It’s another gimmicky layout, a side-scrolling one. I’ve wanted to design one for a while now. Don’t know how long it’ll stay up though, I’ll probably get tired of it and redo it later.

I still don’t know if I like how I did the letters either. I keep messing with that… Overall, not as jazzed as I was when I put up the previous two layouts.

Also, why the heck did Internet Explorer mangle my previous layout so horribly? And why did I not know this until almost a year after I uploaded it? I thought IE was supposed to follow web standards by now. Augh! Even with the current layout, IE doesn’t like how I’m displaying my, uh, sidebar. (Firefox, Chrome, and Opera all show both layouts just fine…)

2. What do you think of public option for health care?
Ideally, I support it. But I do see the other side of it: where would the money come from? As it is we overspend in the government without it!

3. Should health insurance be mandatory? If so, should it be subsidized for the poor?
I guess I agree with the first question, even though it means I have to spend my money. As for the second question, I really do believe that. Although I fall back on my answer to the previous question.

4. Do you think the health care industry and pharma make too much money or not enough?
I definitely think they make too much money. Mostly the companies who make medicine, less so for doctors and nurses and hospitals.

5. Would you leave the country if it meant that you would have no job but was assured health care?
No, because I love America and the First Amendment, and I don’t really feel the need to have health care for myself, because I don’t care to spend thousands of dollars to save my health or my life. If something serious (and seriously expensive) came up, I would just die. (Of course, I say that now…)

questions from Friday Five

1. What is your favorite drink of all time? Does it hold a special memory to you or is it just because it tastes good?
I don’t think I could pick a favorite of all time, because my favorite changes from time to time. I remember when it was lemonade, cranberry juice, root beer (specifically A&W or Mug, not any other), sarsaparilla (omigosh love ya, Virgina City, and Knott’s!)… But ocha (aka green tea) is a good failsafe, I’ve been drinking that for years.

2. Tea or coffee or hot cocoa?
I guess I already answered this in the previous question, but I can stand to write more. *grin* I’m not a big fan of coffee. I don’t like the bitterness, but my mom has had me taste some really good coffee (yes, I do refer to McDonald’s here, points to McD’s!) and if I really need a caffeine boost I’m willing to drink it. With creams and sugars, of course.

Hot cocoa, I’ve mostly had the Nestle instant variety. Lately I don’t like how sweet it is, and I keep mixing in Ghiradelli’s cocoa powder or Hershey’s cocoa powder. But in general if I’m out somewhere and need a hot drink this is my first option. (Unless this place offers green tea, then of course I choose that.)

As for tea… I’ve tried peach-flavored black tea (my first non-green tea) and really didn’t like it; orange tea, thought it was a bit too sweet but it was drinkable; and black tea, not as bad as the peach-flavored tea would have me think, it was much more like green tea than I expected. I’ve never had sweet tea, but as a kid I drank Lipton’s instant iced tea.

My mom served us kids the iced tea for our ochazuke (or chachagohan, for a more cutesy, kiddy term ^_^), but eventually we asked her for the “hot tea” that we thought tasted better: genmaicha. She told us if we liked it better then she would make it for us, even if it did take longer to make than the “instant tea.”

Thus, the tea of my childhood became genmai cha. This is considered a poor variety of green tea, though. Right now I like bancha, a better variety, but still not the best. I’ve had matcha and sencha, but they’re more expensive than bancha.

3. Best summer time drink?
Cold ocha, or for a special treat, Ito En’s Oi Ocha! ^_^-b

4. Worst soda brand ever?
:o I don’t know that I can come up with an answer for that. I definitely won’t drink Mountain Dew though. And I prefer Coke to Pepsi, although that is not saying that I like Coke. My favorite soda is Dr. Pepper, or Dr. Pepper Cherry.

5. Water: flavored, bottled, carbonated, or regular old tap?
None of the above? I think that’s just semantics though. I don’t like to drink water that comes in those little bottles at the grocery market, since it’s so bad for the environment, but I’m okay with Sparklett’s. (Arrowhead has a weird taste…) I don’t like the taste of tap water, because I’m a spoiled urbanized child, used to filtered water. And that is what my choice is.

questions from Friday Five

In the beginning I got lost with all the characters being introduced. The first time I tried reading, I quite about 50 pages in. This time, I sat down with what I thought was an excess of index cards for use to keep track of all the characters, any descriptions, major plot points. I ended up using all but a couple cards by the end of the book.

