As amazing as it is, I have already made another new layout for my site! I believe the last layout was implemented around April, making this a record for me.

Anyway, I think it’s cute and simple. What do you think? If you don’t see anything different, simply click on the pink bubble layout under “Skin this site”. You don’t have to use it, of course, but it gives you one more viewing option.

Let me know if you have any opinions! :)

Posted at 8:07 AM | (8)

Ok, so I guess the system doesn’t always work—at least not in Santa Barbara County. I finally received the results of my Trial by Written Declaration for that speeding ticket. Not only was I still found guilty (not really a surprise there, huh?), but they denied me traffic school and didn’t reduce my fine by a single cent!

I suppose I was going so fast that they wanted me to suffer the consequences to the full extent of the law—to learn my lesson or something. I’m sure they also liked the substantial chunk of change I was forced to give them, and didn’t want to refund any portion of it to this menace to society.

Well, at least I tried huh? I mean, I could still fight it with a court appearance, but given how fast I was going, I doubt they would be very lenient—especially if they didn’t show ANY leniency in the written trial. Rumor has it that judges give more favorable rulings in the written trials, since they don’t have to worry about other people seeing the verdicts and expecting the same leniency. What a crock!

Posted at 8:59 PM | (13)

Yesterday in the mail I received an overstuffed legal-sized envelope. The contents of said envelope? All of the promissory notes I signed for my Perkins Loans and a note acknowledging that the loan has been repaid in full. I threw a large chunk of money at them in April in order to pay off this loan—it had the highest interest rate of my two loans, and I figured it would be nice to not have to pay $120 every 3 months until it was paid off in 2005 or whatever.

Anyway, it’s nice to see those notes, because it means that one loan is OFFICIALLY PAID OFF!!! Of course, the extra money is just going to go towards my credit card that I used for the Graphic Design courses, but whatever. It’ll be awhile before you see me write a post like this again, as my other loan is for a much more substantial amount.

Posted at 9:52 AM | (4)

Since the class I was supposed to be taking this summer got cancelled, I decided to go out and purchase those flip flops I needed.

Being that I shop so rarely, I can’t ever get away with just buying one thing. I bought TWO pairs of flip flops and a new purse. In my defense though, I have had both my old purse and flip flops for 2 years and used them almost daily. I think it’s about time I replaced them!

Anyway, I bought flip flops that look almost exactly like my old black ones—only with a black strap instead of blue. I also bought white ones with a pink strap—for all those times I wear lighter colors. (On a side note—shoe shopping is DANGEROUS! I hurt my left foot when I dropped a pair of heavy flip flops onto it. Yes, some flip flops do indeed pose a danger.) :)

It’s SOOO hard to go purse shopping though—they never have one that does exactly what you want in the size and style and color that you want. I think one of the things I liked best about my old purse was the outside pocket to easily store and retrieve my cell phone. This new purse has a compartment on the inside. Also, it doesn’t zip, it only has a little inside snap flap. Not so sure about that flap, what with how prone I am to throwing my purse across the room. It must be the “in” style or something though, because I couldn’t find a purse that zipped that didn’t look like it belonged to my mom!

Then again, I am a bit resistant to change. I’m sure the new purse will be fine….right??

Posted at 10:22 AM | (2)

Today’s randomness is brought to you by the word: Neap

I don’t know what made me think of this word, but it came to me randomly today and it makes me laugh. I think it is pretty weird sounding, conjuring up images of Muppets a la Sesame Street running around muttering “NEEEAPneapneapneapneapneap” or some such nonsense. I suppose it could also be a sound uttered by cousins of the Knights who say “Ni!”

Anyway, it’s a word that is only really used in one context, and of which no one is sure from where it originated. So there you go, random word, randomly originated. Consider this your Word of the Day!

Posted at 1:30 PM | (3)

I finished the Da Vinci Code last night. Overall I liked the book a lot. I don’t even care about the argument of whether it’s over-hyped or how accurate the info is. The book was entertaining, and I managed to read hundreds of pages at a time without spacing out, so that’s quite an endorsement for the story.

I agree that the very end of the book is a bit lame—especially in contrast to the rest of the story, but it’s not enough to ruin the book. That being the case, I guess I will add Angels & Demons to my Reading List.

Next up though, is Wicked. Since the University Library is missing their copy, the copy I put on hold at the Public Library finally arrived. I’m still in Whittier though, so I won’t be able to pick it up until tomorrow. We’ll see how that one goes. :)

Posted at 1:58 PM | (7)

Yesterday I dropped my car off at the dealership downtown for its 20,000 mile maintenance (my baby is growing up!) Normally I would go to pick it up around the end of the work day, but since I was driving to LA this weekend, I needed to get it earlier to beat traffic.

