an image link to the guestbook." (These images, by the way, are found all over the place, and I'm not using them for profit in any way. It did take some trial-and-error with Photoshop to get them all a similar size, and being impatient and wanting to get something done with this site, I opened up the first one, cropped it to a decent size, took note of the pixels, and eyeballed the others until they were similar to 120 wide.) Someday, when I become proficient with web design and Photoshop (and when I get my own computer that can handle this stuff), I hope to start working with some of my own photos online and using them on my page. But that day's a long way off.

I also decided, for the time being, to get rid of the lines below, the "most recently watched," "thinking" and "on this date" optional fields. I was growing tired of them, and I think at times they broke the mood of the entry. It may mean that some older entries now have random phrases, sentence fragments and people's names on them, but that's something we'll all have to live with until I can do something about it.

Alright, enough about design.

So today I went and asked to be let out early tomorrow so I could go to a baseball-related event in Ocean County (about 80 minutes away) and then realized that the event isn't until next Wednesday. Oops. So maybe I'll go next week. We'll see.

I'm getting a hint of baseball fever again. Not so much for the Mets, because I'm just not sold on their moves this offseason and am going into this season cautiously optimistic, but on baseball in general. By the time the season starts it will have been five years since I could experience a season without having to juggle a nights-and-weekends work schedule. I'm still going to take off for the Mets' opener (March 31), but I'm more excited for the minor-league season. I think I've done a good job the past few years, and I think I've made some good contacts. I'd like to continue it this year, but I don't know how much I can do on weeknights. I may need to do my legwork and writing on weekends and convince a paper to run a weekly minor league column on Mondays or Tuesdays. I could do Sundays, but that would mean my stories being a week old, because I just can't do features on Saturday nights for Sunday mornings. Nope.

It'd be great to establish myself as a freelance writer. That would keep options open, keep my name out there. I know what some of our freelancers make writing 500-word stories with unattributed quotes about Jennifer Aniston's reasons for returning to Friends (her Golden Globe nod sealed it). One told me she makes up to $40,000 a month as an entertainment writer. (!) Woah! That's some serious whoring. (Figurative.)

Over the weekend, Casey and I put a second light bulb into the ceiling fixture in the spare bedroom (it previously had a single 40-watt bulb in it) and the extra 60 watts and a cleaning of the cover really brightened up the room. We talked about doing it in the study, but our step ladder is one step too short and the chair I'm currently sitting in would have made it akward, since I could reach it standing on my toes, but it was uncomfortable.

It would figure, then, that when I came in here tonight and flipped the switch -- zap! -- the bulb burned out in a flash of blue. Darkness. I cursed, turned on the computer (to make sure it wasn't a fuse), then sighed and moved the chair to the middle of the room. It was torture, standing on my toes, holding the fixture with one hand and unscrewing it with the other. I didn't want to drop it on the floor, nor did I want to pull Casey away from her Felicity rerun, and I managed to get it down. After washing the glass, Casey did come back to spot me and hand me bulbs. There were three in there (one 60-watt, two 45s), but we'd only had one working since we moved in back in November. I replaced all three with 60-watters and had an easier time screwing the cover back on, since I didn't have to worry about when it would come off. (We also stacked a few books on the chair for a few extra inches.)

And when we flipped the switch -- wow! -- it was like when they first installed lights at Wrigley Field. We saw the room in a whole new ... well, light. It's so much brighter and accomodating. So pleasant.

Now once I get my Markor Base Cabinet from IKEA and can organize all my random crap strewn about my half of it, then we'll really be cooking.

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