Author: Shelly

Crankypantsing, Meta

Template Tweaking

Shelly

I really didn’t like the way the sanserif font looked, so I spent some more time hunting for a basic template that was more to my liking. There must be twelfty million templates out there, but not one of them was even approaching what I had in mind. I finally decided to use the Cub Reporter template, and substitute my own graphics. It’s not exactly what I’d been visualizing, but I think I can live with it. The only thing I still need to fine tune is moving the WordPress link to the footer.

Now, the only thing that’s still wonky is that Sitemeter is pulling stats from both my old blog and the new one. Very odd. I’m assuming it’s just a latency issue, and that it’ll clear itself up in the next day or so.

So, guess who was born on this date?

A) Howard Stearn
B) Rush Limbaugh
C) The Maharishi
D) John Singer Sargent
E) Me
F) All of the above

Do you suppose this is a sign that the End Times are nigh?

Meta

Migration

Shelly

I struck out finding the perfect WordPress template, ready made, so I opted for a nice, crisp, clean one for the interim. It needs a couple of minor tweaks, but it was pretty much fit for public consumption straight out of the box.

This was a shockingly painless endeavor. There were a few minor kinks, but nothing serious. I wasn’t even tempted to throw things or tear my hair out! The biggest problem I had was of my own causing, so I can’t even complain about it. Typically, I tried to make things too complicated. I hunted around for an import tool, and found one that will handle comments. It involved doing the Hokey-Pokey, saying an incantation, lighting candles, and burning hekatombs, which, of course, I was incapable of doing correctly. I was about to give up, when I hunted in my WordPress directory and found that there was an import utility included. Wheee! It’s not working perfectly–it’s stalled out on me a few times, and I had to restart it–but so far it seems to be getting the job done. With comments. Except for June, which has gone walkabout. I’m going to try re-importing the whole shebang, as I can’t figure out any other way to import just one month. If that doesn’t work, I’ll have to move those entries manually, sans comments. (Hmmm, June seems to have imported this time around, but April was skipped. No biggie, because it was just an overwrite, so the original files are intact, but still, it’s kinda funny.)

When everything is finished running, I’m going to have to go back through my archives and try to reincorporate images for the early months when I was using Hello to upload photos. Those pictures aren’t importing, but that’s not surprising, as Blogger is not likely to want to share its bandwidth with a rival.

I’m also going to have to do something about the formatting on a lot of old posts, in terms of image and text integration. I’ve used a lot of floated images and tables, and they aren’t translating well, resulting in a lot of uglification of Teh Pretty.

There may also be something funky going on with the archives navigation buttons. I’ll have to take a look at that. The original template had built in Google Ad scripting, which I didn’t want, so I removed it. I’ve never touched a php file before, so that was a little nerve wracking.

But, it’s done. We have successfully moved and we are live!

Art, Artist Books, Collage, Meta, Music

A Mid-week Bundle of Non-sequitury Goodness

Shelly

Hemp Bound Journal: Skirting the Issue
Skirting the Issue
child’s dress pattern, used sandpaper, dried plant fibers, and hemp twine
8 3/4 x 11 1/2 inches

I haven’t finished this one yet, but it may not be fit for public consumption once I have, so I thought I’d scan and upload it while I could. I don’t know when I got au fait with Teh Punny, and it needs to stop rightthisminute, but what can I say? It’s an illness.

As you can see, I’m still stuck in Brown Land. I guess I’d better just face the fact that everything in this book is going to be some shade of blech, and stop worrying about it. Maybe if I tell myself it’s a reflection of the winter landscape, it won’t bug me so much. And pigs might fly.

The new Earl Brothers CD is out. Wheee! The Earl Brothers are goth bluegrass at it’s very finest, with a blend of humor and menace that can be found in some of Nick Cave’s best work. Their first CD was one of those rare gems that is an excellent companion for cleaning, arting, or driving. If their second release is half as good as the first, it’s worth every penny and then some. (Guess what I’m getting myself for my birfday?)

Speaking of music… I’m sure everyone has suffered having a song stuck in their head, and been unable to get rid of it. It happens to me regularly. Well, yesterday I had one so firmly lodged, that it stayed there all day, then showed up in my dreams, which consisted of various efforts to dislodge the damned thing. That’s right, I wasted my precious REM time getting rid of Generation X’s Kiss Me Deadly. Not because the song itself was bothersome, mind you. I quite like it. But, it had thoroughly outstayed its welcome.

