Today a good friend is leaving for France to become a nun.

Today another good friend just got engaged.

Separately, I think neither of these would have seemed all that strange. But together they just kind of blow my mind.

“A surprise will titillate you and frighten you but you will accept it.”

Seriously, why do I get all the crazy fortunes?!

A site overhaul is in the works. It’s been long overdue, I know. I think the last time I really redid the layout was back in 2003. And everyone knows the best time to redesign yoour website is when you should be working on anything *but* redesigning your website. Expect something by the end of the week!

**UPDATE** The site is currently in a transitional phase. I know there are bugs that need to be worked out (ie the site looks like ass in Firefox). I’m getting to it.

**UPDATE** Went back to the old version for now. Stupid Firefox.

“It’s good enough for government work.”

I am not entirely pleased with the current layout, but this is just going to have to do for now. If nothing else, this redesign has taught me that I really hate stylesheets. At least everything is legible now, so that’s something. Maybe I’ll putz around with making the text pretty some other time.

The most significant change, you will notice, is the addition of a blogroll to the right. I suppose it’s not properly a blogroll as much as it’s a cast of characters–not everyone listed has a functioning website. Maybe I’ll do more with it in the future, such as link descriptions to it somehow. But for now, this is what you get.

Oh, yes. One other thing. I don’t want to hear any whining about your avatars, people! I was working with limited photographic resources over here. If you don’t like what I gave you, make a better one and send it to me.

Ah dear readers, you surprise me! Who knew that you’d reject my grim darkness and call for color and flowers and pink things? I thought you all knew me better than that. Well, well, you learn something new every day…

That being said, I make no promises to permanently colorize/happify the site any time soon. It does still need work (mainly links), and I will consider adding some tasteful highlights of color, but it’s supposed to evoke gray, ugly, “Communist Russia” feelings–that’s an electric chair in the header, you know?

::sigh::

Would y’all prefer it with flames instead?

You knew it was bound to happen sooner or later. It begins with a little taste at a local restaurant with a good friend. Then it escalates to touring museums and learning all about its glorious history. Eventually, you know what’s going to happen. You’re going to bring it into your own home. You’re going to cook with it. You’re going to like it. There is no turning back, is there?

Mmm, spam musubi :-)