CountryMouse's Diary, Part 39

CountryMouse's Diary

Part 39

Thursday, April 1, 2004: Testing, testing. Is this thing on? We're over on our new web hosting now. Also Cat'r had to fix up the FrontPage extensions. Some things got wonky while we were over on Wasabi, and I had to do a total new upload of my site this afternoon. Hope everything is here!

8:11pm: Working on changing the navigation in several sections. It's already completed in the PalmPix section. I am currently working on this section, the (massive) CM's Diary. I still need to work on the Coolpix section and the Animal Crossing section. I think everything else is fairly easy to move around in...if it isn't, will you please tell me what needs to work better? Feedback is a Good Thing. :-)

9:37pm: CM's Diary is all done. Assembly-line HTML! Cut-and-paste is my friend. ::grin::

11:03pm: The Coolpix section is now finished! Forgot I also have the Fuzzy Fotos, besides the Animal Crossing section. I hope to get both done tonight. :-)

11:21pm: Fuzzy Fotos section (all whopping three pages of it! heh) is finished!

Friday, April 2, 2004, 12:20am: Whew! I finally finished the Animal Crossing section. FrontPage was being flaky about an older version of a couple buttons I'd uploaded ...or IE was being flaky in how it was displaying stuff. I had to eventually upload those two files via FileZilla. Okay, that made sense only to me. I must be reeeeaaaaalllly tired.

9:02am: No, I don't have a Blinkies Page up yet. But here is another little goodie I found! It's from Simply Graphics:

So now we know what we always knew: when life gets you down, have sweets!

Saturday, April 3, 2004, 2:20am: Greymatter....thinking about it for CM's Diary. Well, I would leave the pages that are as-is; but starting this month, I would use Greymatter. Cat'r will set me up with it if I want it......

::blink blink:: I need to sleep. Did I *really* see that the forecast says we may have SNOW SHOWERS in a couple days?!?

Sunday, April 4, 2004: [THE FOLLOWING WILL BE ENTRIES THAT WERE IN MY MOVABLE TYPE BLOG, BUT THAT I MOVED BACK OVER HERE, STARTING WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9, 2004]

12:10pm: Off to play Toontown. I hope I can find a group to go in with, to fight the Vice President! I have all my suit parts again and all my merits.

The other day Lady Raven Thunderboom, playing her son's (lower) toon, helped me in the Factory, although she eventually went sad before we completed it (my lure was failing left and right--and I'm maxxed on all my gags! aarrgh!). I used a couple of my SOS cards, which I thought would help me make it through. But I just could not beat the Foreman. He's a Level 11 (IIRC), and my grand piano drops were missing. Lure was not working. Nothing was working on him. I went sad. :-(

BUT: for some idiot reason I did get credit for all the Cogs I/we defeated in the Factory, so I did get all my merits I needed to be ready for promotion! Yay!

1:47pm: There was no one on Toontown that Lady Marigold and I know, so we were going to do 4-story buildings to work on maxxing her drop gag. But I got SO SLEEPY halfway through the first building, I had to say I couldn't do anymore now. At least she got the merits she needed for promotion, so she's also ready for the VP. :-)

Monday, April 5, 2004: A frustrated little poem called "AARGH" has been added to The Poet's Corner. The most recent poems are now at the top of the list.

Tuesday, April 6, 2004: I found some absolutely gorgeous graphics over at The Mousepad the other night, so I plunked down the very small sum necessary to purchase a couple web sets from Vikimouse, artiste extraordinaire.

Then this afternoon I totally redid my Garden of Friendship Dedication top page with one of the lovely new sets. Now it feels so light and airy and feminine and peaceful there.

I joined The Garden of Friendship's Poetic Expressions committee--woo, that's gonna be fun!!

Wednesday, April 7, 2004: I am not posting the one poem I did last night until I find out if I may do that now or later [EDIT Jan. 14, 2005: here it is!]--it was a little challenge assignment from the GOF Poetic Expressions committee. I didn't even title it (yet). You were given a list of ten words, all of which you must use in a poem, no changes allowed to the words. Interesting!

The other poem just popped out after that one. It's the latest one over in The Poet's Corner. It's entitled Dance.

