Stream of Conscience

I can just hear you… all 2 of you.

“Oh for cryin’ out loud, not again?!?”

Yep, I’ve decided to move back to my WordPress.com blog.

What’s behind the move this time?  Yesterday I got word that the domain name scifichicks.com is up for renewal.  Sci Fi Chicks is/was a website I’d planned to work with several other people, discussing sci fi, horror, fantasy tv shows.  When I first broached the idea with the others, the interest was enormous.  However, half of the people never ponied up.  (This does not include you, Natalie!  You contributed to the site until you had to withdraw.)  In hindsight, I probably should have just started it myself then asked those that were active on the site to join in.

Oh wait, that’s the impetus, not the reason.  The reason is readership and community.  WordPress.com looks at your post categories and tags and provides links to similar posts.  A great way to build readership.  Cripes, even though my site’s been dormant since the end of May, I’ve had up to 16 visitors (per day!) in the last month!

So, I’m off to WordPress.com.  Eventually I’ll probably come back to Stream of Conscience I or III (here), but I’ll try to remain in one place for awhile—at least until 2010.

Well, I conked out of NaBloPoMo again.  Boo, me.   But that’s not to say I haven’t been blogging.

A few days ago I figured out how to bide my time until the new season of Supernatural premieres on Sep 10.  At the time, there were 81 days left, and 82 episodes.  So I decided to watch one episode a day.  Yes, I did attempt to do the same thing last year and sort of fizzled out towards the end.  With that fizzle and the NaBloPoMo fizzle, what’s to keep me from not fizzling out this time?  Not a darn thing.  The whole thing’s going to be a crap shoot.

If yer a bettin’ person, you could start a pool to see how long I’ll last.

I’ve been doing my reviews over at LiveJournal, because this blog is supposed to be classier than me gushing about a tv show aimed at 20-somethings.  Should I just go ahead and post them here?  Or, should I post them at Sci Fi Chicks in an effort to get some action going over there?  Decisions, decisions.

Oh, that reminds me, I need to finish my review of last week’s True Blood before this week’s episode airs.  Honestly?  I’m just not that into the show.

I think next month I’ll go with Ms. Pack Brat for NaBloPoMo.  That blog has a purpose, and I’m finding that when I’m spending my time here, yacking about nothing in particular, my attempts at getting my home and life in order are going unheeded.

Yeah, I know I only have 5 entries there so far.  That’s why I need to put my energies towards it.  I find that if I don’t have a reason to write about my accomplishments, there’s no reason to accomplish anything.  And I need something to keep me accountable.

At the beginning of the month, I’d started a list of things I wanted to accomplish.  They weren’t big things.  They were things like clear off the table, straighten the bookcase, clean up around the computer.  And how many of those items have I been able to check off?  That’s right.  Zip, zilch, nada.

Maybe if I start posting my plans at Ms. Pack Brat, I’ll be held accountable for completing the darned things.  Just like with the singing.  Please help keep motivated, readers!

And yes, I deleted yesterday’s entry.  Blah.

Yeah, yeah,  I missed a day of NaBloPoMo again.  I was actually working on a post yesterday (on my adorably cute little pink netbook) while waiting for an appointment.  I even found a WiFi connection, but it was a private business, and I was reluctant to piggy-back off them.  So I just wrote the post offline with the intent to transfer it later in the evening.

Yeah, that never happened.   It’s probably a good thing, because it was nothing more than an internal debate about whether to return to  the chorus rehearsal I went to last week.

My counselor was all over me about returning to the chorus.  It sort of irritated me because I’d finally gone, but apparently the fact that it wasn’t particularly enjoyable wasn’t enough.  She says I need to give it until… December.  December?!?  Good grief!  Isn’t that changing the rules in the middle of the game?

Anyway, being the irrasible person I am, I didn’t go.  Had the counselor not been so emphatic about it, I probably would have gone.  But the little kid rebel in me surfaced.  So there.  :þ   I know, real adult of me.

Oh, and on top of everything else, I have a pimple on my eyelid.  And it hurts!  And it’s making my grumpy.  And the weather is crappy. 

Yes, I did it again.  I forgot to post yesterday.  But unlike in other months, I’m not going to bail on NaBloPoMo.  (Well, I’m going to try not to bail.)

In my defense, I was here, on the blog.  But instead of posting, I was mucking around with the theme, trying to do something different with the sidebar.  Guess what.  It didn’t work.