This just in from the Things Could Be Worse department: Be thankful that you don’t own the green Pontiac that mysteriously rolled out of its parking slot this afternoon.

I’m in the process of installing WordPress on my main site. If I get time over the extra-extra long weekend (four days, onna count of MLK Day), and if my connection cooperates, I’ll play around with it (as in, I’ll try to break as many templates as possible). Right now, it is Teh Vanilla. My host also has some interesting looking image gallery packages that I’m going to have investigate. Because, you know, I need to complicate my life like I need another hole in my head. It’s that time of year, though. Spring cleaning is overrated. Personally, I’m a fan of mid-winter cleaning.

Photography

Brownies of Dqqm!1!!

Shelly

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I like my brownies to be chewy, with a crispy crust. They must also be rich tasting, with a nice balance between sweet, chocolatey goodness and salty (real) buttery-ness. After years of tweaking, I have finally achieved what I consider The Perfect Brownie. They’re easy peasy to make (prep takes about 5-10 minutes, tops), and don’t require any of what I consider “non-basic” ingredients, like baking chocolate. You can add chopped nuts, but I tend to be a purist.

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/8 tsp salt
6 Tbls butter (not margarine or shortening!)
1 tsp vanilla (again, the real thing, not imitation, vanilla flavored gunk)
2 eggs

Add all the dry ingredients to a bowl and whisk together to blend and remove any lumpy bits. Microwave the butter in a microwave safe dish (I use a Pyrex measuring cup), just until melted. You don’t want it too hot, because it will cook the eggs when you add them. Remove and add the vanilla and eggs. Pierce the egg yolks and stir them into the butter until they’re loosely incorporated. Don’t whip them or worry about thoroughly mixing them, though. Less is more! Pour into the dry ingredients and gently mix until everything is blended. The batter will probably be thicker than what you are accustomed to when making brownies, but It’s Okay. Promise.

Pour into a greased 8″ or 9″ round pan and bake at 325F for about 20-30 minutes.  I’ve found that cooking time varies widely, even when baked in the same oven. Also, my oven is a runs hot, so you might need to adjust your temperature and/or cooking time accordingly.

This makes super chewy brownies, with a caramelized crust. They’re a little on the thin side, but that’s what allows them to be crispy and chewy. If they get much thicker, they become cakey, which would make them ineligible for the title of Brownies of Dqqm.

Music, Photography

Bones and The Magical Chair of Giving

Shelly

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It occurred to me that Mr. Jawbone might have once belonged to a pig, so I went a-Googling, and sure enough, it did.

javelina jawbone
Credit: javelina jawbone, by Drew Mackie

I think the sacral vertebrae are bovine in origin, but I’m not having much luck Googling up any images that are helpful. The closest I’ve come are anatomical drawings.

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Image from page 47 of "A text-book of veterinary obstetrics : including the diseases and accidents incidental to pregnancy, parturition and early age in the domesticated animals" (1901)
Credit: Internet Archive, Image from page 47 of “A text-book of veterinary obstetrics : including the diseases and accidents incidental to pregnancy, parturition and early age in the domesticated animals” (1901)

I’m calling it Good Enough.

As I was driving in to work this morning, I did some more thinking on good car music vs. not-so-good car music. There are some things I love to listen to, but that I don’t like to drive to. For example, I like both Cat Stevens and Marilyn Manson, but only one of those things belongs in my car. So this is why, as I was listening to Antichrist Superstar this ayem, I was actually thinking of hippy-dippy music. Which reminded me of New Year’s Eve and the Magical Chair of Giving.

My neighbor and I attended a New Year party at a friend’s house, which was all sorts of good fun. At one point, we were both hanging out upstairs, when she realized she’d lost one of her hair sticks. So, she started rooting around in cushions of the big, squishy easy chair she’d been enveloped in. And, she started pulling out a vast and varied array of objects. The chair kept giving, and giving, and giving. The penultimate gift was a mixed CD with both Teaser and the Firecat and Tea for the Tillerman on it. She, a little drunk at this point, handed it to me, thinking it was mine. Why, yes, I do happen to have that those two albums on one CD, but that particular copy–despite the fact that the handwriting it bears looks eerily like mine–does not, in fact, belong to me. Very odd. Who knew I wasn’t the only person on Urth who listens to Cat Stevens and who decided to put those two albums on one CD?

Art, Paintings, Poetry

Who Can See the Wind?

Shelly

Solar Wind

Who Can See the Wind?
by Christina Rossetti

Who can see the wind?
Neither I nor you
But when the leaves are trembling
The wind is passing through.