3:44pm: If you love bears (and who wouldn't?!), here is a beautiful page! It's called Burden Bear. This is what teddy bears are all about (besides their fun-loving secret lives when people aren't looking!). :-)

Thursday, April 8, 2004, 1:42am: Oh boy, I can see what I am going to be doing for the next day or so: making an Easter quilt! I made one Easter quilt square; then I received a very beautiful one from GrammyJ tonight. I have to make an Easter quilt now. :-D

And I just received my WOSIB bingo cards tonight! I hope I can win one of the games. :-)

4:01pm: Next Wednesday night: new "Angel" episode! I hate that it's being cancelled. :-( But for more than any other reason because I am a serious

Also next Wednesday night is a new episode of "Smallville", with the wonderful and courageous Christopher Reeve reprising his role of Dr. Swann.

6:56pm: New photos: I went out this afternoon late to see what I might see. I thought, "Oh, it's up around 70 degrees F., I might even get too warm!" Was I ever wrong! Stiff chilly breeze, even with the abundant sunshine! I was not able to get any beautiful flower pictures; I had to settle for "arty" pictures. ::grin:: They are here.

Saturday, April 10, 2004, 1:58am: New quilt--well, the beginnings of one, which I'd better hurry up with before Sunday! I started up My Easter Quilt late this (last) evening.

If I stay up much later, I could catch the very beginning of the takeover of Toontown by the Skelecogs! That starts at 12 midnight PDT and runs for 24 hours! I gotta get to Toontown sometime tomorrow to fight the Skelecogs! They are usually only seen in the Factory and when going up against the VP.

HOWEVER, I should get to bed ASAP, since Cat'r is going to take me out to view and (I hope) photograph flowers tomorrow morning.

11:07am: Accumulating squares for My Easter Quilt. I will get to adding some later today or else tomorrow.

Hope to go out flower-viewing soon.

As for the Skelecog invasion in Toontown: it's not happening yet. No one knows why, whether there is a bug in the game or the programmers forgot to set some clock or what.

Sunday, April 11, 2004, 12:33am: Cat'r and I went riding today and saw lots of wonderful things! We also went to the store, which was packed with people making last-minute Easter purchases. I got us a little Easter Tree for a pittance!

Click on the flowers to take you to all the new photos.

10:44am: I have a new page of photos up, but they are not by me--they are by Dark Childe. The page is Withrow High School in Springtime. Dark Childe did not really care to put them up on hir website, so I asked if I could put them on mine. DC said yes. :-) Withrow High School is my Alma Mater.

Hey, I remember climbing up into the tower with a girlfriend of mine, a few days before our senior year began! We actually got the new principal's permission! We climbed up the iron steps that run along the walls inside, then we climbed out one of the windows at the top! Wow!

Anyway, fond memories of a good high school set on a beautiful campus.

12:46pm: Wheeeee! I got My Easter Quilt pieced together. :-) Go see!

And, oops, I forgot to say:

I got a cute little blue bunny this morning! Photo will show up at some time. The guys got lots of candy from the Easter Bunny; but the Easter Bunny knows I have lots of allergies, so he brought me what I wanted anyway: a stuffed animal. :-)

Monday, April 12, 2004, 9:46am: I'm leaving the bunny splash page up for the rest of the week since I am participating in a Secret Bunny (like Secret Santa) Exchange in the Women of Strength and Inner Beauty. :-)

Woo, I have two presents already from my Secret Bunny!

5:07pm: Rainy day today, but that's fine with me. I like cool grey damp rainy weather. :-)

We went driving through a nearby park; then we went through a McDonald's Drive-Thru and Cat'r got me a THE DOG Happy Meal! Yay! I got a cute little pug DOG! :-) After that we went over to the Hallmark store, where I found several packs of little postalettes (foldover writing cards that require no envelopes)...AND a cute soft dark brown medium-size lap (for one's lap) dog. He was begging to come home with me--how could I leave him there?! His name is Howard.

We now seem to have a little law firm here: Harrison, Howard, Paint and Pug. Cat'r says Pug is the paralegal. :-P

Anyway, photos from the park coming pretty soon...maybe not today, but soon-ish.

Wednesday, April 14, 2004, 10:02am: Another rainy day + music: That was yesterday. Chillier than Monday even, steady rain, greyness.

