Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Wednesday, Apr. 20, 2005 - 1:28 a.m.

Do you like the snazzy new template? I took the picture in France, at Chateau Villandry, in the Loire Valley. I heartily recommend it, should you find yourself in the area. It is famous for its garden, which is nothing short of incredible. The template is only temporary; I'm testing it out. Good thing, too; it had a few bugs. It was originally designed to accommodate people with monitors at 800 x 600 resolution, but dayam, is that a little space. If you run a 3 column page, the entry section has to be just tiny. So I'm sorry alla yous wit' that rez, but you're gonna have to hit the scrollbar at the bottom there. Bygones.

Did you know 66% of web surfers have resolution 1024 x 768 or above? The lion's share have that size; something like 13% have the larger 12something x 1024 or whatever it is. I am not such an egghead that I know those numbers right offhand, so I'm sorry, but those numbers are not at my disposal. I just know it's a pretty darned big screen. That's what mine is, and it's so darn big I don't even open my windows up all the way, coz it's too hard to read in a window that big. And in case you're wondering, IE6 and Firefox are the two most popular browsers. All you elitist Mac users can take heart in the fact that you are still in the bottom 3% of all web users. I would like to go on record as saying I do not so much like Firefox. A) it looks too damn much like Netscape for the Mac, or Safari. B) it does not recognize as many colors as other browsers. And C) it feeds things right up against the edge of the page/table, instead of giving a few pixels of buffer like other browsers do. No, I am not a big fan of the Firefox, at all. While we're on the subject (we are, too; shut up), I am not that fond of CSS, either. Yes, it makes some things easier (and possible), but it's a whole new language I have to learn, and not the fun kind, either. ::sigh::

All of which, I mention only because that is the kind of stuff you have to pay attention to when you have your own dot com to deal with. You have to take into account how your website looks on different monitors and with different browsers. Especially if one of the things you would like to do is design and sell templates (aka skins) for blogs. And since I would like to do that, and since I am currently developing a website in order to, said information becomes part and parcel of my life. Oo. Ah.

At any rate.

I was tossing about over where to live, as I last mentioned, and I decided that the thought of moving back to Texas was really far too hideous for words. Yes, I have some great friends there that I miss and would love to see, and yes, I can afford my own apartment there without having to go without stuff like food, but there are three big problems with moving back there. They are, in no particular order, tornadoes, my father, and the fact that Texas is a red state. Let's take those in relative order of importance, shall we?

The Red State Factor
This should be pretty obvious to any of you who have read here more than 3 weeks, but I am of the moderate political persuasion and may, in point of fact, be growing ever more liberal as time goes by. To live in any state that more than half went for the idiot in the White House solely based on his religious beliefs is pretty much my hell. Texas is, by and large, a male-dominated land ruled by the Bible and Billy Bob's, and is the kind of place where too fucking many people consider the N-word a perfectly acceptable term. No, I really don't want to live there, despite the many perfectly nice people who do live there, do not use the N-word, do not subscribe to the Theory of Big Hair & Big Makeup and That Being A Wife & Mother Is The Loftiest Goal a Woman Can Attain, are not sexist pricks, are not absolutely convinced Sugarland is the next big terrorist target, and did not vote for Bush (or had other reasons than greed or religion to vote for him). I know there are perfectly nice people living in Texas, because I am friends with a great many of them. Unfortunately, I have also met a great many of the other kind, and I'd prefer not to have to deal with them that often. Which brings us to

The Father Factor
Those of you who have been reading here a while know I am not on the greatest of terms with my father. Or rather, that I am on the greatest terms with him that it is possible to be, but only because I am 1453 miles away from him. Give or take 1 or 2. My father is the kind of pushy man who feels that it is perfectly okay for him to drop by unannounced and uninvited at 8pm on a weeknight and expect you to drop absolutely everything and go to dinner and movie with him. And he is horribly hurt and bewildered when you will not, no matter how nicely you turn the offer down. In fact, he does not actually seem to hear any of the perfectly good reasons why you can not, and he does not actually hear the word "no" at all. So more often than not, I find myself doing something I have no time for and do not want to do at all, merely because my father steamrolled over my ass and then drug a Katie-shaped pancake around with him. Not even living 1500 miles away has aided in this. You might think it would, but actually, I have been home on a Saturday afternoon and answered the phone only to have my father announce that he and my stepmother were down at the bottom of the hill with my uncle and step-aunt, and that they were on the way up to take me out to Ontario for dinner with my extended family members...all 28 of those present. Imagine my surprise, when for all I knew, he and the step unit - a woman he insists on referring to as "your mother" when he mentions her, as if I do not have a perfectly healthy actual mother already - were tucked safely away back in Irving (just a stone's throw from Cowboy Stadium), properly ensconced on their sofa, watching a college football game. I have a great many issues with my father; these few I have mentioned are merely the tip of the iceberg. I really, really, REALLY do not want to live any closer to him. In fact, I am thinking I can not get far enough away so long as we both live on the same damned continent.

The Tornado Factor
Dallas-Ft. Worth lies at the heart of what the US Air Force calls "Tornado Alley." They call it that because it's basically this big corridor which brews more tornadoes than any other part of the country, and Oklahoma and Texas are the two states that just kick ass for tornado activity. When I was in 5th grade, our house got utterly destroyed by one, while we were all in it. I have just not been a fan of the tornado ever since, and I have to say, you get used to living in an area where the wind can blow over 20 miles an hour without it meaning you have to stay tuned to the radio for storm warnings. Sure, we have earthquakes, but somehow, until a building has come down pretty much around my ears during one, earthquakes just do not terrify me like tornadoes do. They freak me out; don't get me wrong. But a floor which is literally rippling toward you like swells on the ocean just does not compare to the sound of every window in your house shattering, followed a split second later by the sound of the walls splintering. Trust me, that is a hellishly loud sound you do not want to hear. Particularly if you are standing in the middle of them, and the next thing you know, the floor has gone out from underneath you and you are tumbling through the dark like a ragdoll. It was literally years before I could tolerate anything more than a stiff breeze without switching into panic mode. So yeah, I'm not real thrilled to have to deal with that again. Especially since contrary to what the movies tell you, most houses in that part of the world do NOT have storm cellars. You're supposed to go into your bathroom or an interior closet. That's right; your bathtub is supposed to be a stellar place to wait out your doom.

I don't think so.

So I am staying in California for the time being, trying to find a job that pays decently enough to move into my own $1000/month "junior one bedroom" or "studio" apartment (that means it's all one big room, with a bathroom off to the side). If I can't, though, I think I'm outta here in September. Too many things have been said to stay where I am.

And that's about it. Lemme know how you like the new template, please. :)

Peace out,
Katie

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Yesterday's News - Next Stop

In which Katie shares sad news - Wednesday, Apr. 01, 2015
In which Katie returns after a very long absence - Monday, Jun. 25, 2012
In which Katie pokes her head in and brushes some of the cobwebs away - Thursday, May. 06, 2010
In which Katie asks you to write your congressman again. - Monday, Jun. 02, 2008
In which Katie asks you to please click the link and send the message to protect the rights of artists - Wednesday, May. 21, 2008