As a result, I left work at 11:30 to catch the 11:40 express bus downtown. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that during the summer months, the bus doesn’t run at all of the listed times—the 11:30 bus is one of those times. The non-express bus was waiting to leave, but it wouldn’t get downtown for almost an hour—about 12:45. The next express was coming at 12:10, and would get downtown at 12:30.

I wasn’t the only one who made this mistake—there were a guy and a girl also waiting for the bus that would never come. The guy seemed to be contemplating his options. Then he turned to me and asked if I was going downtown. When I said yes, he told me that he was going to bike to his car and asked if I wanted a ride. Not wanting to brave LA traffic at too late an hour on a Friday, I said yes.

So the guy drove me and the other girl to our destinations—not only did he drop me off right in front of the dealership so that I didn’t have to walk the 4 blocks from the Transit Center, but he also didn’t want any money. So cool. Hehe normally I’m not that trusting of people to just hop in cars with strangers, but I was pretty sure this guy was harmless—not to mention I wasn’t the only one riding with him.

Unfortunately I still had to sit in some bad traffic—my trip home took me 3 hours and 20 minutes, which is a bit long. I suppose that’s my fault though for leaving at 1.

Today is a sad, sad day.

In case you are wondering what the cause of mourning is, it is with much grief that I must announce that my flip flops have been afflicted with a terminal condition—the fabric that goes between the toe of the left shoe is coming out. I am afraid that this condition is irreversible, although it is hard to determine at this point how many weeks, days, or possibly even hours it may have left.

While it might be considered appropriate by some (you know who you are!) to mourn the impending loss by refusing to replace them with another pair (it would just be a rebound and everyone know how those never work out), I feel that the best way to get over it is to CELEBRATE the wonderful creation that is the flip flop and procure a new pair as soon as possible!

If this idea perturbs you at all, I will give you a chance to voice your opinions. I WILL buy another pair, but you may perhaps persuade me to select a pair that does not offend your sense of good taste so greatly. After all, it IS the footwear I will be wearing almost daily, regardless of weather.

You can pick your favorite(s) from PacSun, Ron Jon’s, or any other place that sells this type of footwear.

Vote early and vote often, or else you don’t get to complain if you don’t like the shoes I’m wearing! :)

Posted at 11:08 AM | (3)

It looks like I’m going to have to step it up a notch in terms of how long it takes me to read the Da Vinci Code. It seems that someone has decided to put a recall on the book, so it’s now due back at the end of this month.

I suppose it’s not that big a deal, since that still gives me 2 weeks to read it, but I guess it’s just the principle. I kinda liked knowing that I had until the end of October. ;)

I do know it’s possible though to read it in a day or weekend. Ivette read it in a weekend, and Steve decided to read it all in a few hours (partly to show me up ;) ) So, I know it can be done. The only problem is how easily I can get sidetracked with internet stuff.

I guess I will just have to focus. Maybe I can finish it tonight—it IS an interesting book (even though Kevin finds it to be merely mediocre).

Posted at 10:41 AM | (4)

It took until exactly midway through June, but it seems that June Gloom has finally descended upon us. This morning it was overcast and gloomy, with a light mist coming down onto cars as they drove. At a quarter to 10, it doesn’t look like that is changing any time soon.

It’s a weird phenomenon, but one that happens every year—especially here. LOL I need to go somewhere super hot and sunny. :)

The other thing making my day slightly more gloomy is that I got more comment spam recently—all from the same guy. So far I’ve just deleted it, because I don’t want to increase the lag time in comment posting by using MTBlacklist. If it becomes too much of a nuisance, I may have no choice…

Posted at 9:46 AM | (1)

I finally finished reading Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and even though I still have Stardust checked out and unread, I think I am going to start The Da Vinci Code. I finally managed to obtain a copy of it, and since I think it is the one that I will most likely be unable to keep for a long period of time, I figure I better read this book next.

Overall I liked Confessions, and I should have Wicked in my hands fairly soon, so I look forward to reading that. The consensus seems to be that Wicked is a better book, so perhaps it is good that I read them in this order. :)

Posted at 5:06 PM | (2)

Can you believe it?? Even in the midst of the whole MT scandal, I am still recommending it to people (well v.2.661 anyway). I got my Dreamweaver instructor psyched on it, and I just helped Martin put it on his server last night.