Cat'r took me to Target, where I found some very cute Classic Pooh items! The line is called "A Bear and His Things". I got some thank-you cards, some note cards, and a magnetic list pad + pencil. I also bought a pack of "grown-up" thank-you cards (flowers on the front). Well, technically you shouldn't even USE thank-you cards; you should just write your thank-you's on blank notecards or correspondence cards or the like. :-D

Anyway, onward to Circuit City to look at CDs and DVDs. I ended up with two CDs: "Harem" by Sarah Brightman (the plastic inside part was all cracked and falling out--this needs to be exchanged) and "Measure of a Man" by Clay Aiken. (click on both images to see them larger)

The Sarah Brightman sounds WONDERFUL so far--more Kate Bush and less operatic. :-)

As to Clay Aiken: I never watched "American Idol", so I know nothing about him actually. I heard this music in the Hallmark store a couple months or so ago. I thought, "OMG, it's Matthew Ward!" (from the ground-breaking contemporary Xtian group 2nd Chapter of Acts). I asked at the desk who that was, and they pointed me to their copies of "Measure of a Man" (waaaay too expensive at Hallmark!).

Okay, on listening to "Measure of a Man", my favourites are "Invisible" and "I Will Carry You". There are subtle reminders of Matthew Ward, but not the incredible vocal gymnastics Matthew can do. As far as I know the ONLY secular music Matthew Ward has ever recorded is "Love Has a Mind of Its Own", a duet with Donna Summer on her "She Works Hard For The Money" album. It leaves me longing for more. What a voice that man has! But as much as I loved The 2nd Chapter of Acts in my born-again Xtian days, it's just not for me anymore.

11:01am: Yesterday I had occasion to look at my Secret Bunny page [EDIT Jan. 14, 2005: no longer there] on Cat'r's computer--EEEEEEEK! He runs at a much higher resolution than I do, plus he has a bigger monitor. I saw that the side-bordered background was repeating! AARRGH!

So I found (I hope) all the pages I have with side-bordered backgrounds and redid the backgrounds in PSP to be 1600 pixels wide. I hope that works for most computers running at present.

I'm a Virgo, what can I say? I strive for perfection.

Thursday, April 15, 2004, 12:41am: I have the photos from Monday (the rainy-day photos) and some photos from this evening (it's still Wednesday to me) up now. They are on Page 15 of the Coolpix section.

Friday, April 16, 2004, 11:48am: My artistic spirit is feeling smothered. Read here.

9:14pm: Who is Bunny Hugs?? (this is with regard to the WOSIB Secret Bunny event) I know she was having trouble with her email client/service (Yahoo?) earlier on, so it's possible she hasn't been able to send me the final "revealing" message, as to who she really is.

[EDIT April 17th, 9:51am: Bunny Hugs is Pattie! Check out her site!]

I told my "spoilee" who Eggcited Bunny was (ME!) around 5 or 6pm this evening. :-)

In other news, there is a new, generic Springtime splash page, with new music too. Worth a look-see. :-)

Saturday, April 17, 2004: Web page/site design: regarding the use of unifying themes throughout my entire site: bah, humbug! LOL! I like being an eclectic mousie! I like all kinds of different pages. I like it to be a surprise wherever a person goes!

If I owned a huge mansion, I would have different rooms all decorated in different styles! So that's why my home-on-the-Web is like it is: I like fancy stuff, I like cute stuff, I like unexpected stuff. As selfish as this sounds, this site is for my pleasure too, besides my visitors', so:

ANYONE COMING TO EVALUATE MY SITE

please realize I LIKE it this way! LOL!

Sunday, April 18, 2004: New bakery goods! I have added a couple sections to the Bakery: my Pocket Bishoujo Captures and my Pocket Seibutsu Captures (not very many of this second batch, I'm afraid. Oh well! Maybe I can add to that).

Argh, it's a good thing I finished working on that bakery photograph. I don't want to do THAT again! Grrrr. I thought I could just add buttons/signs I had made previously, but somehow PSP wasn't going to let me put the new buttons onto the bakery photograph as transparent selections (well, transparent as I thought they should be). So I ended up having to draw some new little signs and put text on them, ON THE PHOTO. :-/ So I am glad I am finished with that. If I get any more ideas for miscellaneous pages, I will have to think of something else, since the Bakery is full up now, thank goodness! :-P

Monday, April 19, 2004: There is now a subsection to My Treasures called Teardrops (which are another form of globe). Very pretty things they are, too!