I think I’ll just have to try making my theme from scratch.  I’ve done it before, with a theme tutorial by Urban Giraffe, although it had a couple glitches (my design, not Urban Giraffe’s, heh).  But now that I kind of know what I want, I think I’ll return to source and have a go at it again.  (And yes, I supported the guy by buying his book.)  The tutorial was written before the advent of widgets, but since it’s going to be my blog theme, I should know what I want to put in the sidebar, right?

Oh, that reminds me.  I need to add a few links in the sidebar, the Awesome Stuff.

With the unveiling of the Supernatural season 4 DVD cover, I suppose now would be as good a time as any to discuss my only #1 fictional hero, Dean Winchester.  Normally I’d say Dean’s brother Sam Winchester  is my favorite, but Sam allowed himself to be conned for two freakin’ years and the dope brought about the apocalypse.  What an idiot!

There’s much that has been written about Dean Winchester already.  I chalk that up to the character being played by Jensen Ackles.  The actor has many rabid enthusiastic fans, mainly because he’s ridiculously handsome.  Plus, it doesn’t hurt that Jensen is a terrific actor.  I won’t go so far as to say he never misses, but he is probably the most underrated actor in Hollywood right now.  (Personally, I think one day he will be as big as George Clooney.  Gosh, I hope I didn’t just jinx Jensen’s success.)

Dean Winchester is one of those guys you love to hate and hate to love.  He’s tough as nails, hard to get to know in any but the most superficial ways (which for women usually means taking off their clothes).  Yet he’s deeply passionate about his family, and saving people from things that go bump in the night.   But underneath his bravado and considerable swagger, the guy is massively damaged.   Even though he was the “good Marine” who (almost) always followed his dad’s orders, he never received his father’s gratitude, until the very end.  But even now, every once in awhile John Winchester reaches out from the grave to screw with his elder son’s head.  It adds wonderful complexity to the character.

Truthfully, in the beginning I think Dean Winchester was meant to be the hero’s “sidekick,” like Han Solo to Luke Skywalker.  (In fact, series creator Eric Kripke has used the Star Wars analogy to his show many times.)  But Jensen Ackles has brought so much depth and humor and passion to the role, Dean Winchester has become one of the most fascinating characters on television.

And if you’re not watching Supernatural, get off your ass and start!

June has  arrived.  That means it’s time to get into the blogging (regularly) habit.  NaBloPoMo’s theme for this month is “Heroes” and I’ve identified a few to write about throughout the month.

I decided to start with the Sadish Balasubramanian, the creator of this theme, along with many other very popular themes.  This is not one of his better known themes (in fact, it’s not even featured with his other free themes).  It’s called Senorita, and it’s the first theme I used consistently when I started blogging.  I still love its simplicity and beauty, even if it doesn’t match my blog’s title.

But it’s a very old theme.  I believe it was created in the dark ages prior to WordPress 2.0.  It doesn’t have any of the fancy new gadgets like widgets, tags support, threaded comments, or integrated image alignment.  (In fact, I had to go into the HTML editor to get the NaBloPoMo badge to align properly.)

But why should the age of the theme deter me?  After all, I do want to become more proficient with WordPress themes.  So, why not use this as an opportunity to delve into the WordPress codex and try tweaking the theme to bring it up do date?

Yeah!  That’s what I’m going to attempt do.

Those of you who know/follow me, know I am a fickle beast.  I started blogging 3-4 years ago.  Or maybe it was like 5 years ago.  I don’t really know when I started because I’d write for awhile, decide it wasn’t perfect, delete it and start again.  Along the way I lost some really good posts.  Finally in October 2006, I began again and stayed with it.  Stayed with it in that I didn’t delete the blog.  I just haven’t blogged consistently.

Then, just when it looked like I was getting some readers, I moved over to WordPress.com.  I don’t really remember why.  Perhaps it was just to have the experience.  Although I do like it because it has a bit of a community.  I mean, the stats showed I actually had visitors—one day up to 100!  But there’s some flexibility that’s lacking.  And besides, part of the reason I’m blogging is to find (or perhaps create) the ultimate theme.  (Strong words for someone who doesn’t know PHP and has trouble with CSS.)  WordPress.com doesn’t give me that opportunity.  So here I am, back on a stand-alone WordPress blog, but now with a shiny new domain name!

I decided now is as good a time as any to start anew.  NaBloPoMo for June is coming up, and I’m going to try once again to participate.  [I was also going to talk a little bit about the theme I'm using, but I think I'll save that for tomorrow.]  Wish me luck I don’t forget to blog every day!