Who can see the wind?
Neither you nor I,
But when the trees bow down their heads
The wind is passing by.

This weekend has been sunny, warm, and generally gorgeous–a welcome contrast to last week’s typical Winter in Indiana dreariness. It’s windy, though, so even though it’s in the mid-50sF, it feels a little brisker than it actually is. Yesterday, we had bright blue skies, but today, even though the sun is out, it’s hazy and the sky is a pale, bleached blue. But, the wind…! It\’s howling and gusting and thundering, by turns. I swear, it’s more solid than not, so that you almost feel as if you could see it[1].

Anyway, no new art today, at least not yet. Perhaps later. After a four-day weekend, most of it spent hacking up bits of lung tissue, I realize that I have had precious little in the way of actual ass-sitting. Sure, I’ve talked about it, but the sitting itself has actually yet to materialize. So, maybe, that’s what I’ll spend the rest of the day doing.

Speaking of not sitting on my behindermost, I did finally manage to finish mucking out the laundry room yesterday. Even though the stuff destined for the Mission is still in there, it’s taking up about half the space it did pre-mucking. I can actually get to the washer without falling over things. The point of the exercise was that the dryer fairy may, at any point, decide to visit. I wanted to make sure I could actually get the old dryer out, before she arrived. I even pulled it out and cleaned behind it, so that I won’t have to do that when we swap out machines. (You would not believe the assortment of junk I found back there!)

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[1] I had a book of poems when I was little, that included several by Christina Rossetti. I’ve always loved this one, in particular. It wasn’t until a college art history class on the Pre-Raphaelites that I realized she was the sister of that Rossetti.

The Pre-Raphaelites were an odd little group. Ruskin, and artist, poet, and critic, was shocked and appalled to discover, that women–or, at least, his wife–had pubic hair. Or so the story goes. Apparently, he had this rude awakening on his wedding night, which disturbed him so much the marriage was not consummated. I’m not sure I buy that story, as someone who had spent his life in the art world, around artists and models, should have known better. True, it was traditional to portray women with pre-pubescent, hairless nether bits, but still, surely he’d seen a real, live woman in her altogether before[2]?

Okaythen, class dismissed!

[2] This total and complete non-sequitur brought to you by NyQuil: The sneezing, stuffy head, sore throat, hallucinogenic, where-the-hell-is-my-brain cold medicine.

Photography

Look at the Bones…!

Shelly

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Lower Jawbone from a Pig

I had been planning on sleeping in late, then spending the day in my PJs in front of the teevee, watching the Lord of the Rings movies back-to-back. But, I was wakened at the ass-crack of dawn by my across-the-lane neighbor, who was loading his horses into their trailer. He’s a man of very few words, though he seems friendly enough. He smiles and nods at me when our paths cross, and has occasionally mowed my outside-the-fence grass when it’s gotten extra unkempt[1]. He loves his horses, though[2], and spends a lot of time hanging out in the barn with them or taking them on weekend riding trips. I assume that’s where he was off to bright and early this morning. Which is all a round about way of saying that my plans for an extended day of ass-sitting in front of the television were shot to hell. I ended up getting up early, cleaning the kitchen (I never got around to finishing it yesterday), vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom, and, after months of procrastination, sorting out the laundry room. The laundry room is where I throw all the junk I don’t know what to do with it. There are old couch pillows, bags of plastics for recycling, jumbled tools, a mortally wounded dryer, stacks of games, three old aquariums and their associated paraphernalia, window screens that I never put away properly, and lord only knows what else, hidden under, between, and behind the aforementioned.

One of the things I found was a jaw bone and some vertebrae I was given by a friend. (It pays to have friends who understand one’s fondness for weird stuff, and who will cater to it.) I don’t know what I’ll eventually use them for, but in the meantime, I had planned on using them for sketching. I love drawing bones, and these are nice and big. For now, I’ve photographed them, which provided all sorts of entertainment for Harriet and Pandora. They both thought the bones might, just possibly, be for them. Ha! Harriet was crestfallen when I told her to back off, and she realized that she wasn’t going to get to investigate more closely.

Speaking of motivation and procrastination: I missed my blogoversary yesterday, which is about par for the course. I tend to do the same thing with my birthday. I’ll remember it a few days ahead of time, forget it on the day, then remember it again a few days later. I’m kind of surprised I stuck with it for this long, because I’m not always good at following through with things. My intentions are good, but I’m often sorely lacking in the motivation department. I haven’t managed to make daily updates, though I was delusional enough in the beginning to think I might do so. But, I have been fairly consistent, which is good enough.