Related to the mass number of characters, I don’t even know what the point was for their being in the story. The book jumped around to different plots, different characters, different settings. For the most part it made sense, here’s a section about war, here’s a section concerning the civilians. But other than that, I really don’t know why I needed to know so much about, for example, the guy who was Natalia’s cousin/crush-at-first and Nikolai’s best friend-at-first. Or Natalia and Nikolai’s older sister.

I didn’t care for the war parts either. They just seemed to drag on, and that so much more could have been accomplished with much fewer words. But maybe the war parts were meant to be a big part of the story. Like how some characters chickened out in battle (and then what? nothing happens because of it? the character doesn’t learn much from it?), some lost body parts, some were heroic. Woop de do.

I did read an abridged version, though. (Over 650 pages is abridged? hah!) Maybe some important stuff was cut out? Or was it even more pointless goings-on of characters that weren’t really important?

I don’t know. It might have helped my understanding if I’d had someone tell me what I was supposed to get out of it. That probably helps for a lot of important classic literature.

At the end of the book, I just thought, so that’s it? What was the book about? What was I supposed to have gained from it? Was it the characters that Leo Tolstoy wanted to focus on? I couldn’t stand the characters! I thought they were stupid, blathering idiots, and I didn’t care one whit for any of them at the end of the book. Pierre might have been the most likeable character for me. I don’t know.

This entry is exactly like War and Peace. I cut out expanding on some points (partly for time, mostly because I don’t care), the reader doesn’t really care about anything in this, and what exactly have you learned from reading it? Not much, except that maybe War (and Peace, to a lesser extent) didn’t tickle my fancy.

My mom grew up during the 60s and 70s, seemingly the golden age of musical creativity. Motown, The Beatles, you name it, practically every musical act was or had a hit. I don’t remember who were her favorites as a kid, but now she’s a fan of Janis Ian (first and foremost!) and other female folk artists. She also enjoys doo-wop and jazz, and my brother has turned her on to Celtic Woman.

My journey through music is chronicled on my personal site, and although it hasn’t been updated for over a year, and I’ll likely add to it after this entry is done, there isn’t much that’s new. Right now the top five musical artists on my Last.fm profile are The Cardigans, Maria Mena, The Divine Comedy, Lisa Loeb, and the Submarines. Lately I’ve also been listening to Muse (thanks to a certain artist) and to movie soundtracks (yay, Neil Gaiman!).

Mum once told me that she rarely ever likes every single song on an album. No matter how much she likes the artist, there is always at least one song that she won’t listen to. (So when she says that she thinks Vanessa Carlton’s Be Not Nobody album is the best she’s ever heard, and there is not one bad song on it, this is very high praise, coming from her.) Basically, she is picky with her music.

When I told her that I usually like all the music I buy, she thought I was lucky. I thought, although I didn’t tell her, that maybe it just meant my standards weren’t as high. Normally it takes me a couple listens to actually hear the music, and not just a wall of mindless sound. I didn’t know whether I was readjusting my brain to accept the music, lowering my standards, or what. (When I hear a tune I like, I immediately know I like it, no adjustment period or subsequent listens required.)

By this point I began to think that either my taste in music really sucked compared to my mom’s and that I had a tin ear, or that my tastes differed from hers.

In regards to my top five, my mom has had positive comments about each of them (except for Lisa Loeb, but she never complained, which is pretty good). The Cardigans, she likes the bassoon they used in songs. Maria Mena, she sings like Janis Ian. (Which I thought was, whoa! my mom is comparing Maria to her music idol! But she does think Maria Mena needs work in the songwriting department. Sigh.) The Divine Comedy, he uses cornet instead of trumpet, being British and all. (My mom’s instrument of choice is the cornet.) And he reminds her of Jim Morrison. (Although I don’t know if that’s positive or just neutral commentary.) The Submarines, she thinks the female singer sounds similar to Nina Persson, of The Cardigans. She also thinks they’ve got a great sound.

