So – how do you like that header image?

I really like it. Thanks again to Mr. and Mrs. Bushwack.

I woke up this morning to a wonderful smell – moisture on a desert wind. I opened up the house a bit, and the temperature inside dropped from the overnight 78° to about 71° in less than a half hour. The wind is blowing pretty good, and it’s so darn pleasant that I might just turn this thing off and go sit on the patio.

Well, I just sat here and thought about it. I’m going to do that.

Saturday afternoon, TMBWitW was rear-ended on the freeway. Seems her lane of traffic was slowing, so she slowed, but the person on the cellphone in the vehicle behind her was too absorbed in the conversation. Knocked TMBWitW into the middle lane, and she did get the car back to the right lane and onto the shoulder; the person in vehicle 2 only hung up once the officer showed up. My wifes car (a 2005 Camry) has some rear-end damage. The S-10 Blazer could not be driven away. TMBWitW, MEG, and our Momma are OK, but there are some minor issues that need to be addressed. Turns out, also, that vehicle 2 did not have current insurance. So, along with everything else, we get to pay our deductible and watch as our insurance company tracks down and sues the pants off person 2.

Three guesses as to the ethnicity of the driver of vehicle 2. The first two don’t count. (hint: open borders suck)

I’m also taking a quick survey. Please put your answers in the comments section. Real fast, and I won’t bother you anymore. Two questions: What browser are you using? Does the text on this page appear to be left-justified, centered, or right-justified?

That’s it. (Update – never mind. It’s fixed now.)

One last thing: I’ll be “off the air” for a few days. TMBWitW is working from home tomorrow, and taking Thursday and Friday off (she graduates Sunday with her Bachelors in Accounting). This means no posts here until Monday, most likely, and no BlogTalkRadio show Friday. The regular schedule will resume on Monday.

Thank you for stopping by, God bless you all, listen to The O Word on BlogTalkRadio, Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!

Still working on the design.

Please bear with me as I try to work with the one TexasFred really likes, too.

Update: Many many thanks to Bushwack and his lovely bride for their help with the new header image. The shot itself is of a sunset over the White Tanks west of Glendale I took with a low-resolution digital camera (it was a setting I hadn’t yet set on a brand new camera) about two years ago; Mrs. Bushwack applied her vast knowledge and skills to the removal of some objectionable items while Bushie himself helped me with some coding tips.

So – whaddya think?

Thank you for stopping by, God bless you all, listen to The O Word on BlogTalkRadio, Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!

I am dealing with two learning curves.

Actually, one of them is just a reminder of things I already knew, but at a higher rate of speed.

The first one is WordPress. It is a wonderfully adaptable and ownable blog software. Finding just what you want and being able to use it is a nice change from blogger. Of course, if you happen to hit this blog while I am trying things out, the appearance may change while you are off reading the comments on another post…

The second one is raising a child. Again. In my first marriage, there were two girls that came with the first wife. I raised them both as my own. (the older one has issues, and I will not be talking about her.) The younger one was six months old when I married her mother, and she only knows me as “daddy” – which is really, really cool. She is 22 now and married, living in Idaho with her husband and dog and cat in a house they just bought.

Now, I have this sixteen month old information sponge that I am raising. I have learned that chores go a lot quicker when a toddler is helping. No, really – they have to. At least, the chores that you can accomplish while watching a small person with eighteen arms and forty two hands. For example, emptying the dishwasher. MEG has figured out how to unlock and open the dishwasher (and also how to lock it and start it, whether it’s ready to go or not) so when the dishes are clean, they need to be put away. I have found that it takes about 3.5 seconds to empty and store the dishes. (when I was a teenager, it would take me about 3.5 days to do the dishes when asked. told. commanded. ordered. threatened.) Otherwise, most of them get to be reloaded and rewashed after MEG shares the flatware with the dogs and the plates with the cats.

While I was in the Marine Corps, two minute showers were the rule. We lived in squad bays from the Korean War era (interesting sidenote – my Dad helped build most of them on Camp Pendleton. he was a Marine Corps meteorologist, which is a perfect MOS for building squad bays, right?) (they are all replaced by BEQ dorms now, two Marines to a room, no comradarie…) Anyway – sixty guys, ten shower heads, reveille was called at 0500, assembly at 0600 and chow at 0630, so there was not a lot of time for you to relax in a long hot shower. That’s history. Now, two minutes to a toddler is forever. My shower lasts ninety seconds on a slow day, so MEG doesn’t start getting upset because I’m out of sight. Unless, of course, I’m up before she is, then I grab a longer shower and get shaved and dressed rather leisurely. On those days, I even get to enjoy shaving with the straight razor, taking my time and having deep thoughts.

Everything else is in a hurry – her hurry. Somethings don’t get done – the floor has little piles in the corner (I’m not going to tell you piles of what, so don’t even bother asking.) and the entertainment center needs to be dusted – again. But, I am not going to take time away from MEG’s learning curve to satisfy someone else’s idea of clean. The house is not going to fall apart, and we can still tell what color the tile is.

Make sure you wish your mother a Happy Mother’s Day tomorrow.

I may even break my own rule about not allowing bitterness to creep into my life and call my own mother. Maybe. Long story for another post.

Have a good weekend.

Thank you for stopping by, God bless you all, listen to The O Word on BlogTalkRadio, Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!

OK – so this guy I know (you might know him too – he goes by Bushwack, and blogs on American and Proud) is very code-savvy and has been helping out a little bit here and there with this upgrade to WordPress 2.5.1. One thing he pointed me to was a comment reply plug-in that he pointed to here, and the directions were deceptively simple. In fact, I messed up the install because I didn’t read the “readme” file first. Yeah, I know. Bullheaded old Leatherneck, right? Right.

The other thing – and you may or may not have noticed this – is up on the tab where this window is open. I have an icon on the tab! That is so cool! Like I mentioned in a comment to an earlier post – having this much control over your site is a pretty cool little power trip!

So – I’m going to keep looking for some of the really cool plug-ins out there, and really get this thing working for me.

Thank you for stopping by, God bless you all, listen to The O Word on BlogTalkRadio, Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!

OK, bear with me while I get this figured out.

I’m using a new interface, on a new platform, and even a new domain – if that’s not enough craziness, I’m actually trying to design my own page!

Moving the blog over here turned out to be a lot less hassle than I thought – wordpress is the bomb-diggity for translating all the weird blogger stuff, like entries AND comments. (notice that not only are all the original posts still intact, so are all the comments. i even managed to combine the two blogs from there and place them here. if you are looking for The Wisconsin Cartters, look for the “pages” entries.)

The one thing that I must ask you to bear with me for is the overall look and the widgets and sidebar stuff. I’m still working on that. Things may appear and disappear, but bear with me. If you decide to leave a comment about a particular layout, please describe it the best you can in the comment, since by the time I notice I’ve got a comment that design will be so, like, five minutes ago.

Blessings on all of you, and hold on tight!

Thank you for stopping by, God bless you all, Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!