So, here’s to another year of blogging!

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Sacrum from a Cow

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[1] He spends an inordinate amount of time on his riding mower. I suspect he’s one of those folks who finds mowing therapeutic. They’ve got, I think, three acres of land, about half of which is beautifully manicured grass. If you’ve looked at photos of my, um, “yard,” you’ll probably have noticed that mine is not anything approaching manicured. I hate mowing and really couldn’t care less how my yard looks. It used to be pasture, and wasn’t maintained at all, aside from the occasional bush hogging, until I moved in, so I figure anything I do, no matter how pitiful, is an improvement. Still, I’m sure it irks my neighbor no end that he has to look at my sad and sorry excuse for a lawn.

[2] When it’s really quiet out, I can sometimes hear him whistling songs or talking to the horses.

Pets, Photography

As Promised, with a Side of Cute

Shelly

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First, the cute, in the form of Miss Harriet Brown.

The rest of the photos were taken this morning from the driveway. I’ve been meaning to get some pictures of the driveway itself for months now. It’s more off-road than on-road. The center driveway photo shows the trench SBC cut when they laid phone cable. I have no idea what on earth they were smoking when they did it. It should have been laid along the edge of the driveway, not in it. After repeated complaints about poor sound quality and dropped calls, they eventually came out and moved the line. Unfortunately, they did not do anything about the huge trench they’d made.

Every time it rains, water funnels down the driveway and washes away the gravel, widening and deepening the trench. Last summer, while I was house sitting for the neighbors, we had several days of heavy rain. The bottom of the trench shifted and deepened, and my poor little car was eviscerated and mortally wounded. So, that’s why, when I was car hunting, I wanted something with both high clearance and part-time 4WD. I do not want to repeat that particular experience.

You may ask why we don’t just fix the driveway? I rent, and the folks who live next door don’t own the driveway, either. They only have an easement to use it. The owner keeps chucking gravel at the problem, but it’s only a bandaid solution. Maybe it’ll be fixed, someday, but I’m not holding my breath. In the meantime, I now have an off-road vehicle.

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The Driveway of Dqqm

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Abandoned Truck Bed & Cap

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Old Tires

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Abandoned Trailer

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Gas Easement

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Pylon

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Bird House

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Fence Near Entrance to State Forest

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Stream Along Driveway

Crankypantsing

TeeVee Commercials

Shelly

I’m home sick again today[1], so I thought I’d share a few thoughts on daytime television commercials. First, Wilfred Brimley needs to learn how to say diabetes. The word has four syllables, not two, and the last one is long, not short. It gives me flashbacks to when Kate Jackson was the spokesperson for Mercury cars. She used to pronounce it Mer-cree, which annoyed the shit out of me. What the hell did she think that u was for, decoration?

Another commercial that makes me cranky is the laundry product (dunno if it’s for detergent or fabric softener) that features the song Baby Boy. The mother (it’s always a mother) picks up her son’s clothing while the song plays in the background. She sniffs it and wallows in it, in a manner that screams “Innappropriate!” and “Bad Touch!” Squick!

And, speaking of all things squicky, the new Hardee’s taco salad commercial is bad, bad, bad. No one eats their food like that unless they’re being paid to do so, IYKWIM AITYD[2]. I’m sorry, but if that’s your kink, it is Not Okay. Please get help and God bless.

In totally unrelated news, a couple of dump trucks of gravel were delivered this morning, so it looks like our alleged driveway will soon be mended. Again. It could be fixed for real, but that would take time, money, and an ass load of work, so I’m not holding my breath. In lieu of actually fixing it, Ralph occasionally throws gravel at it as a stop-gap cure.

Anyway, I’ve been meaning to get out there and take pictures of just how spectacularly messed up it is, so I figured I’d best hop to it before it was covered up with a new strata of rock[3]. While I was out, I also took some photos of the surrounding landscape that I haven’t photographed before (I really hope they turned out, because they’re quite pretty in a barren, wintery sort of way). I’ll resize and upload them as soon as I finish brunch and I’ve cleaned the kitchen.

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[1] It never fails that I get some sort of respiratory plague after I’ve been around the barbarian hordes. I don’t know whether it was going to the ISM on Monday, or that I was in a car for three hours with someone who was sick, or if I caught it from someone at work, and it really doesn’t matter. All I know is that I may never leave my house again. It’s just not safe out there!

[2] If you know what I mean, and I think you do.

[3] Ahh, yes, here comes Load o’ Gravel #3.