With all that said and done, I thought I was pretty safe in loading up my playlist for a long drive with The Divine Comedy, The Cardigans, and Maria Mena. (They’re in my top three for a reason!) After we’d listened to Casanova, Absent Friends, Regeneration, and Super Extra Gravity, however, my mom complained about my music selection and wanted to put on Janis Ian, saying, “Can’t we listen to something more tuneful?”

This really stung, because to her the tune is the be all and end all of music. She’s commented about modern classical music, telling me there’s a trend now where music written with a recognizable tune is perceived as bad and that she doesn’t understand that philosophy at all!

When she first started reciting her mantra of “no tune, no music,” I agreed with her. It made so much sense as to why I liked songs from the ’60s, all those Motown songs, more so than contemporary pop played on the radio, which sounded like mindless noise to my ears.

Now, although I agree that there’s truth to Mum’s mantra, I also think that a song doesn’t necessarily need a recognizable tune to be listenable.

Recently, I saw this commercial on tv. I don’t remember what product it was selling, but it had a retro ’50s theme to it. At first I couldn’t tell what made it so ’50s, and not just a kitschy, modern take. Then it hit me. There was a jingle! This jingle had a recognizable tune! Is that what my mother has been going on about all along? This outdated, old relic of music composition?

I had to wonder, if I thought this catchy, tuneful piece of music was old, then what did I think of modern music? Not much music nowadays is so melodic as in the ’50s and ’60s, but I don’t consider that a drawback. On the contrary, of the modern music that I do like, despite it not having Mum’s oh-so-necessary recognizable tune, I find it interesting, something new and different, something that can keep my attention.

For example, I think Daughter Darling, Natalie Walker, and Starsailor are great musical artists. I absolutely love their music, how atmospheric and emotive they are. Mum probably thinks they’re tuneless and boring, and for the most part I can’t hum their songs from memory (ah hah! no recognizable tune!), and yet I enjoy the thoughts and feelings their music evokes in me.

So I had to reconsider my view of music. Just because there’s no tune to identify the song by doesn’t mean that there’s no merit to the song. Music has either advanced and progressed beyond tunes and they’re experimenting with music with no obvious structure, or, according to Mum, all the good music has been written so there are no ideas anymore and now everyone is not even trying and they’re just writing crap. I’ve decided to go with the former, and just enjoy what I enjoy!

I think it was once a month; get the list at the beginning of the month, turn it in at the end. The reward was that the kids who’d read the most got prizes. The kid in first place got two books, second place got one book, and third place got something that is not sticking in my memory because it obviously wasn’t a good prize. I think other kids also got a cheap bookmark for participating, can’t really remember.

I easily, easily got in the top three every time this event occurred. If I really put my mind to it, I would get first place. Most of the time I went my own pace though.

I felt guilty about getting rewarded for something I’d be doing whether this event happened or not. Sometimes I even wondered why I should enter at all, or why I should be truthful and list every single book I read. I mean, wasn’t this event more about encouraging kids to read? I didn’t need encouragement! In fact, my mom confiscated my bedside lamp once because I stayed up too late reading.

I did turn in the lists though, every time. Sometimes I would skip listing the “baby” books (as I deemed them), but I always turned in my lists. My teachers would have thought it was odd if I didn’t. >_> It seemed to make my teachers and the librarian happy, too, to see a kid reading so voraciously.

And yes, I did regularly get free books that I read and usually wrote down on the next month’s reading list. I remember a few of them, but that’s for another entry, if I ever get around to writing it up.

Back to the Borders challenge. It’s for kids who are 12 years old or younger. The reading list needs to be signed by a parent or guardian and turned in to a Borders store by August 26. (What, no page count requirement? *grin*)

I think it’s great that Borders is doing this, it eases up a bit on my being sore at them. (Messed up coupons, botched up return, closing my local Borders Express, all that fun stuff.) Still won’t go into their store any time soon. (Money woes, no funds for books. *cries*)

But now, since I have the time, I decided to use the rose-scented Herbal Essence conditioner that I’ve had since high school. Despite its age, it works well!

