Ok, so the TealArt, is if nothing else, functionally established with it's new set up. In retrospect I'm not really sure what we accomplished in the long run, or in the short run. Everything works as it should or more or less as it did. The administrative components are perhaps a bit more efficient, the way the categories are organized are a bit more logical. I think it'll also be easier to manage in the long run.
The one thing I'm a bit disappointed in Wordpress for is the fact that they've dumbed it down a lot. Used to be, that this program was efficient, feature filled and really customizable. Now, the scripts add a lot of formatting related code that you have no control over, unless you go in to hack the core of the application. This isn't cool. I want my data to be present in a pure manner, and if I want to format it, well then I'll add the formatting code myself. Their approach probably makes the vast majority of websites more functional, standards compliant, and easier to manage, but it also breaks the holy content/display divide that needs to be a defined as possible. But it works. We're going to get trackbacks and ping backs to work, and I have an email out about how to integrate the links/quotes and other sites with the main log. But for now it's good. There's a little more work that I'll get to in a couple of weeks.
I need to do a little bit of this really analytical work every now and then to stay sane, the bad part is that it draws a lot of attention for the time that I'm enthralled. I'm free of it for now, but I'll get back to it soon enough.
Moving on.
I think I have my schedule nailed out for next semester, I haven't heard back from a couple of professors, and I think there are a couple of things that relate back to my 3 year plan that I want to have a little more nailed down, but I’m in a very good place I think. I'm going to take a natural history class (my last required science class) a weaving class, an upper level English/Gender studies class called (Writing Race and Sexuality), Statistics (for psych majors) and probably a Cross-Cultural Psychology class. It'll be neat. Almost all of my transfer credit has come in, and I'm 3 hours away from sophmore standing (without the classes I'm taking now), and I should be able to make junior standing after next semester.
There aren't classes today because of a really poorly organized symposium, which is a good break in the rhythm. The beginning of the week is always really killer, in one way or another. Either I'm insanely busy, or I'm insanely in a weird mood (this week), and usually by Wednesday everything irons itself out. It better.
I'm going to post this and go to lunch, in a moment, but before I go, let me leave you with this.
Everyday I see a situation that I think would make an insanely good vignette, or I see someone who would make a perfect character, or I get some sort of story idea that would just be amazing if I remembered it and wrote it down. Usually I don't have my ibook with me to record such things (or even an index card,) so usually I just forget them and complain about how I have so little to write about. Well, ok, I'm sitting here, watching a guy who just needs to be written about.
He's tall--6'3" or something. He as this excruciatingly fashionable and suave air about him, except when he starts talking you kind of feel like he's about 14. I think he went to an all boys boarding school, which could explain some of the social awkwardness. Right now he's curled up into a little ball in a chair, across from me reading a book. We're kind of sharing a foot rest, so I'm acutely aware of his nervous movements. He has an intermittent vacant look on his face, and the book he's reading is a collection of case studies that I'm reading as well (for a different section of the class and clearly not at this very moment. Every now and then he looks at the door as if he's waiting for someone and then looks out the window in this sort of dissocialize sort of way.
Before he left, he paged through the next four or five pages of the book, clearly checking to see how much he had left to read, and then left. He said good-bye to me, perhaps not as awkward as usual, but whatever. He's a weird kid, interesting I suppose, how the presence he exudes by his appearance is so different from what he exudes both vocally and through his behavior.
Just notes and observations; I'm sure there'll be other notes like this one every now and then.