i always feel kind of sneaky and vaguely guilty when i read the blog of someone i know.

now rationally, i’m fully aware that if a person doesn’t want their thoughts to be public knowledge, they wouldn’t post them to the world wide web. at least, if they’re savvy enough to have their own website, they ought to know that is rule number one. but for some reason, i feel as if i’m snooping. or reading their diary.

the diary that they left open on the middle of the table in starbucks.

at any rate, a post on my friend yvonne’s blog has inspired me to write this:

eight ways that i know my husband loves me.

1. he takes care of me when i do something stupid to injure myself (taping a broken toe, washing a detached fingernail, bandaging cuts, catching me when i pass out).
2. he sings silly lyrics to songs, and laughs when i come up with a good one.
3. he lets me sleep as late as i want on the weekends.
4. he sends me sweet little text messages on my phone.
5. when his phone died and he lost all his information, he was more upset about losing our text messages back and forth than all his phone numbers and calendar data.
6. he tells me stories about the characters and images he sees in my paintings.
7. he encourages me in all of my five hundred different creative pursuits.
8. he hasn’t written a song about me.

looks like it worked to send a post from my cell phone. i did that while on the bus this morning.

however, the length of that post is about the size limit that i can do from my phone. i probably could have added three or four more words before it cut me off.

at least it will force me to abbreviate my thoughts into little packages of clarity.

actually i got that idea from arushi, who wrote a stunning story, bridget-jones style, in short prose on her cell phone. she ought to write more, and publish them.

apparently it is incredibly simple to publish to my blog from via email. now, i wonder if links and photos will work as well?

let’s try it.

here is a photo…

and here is a link: the mars orbiter [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4797613] lifted off this morning.

i am testing out new features (well, new to me) of this blog. i can publish posts from email; that’s what i’m trying to do here. next up: publishing via my phone — mobile bloggging, or moblogging.

changed the way my site looks again… i don’t know why i do this. apparently i get easily bored. what do you think? the fancy top bit is a detail from one of my paintings, called “land of counterpane.”

okay, so i installed a hit counter on my site yesterday, and it’s pretty cool in that it allows me to see where my hits are coming from (the page the person was on before they came to my site). this is useful because it lets me see how i’m coming up in search engines and also where i might be linked from.

most of my hits seem to be coming from folks using Google’s image search. and, for god’s sake, THIS is the image that’s been looked at most.

i don’t get it! what’s the deal?? how are people finding this? i mean, we’re CUTE and all, but it’s not like either of us is naked!

anyway, the wackiest part is, WAY more people visit my site than i ever thought. i’ve had hits from spain, belgium, iran, germany, uruguay, argentina, china, singapore, and more. this is kind of freaking me out.

So do you like the new look? I needed a change.

Actually it was a spur of the minute decision.

I’m still wanting to customize it more, which I’ll do this week or weekend. Ain’t CSS great?!

Things change fast in the world of the Web. And in light of that, I’m trying out a service called blogger.com to keep track of my weblog. It promises to easily allow me to post, AND to allow you to leave comments and responses. Of course, that assumes that anyone actually would USE interactivity on my blog! Hehe. Guess we’ll see what happens!

I’m going to customize it when I have time, but for now this just uses a standard template.

I am updating my website, and drastically overhauling the design. I’m using kind of the same basic design as I use on this page. I really like the way this page is set up and the way it works in a technical sense. I am very proud of the CSS I wrote for it. The rest of my website will soon be fully CSS enabled. Like you care, I know!

Anyway, many things will change. I hope to have it complete this week, then on to the next project, which is either going to be A) finishing that painting on the easel in the garage, B) working on a DVD project (maybe Christmas, maybe a slideshow, maybe a music video), or C) starting writing on the next book. I need to do “C,” but probably will opt for A initially, then B later on.

I’m having trouble typing tonight because I paper-cut my left index finger tip, or rather, I foil-cut it trying to get the foil lid off a tub of blue cheese crumbles. I’m typo-ing every other word.

Last night I was having a series of weird dreams with very vivid and drastic imagery. I think that John and Melanie Lanning were in it (we spent the evening with them last night). It involved large semi trucks on fire, burning tires, tornadoes, cats, basements, houses I suddenly didn’t recognize, and lots of other strange things that unnerved me.

I’ve been trying to ignore the news for the past few days, so I don’t know what stupid things that our leaders have done or what crazy ways the media is reporting it (or not). Tomorrow, it’s back to the routine.

Hmmm… Beginning a web log here (or “blog” as the kids call it). I’m not quite sure why, because I don’t know why anyone would be interested in reading about the life of a perfect stranger.

Wait, I guess that it’s kind of like Reality Television. Maybe perfect strangers WILL be reading this. Doc put it to me like this: “Imagine how interesting it would be to read someone’s personal journal from 600 years ago. Well, 600 years from now, someone might find yours just as interesting!” When you put it that way, maybe it will be worthwhile.