This change of heart was brought about by a Garnier Fructis coupon, over a year ago. I needed more shampoo, and Target had this shampoo for cheap! I bought it, liked the softening effect it had on my hair, but still preferred how clean my hair was after using Herbal Essence’s clarifying shampoo. (Don’t worry, my hair is coarse, it could take shampoo stripping it of everything it’s got.)

So I stuck with Herbal Essence, but after I graduated I came back home and still had the Garnier Fructis shampoo left over. I’d switch back and forth between the two, slowly using up the Garnier Fructis shampoo. Being in the mode of use up products sitting around, I decided to use my old Herbal Essence conditioner in that ancient soft pink, opaque bottle. Voila! Amazingly soft and silky hair, just like in all the hair commercials! (Um, commercials selling hair-related products, not selling hair.)

But then another dilemma popped up. My hair was now ever so smooth and shiny, but I had, over the years, grown used to it being poufy and slightly frizzy! I had to adjust to liking my hair even in its new calm and flat form, which I eventually did, accepting that looking like others’ standard of beauty was not a bad thing.

Now I just need to grow my hair longer and buy rollers, and I will be a complete girly girl!

I’ve had ideas of stuff to write about, but I never managed to write a whole entry. I feel like that’s reflective of my life currently, that I have ideas and maybe I start things, but I never really do anything. I won’t go into that here, either.

Just wanted to say … I miss my blog, and I don’t want it to die yet. (Although based on search engine statistics and the amount of spam I’m getting [which is close to none], other people seem to think my blog is dead.)

Hmm, something interesting to say, I feel this entry is lacking. (In a lot of things…) I’m trying to read War and Peace again! Last time I tried was 2005 maybe? At least I got to the war part of the book this time.

I don’t even remember why I chose XHTML over HTML. Possibly I thought it was the wave of the future. Or maybe I thought all the cool kids used it. (Not really. :))

I guess I started using XHTML about five and a half years ago (“validation”). I didn’t even know what it really was! I still don’t. People commented on Jeffrey’s blog about the extensibility of XHTML, and while I’ve heard the term before, I never knew exactly what that meant, and I still don’t.

I know a little about XML; I had to do a small XML project for school and I thought it was nifty. (Although in my major it was more about JDF files, or job description flows? Something like that. A file that would travel with printing jobs and would contain information about how to print said job.) But beyond that I never got into XML and this extensibility gig. I didn’t understand how XML changed or could even make a difference with HTML.

Because of that, I’ve come to the conclusion that I really shouldn’t keep up with something that I’m not using to its fullest potential (and I should definitely take the mention of it off my resume o_o). All the work that I’ll have to put into removing trailing slashes from every webpage I wrote (including inserting some code into WordPress headers to strip the slashes out) is not a good enough reason for me to keep using XHTML.

I’ll get right on that. After I finish moving all my protected blog entries to a private blog, after I retag and recategorize all the remaining entries, after I tag all my Livejournal entries, after I tag all my dreams, yup. (Some projects that I’ve been working on for ever.) At least I’ll have a few years before HTML5 becomes a reality and I have to buckle down to transition to that.

2. Do you record your dreams in your blog or a journal?
Already answered. :3 Yes, I’ve been writing down dreams since the mid 90s; I thought I had a few really interesting dreams and considered turning them into stories. That never happened though. Mid to late 90s I physically wrote them down in a notebook, then I transferred over to an online log in 2002 or so.

3. Do you think dreams are messages our bodies are trying to tell us? If so, are you real big on trying to interpret all the details?
I believe some dreams can be messages, but I don’t interpret every single dream I have, much less every little thing that happens in a dream. I don’t think dreams are literal, or strictly symbolic. Mostly I pay attention to the feelings in dreams, and any patterns that come up over time.

4. Do you remember your first nightmare?
The earliest nightmare I can remember having is recorded in my dreamlog, but I don’t know if that was my first nightmare.

5. Have you ever had a recurring dream? If you did, what was it and what do you think it meant?
I don’t think I have recurring dreams in that the same exact thing happens. I’ll have dreams where I think, ‘This happened before’ or ‘I saw this before,’ but when I wake up I can’t remember the dream (or real life experience) that made me think that. I know I dream about malls a lot (hee), and airplanes crashing, but I’ve never dreamed the same exact dream.