Wordpress is more of a blogging system, while MT is more of a CMS—which I think is better suited to a business. Not sure which would be better for Martin, but if he’s just going to do blogging, then I guess it’s a matter of personal preference. WP does some cool things, but I think that MT is easier to wrap your head around. I also think that the tag structure is easier to deal with—if you can code HTML, you can easily figure out how to use MT tags.

Anyway, it was cool seeing Martin again, if only for a short time and primarily in a technical context. Hope you enjoy using MT! :)

Posted at 8:04 AM | (2)

A few weeks ago one of my coworkers bought, among other things, a nice smelling shampoo/conditioner/body wash for one of the student workers in the department. Since I was in need of some more shampoo, I decided to try out this brand.

I bought 2 kinds—Melon Daiqueri and Chocolate Ice Cream. I am currently using the Chocolate scented one, and I have to say, it smells EXACTLY like chocolate ice cream. So much, in fact, that I’d even venture to say that if I wasn’t paying attention, I might be inclined to try to eat it!

Ok that’s a gross thought, I know, but it really is quite convincingly scented. The only downside to it is that the scent doesn’t last on my hair for very long. I tend to like if my hair smells good all day, but this scent dissipates rather quickly. They are still nice to smell while showering, however. :)

Posted at 5:10 PM | (3)

Man, it seems like the weekend just flies by sometimes, doesn’t it? Perhaps it seems shorter because last week we had 3 days off, or maybe it’s because I spent all day in class for Dreamweaver. You know, that program is pretty neat in all that it does, although I’m not sure if I like using its features to create style sheets. It does list all the options you could use to create your particular class, but it seems a bit cumbersome to me—probably because I’m so used to just quickly typing out exactly what I want manually. If you didn’t know what the attributes were, I suppose it would be cool. At least Dreamweaver still lets you type it in manually.

I don’t know though, even though I’ve tried to take advantage of some of the automated stuff this program does, I still find myself working in code view the most. There’s just something satisfying about typing it out yourself and figuring out where things went wrong and getting it to validate. Not to mention in class the program would crash on me if I used anything other than code view (probably because of all the weird PHP includes and stuff I was using)—thank goodness my copy here on my laptop doesn’t crash. Anyway, almost done with that class, and then it’s on to the Advanced web design course, woohoo!

Posted at 11:43 AM | (3)

Yay I made my foray into the world of the Central Branch of the SB Public Library System. I’ve only had my library card for about a month now, and I obtained it at the closer Goleta Branch. I was pleased to observe how conveniently close one of the large public parking structures is to the back entrance of the building. I had no trouble finding it.

I did, however, have a bit of trouble finding Maguire’s Confessions… I suspect this is because of his last name. He is grouped near all the McDonald’s, MacGregor’s, whatever. I saw many books shelved incorrectly—so much so that I’m not even sure how one correctly shelves Mcs and Macs anymore in relation to other names. Suffice it to say though, that the location of the book was incorrect regardless—it was shoved in between a Mahoney and a Majors or something. Most likely someone looked at it, attempted to put it back, then was like “Awww screw it” when they couldn’t figure out where it went, and just stuck it randomly in the “M” section.

Luckily I found it, because the other copy mysteriously got checked out yesterday too. Now I have to wonder if maybe this book is so self-important that it considers itself to be 2 copies, if it’s merely coincidence that someone else decided on this book on the exact same day as me, or if someone read my site and was turned on to the book by my mention. The first option flatters the book, and the third myself. I may never know the reality of the situation.

Anyway, I also picked up Kev’s suggestion of Stardust, which if he had told me what it was about earlier, it may have gotten more of my attention. Now I just have to wait until my copy of the Da Vinci Code gets turned back in and either the University Library finds the copy of Wicked, or I wait my turn and get it from the Public Library.

Posted at 11:10 AM | (3)

Sweet, I have to keep correcting myself to remember that it’s TUESDAY and not Monday. I love that about 3 day weekends. Hopefully this trend will continue into Friday, where I will believe it to be Thursday and then be pleasantly surprised that the weekend is already upon me again. :)

I made another change to my site—my pictures now appear with a drop shadow if you use the default grid layout.

Oh and I finished the Bridget Jones sequel. I was planning on starting on the Da Vinci Code, which I recalled from the library and was supposed to be given to me on the 28th. However, the person who checked it out has decided not to turn it in on time (so inconsiderate!), so I think I will be reading Wicked Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire (Thanks for the suggestion, Gwen! Unfortunately this book is not on the shelf even though it should be, so I’m requesting it from another library. Until then I guess I’ll read this other book by him that looks interesting)

Posted at 9:13 AM | (3)