Also, I redid the Globes pages so that there are fewer on each page, making each page load a little faster (I hope).

Wednesday, April 21, 2004, 1:36am: Stuff that's been happening:

Hurriedly did my PSP8 lesson this morning (it's still Tuesday night to me), just before going to class (on MSN Messenger).

Cat'r and I watched the latest episode of "Deadwood". That is one seriously GOOD series! But NOT for kids or anyone who is sensitive to a lot of cursing/swearing/foul language. Hey, it was called the Wild West for a lot of reasons!

Did some stuff around the house (washing dishes etc.).

Played some Toontown this afternoon. I hadn't been there for about a week and a half! I did two 5-story bldgs. in Donald's Dreamland with strangers. Both were tough bldgs., with mostly level 10-12 Cogs and lots of them!

Got very sleepy, took a nice three-hour nap. :-)

Wrote a poem for the Women of Strength and Inner Beauty's Four-Year Birthday/Anniversary, but I'll look at it tomorrow to see if I still think it's okay.

Music I have been listening to (click on both pics to see them larger):

"Cho" by Choying Drolma and Steve Tibbetts--Buddhist songs and invocations. This is Cat'r's CD. Very beautiful!

I have also been listening to Moya Brennan's "Two Horizons". Very ethereal. Very Clannad. :-)

2:07pm: There are more Springtime-y photos up.

And there are some new Fuzzy Fotos up too! Howard, my chocolate-brown doggie, is very hard to photograph, especially if he is beside someone light-coloured. He is much more beautiful in person than I can capture in the photos.

10:35pm: I didn't think I would ever do this, but I have begun a section for poetry by other writers. The poem/song "Prothalamium" jumped into the forefront of my brain this afternoon and demanded to be put on my website. So I complied. The Poetry of Other Writers can be accessed off my Poet's Corner section.

Late this afternoon/early this evening Cat'r and I watched the movie/musical "Chicago". Fascinating...I did a review of it, also over in The View From Here.

Friday, April 23, 2004, 12:46am: A new poem, for/about a friend. :-) It's called Lady of Pens.

8:36pm: There is a thread about the game Animal Crossing over on Toontown Central; so I thought, since I posted in that thread and left the URL for my AC Diary, I should start putting more of my pics up! The new additions are on Page 3 and Page 4 at this point. More to come!

Sunday, April 25, 2004, 2:27pm: A couple new things up in The Poet's Corner: one serious, one whimsical. :-)

3:07pm: Iron Chef America! If you haven't been watching "Iron Chef America", you should! You still have a chance to watch/tape the Making Of, all the battles, all of it! You can catch ALL the action tonight on Food TV from 6pm-11pm ET! Don't miss it! And check out all the extras at the Food TV website. (click on the picture to see it larger).

Tuesday, April 27, 2004, 10:56am: Off to my PaintShopPro8 class in just a minute, but just wanted to say we're getting a NEW REFRIGERATOR! Yay! Read more about it here in my LiveJournal.

Wednesday, April 28, 2004: Freeze warning! Wow, it's supposed to get down to 30-35 degrees F. tonight/overnight! It's 36 degrees F. (2 degrees C.) now! Brrrr.

Friday, April 30, 2004, 9:02am: Delivery Day for the new refrigerator! Hurriedly eating breakfast. Bunnicula just got back with bags of ice for the cooler, for the few cold items that need to be transferred after the new fridge cools down.

58 minutes to go!

3:24pm: More than you probably want to know about our new refrigerator. ::grin:: It's a brand-new GE. It's slightly wider than the old one, maybe by an inch. This ended up being a problem, as the plug into the socket on its one side kept if from sliding back into its little niche properly. It ended up needing to have an appliance extension cord running over to a fairly-nearby three-prong outlet.

The freezer is bigger than our old Hotpoint fridge's, but the fresh-goods section is a little smaller. It has coated-wire shelves (yay, no rusting!). It went from 60 to 30 degrees in 2 hours, maybe less (I took a nap). It is white, but with a textured-like-leather exterior; it's interior is of course white. It's quiet and efficient-looking and -sounding.

The manual that came with it says it really takes 24 hours for it to reach the temperature you want. I think it means through-and-through, walls, etc. The air temperature had gotten nicely cold by 2pm.

So tomorrow will be a nice BIG grocery-shopping day! Yay!