Home sweet home

Welcome to the new digs! Blue Tea is now hosted on my own space at http://deeplyblue.com/bluetea. Kindly update any links you may have — and thanks for sticking around while I aestivated.

I thought with the move I would be switching to WordPress or another platform, but as I tried them out I noticed I was harboring resentment for them not working like Blogger, and finally realized that it was because I actually wanted to keep using Blogger. Rather, I wanted to keep using the old style Blogger, before they updated it so you could hardly customize anything any more. I like the look I have, so I'm sticking with it.

So the platform's not changing, but a few other things are. For one, the formatting and timing of the posts: they'll be shorter and much more frequent. The links are also getting a bit of a shakeup, mostly some new additions in new categories (check out the new "Museums & Collections" section after "Blogs"). Also, you may have noticed I am now blogging under my real name. No one could pronounce "bluewyvern" anyway.

Again, thanks for your support and interest during my recent dry spell. I wasn't dead, just resting my eyes. Time to get moving now.

Weird initiatives

Last night I dreamed that in the chaos following a BSG-esque national emergency, Bush was forced to resume the presidency of the United States. In a conference he was reading out a speech that included the line "I fully support wired initiatives," but he hesitated and stumbled over the unfamiliar word, pronouncing it "weird." An aide had to look over his shoulder and correct him as he mumbled about being tripped up. Rahm Emanuel spoke up then and apologized, explaining that the speech had been written for Obama — they never would have put those funny words in Bush's mouth.

Yogic physics

I am a great lover of serenity and silence, but there are times when I long to talk back to my yoga instructor.

Now, I hate all the New Agey trappings that the trendy modern brand of hipster yoga is cloaked in, so there are plenty of times during a typical practice where I must simply shut my eyes and tune the chatter out. For me yoga is no more than an effective and agreeable physical exercise, and I would gladly excise the vague mystical overtones and pseudotherapeutic insights that are usually served along with my sixty minutes of physical conditioning. Sometimes it gets to me.

Last week, as we were being goaded to assume a crazy pose where you tip your head back and lose your balance, the instructor embarked on a miniature sermon about fear and letting go: "It's okay if you lose your balance, it's okay if you fall. As children, we weren't afraid to fall. We did it all the time, we loved it. As we got older, something changed, and we became afraid of looking foolish, afraid of losing control. Falling became a shame, an embarrassment. Remember how it used to be when you were a child. Let yourself feel again what it's like not to have that fear."

I had a very strong urge to open my mouth and respond.

"WE HAD MUCH LOWER CENTERS OF GRAVITY THEN!"

Was not eaten by bear

And here's the bear to prove it.

Iris at the mouth of Wolverine Creek.

Her brother didn't eat me, either. There was plenty of salmon instead.

Yukon enjoying a pink salmon.

The scenery was spectacular.

Fall colors along Resurrection Pass Trail.

A mountain vista near Portage Glacier.

A front-row seat to Prince William Sound.

So was the local color.

The saloon-styled facade of the Diamond M Ranch. And yes, that's a red British double-decker bus in the back.

The crowded Whittier harbor.

Unexpectedly, a perfect 50's-style ice cream parlor in Sterling.

Especially the graveyards.

The Russian Orthodox church in Ninilchik, with its picturesque picket fence and graveyard.

A jungle of graves.

Athabascan spirit houses in the graveyard of another Russian Orthodox church in Eklutna.

The wildlife was abundant.

A kittiwake on the shore at Whittier.

Sea otters at the end of the rainbow.

A juvenile bald eagle.

Nice flora, too.

One of the few wildflowers still blooming at the end of the season.

Still Life With Mushroom.

Another firey floral find.

An ice age was ending.

Exit Glacier, steadily receding.

The path to romantic, windswept Byron Glacier.

Bits of Blackstone Glacier falling off into the sea.

I saw everything I said I wanted to see -- whales (smooth white belugas spotted from an airplane at the mouth of Beluga River), glaciers (see above!), mountains (everywhere), salmon (on my plate and in my luggage as well as in the claws of bears) and bears (see above. Also, a young black bear that was not photographed, frightened my traveling companion, and thrilled me). I also met loads of interesting people: there was the forestry services worker and his buddy who challenged us to pool; the independent-minded woman at Indian Mine who queried us on our politics and shared her views on God, family, Sarah Palin, antibiotics and the Federal Reserve; the circle of sport fishermen and hunters who told riveting adventure stories around the campfire; the Russian Old Believer who cooked us dinner, poured us tea, put us up and shared her world; the gregarious, salty fisher captain and his engineer who bought us drinks and told us about a harrowing life at sea; and plenty more. And there was all the overwhelming nature and wildlife. Moose, hawks, ducks, eagles, sea lions, seals (including the curious one that followed my kayak for some time, to my delight), porpoises (including the one that spooked the seal and finally scared him off), otters, red squirrels, foxes, jellyfish, gulls, geese, swans, cormorants, magpies, and ravens.

It was a good trip. Maybe I'll tell you about it sometime.

Alaska ho!

Last year I won free airline tickets in a raffle at the firm's Christmas party, so today Ladysusan and I are off to Alaska for two weeks in search of breaching whales, melting glaciers, snowcapped mountains, tasty salmon, and friendly bears. Thanks to the magic of scheduling, posting will continue uninterrupted in my absence.

In the event that you see two more posts published and then nothing, feel free to assume I was eaten. Otherwise, I'll be back in two weeks...with pictures!

Ow.

I have a cramp in my right pinky finger.

Now what kind of a complaint is that? Who's going to take me seriously?

But it hurts. Frequently. That's my ENTER key finger! It's also the one I use for sticking up in the air when I drink tea. And pressing ENTER and drinking tea are two things I do a lot. (Addendum: it seems that I also stick that finger up when pressing any key that is not ENTER. I do that a WHOLE lot.)

Apparently that's just too much for one small digit to bear.

Ow.

Arte y pico award

A ways back, Capitán Langstrump of the excellent Pildoras Crumelus stopped by to graciously bestow the Arte y pico award, from the blog of the same name, on Blue Tea. My silence on the point up to now was not an indication of refusal, but more like arriving a little late to the acceptance ceremony. So start the music, here I am (huff, puff).





The award is passed from blogger to blogger and honors blogs for "dedication, creativity, community, joy, and above all, art". With those criteria in mind, here are my choices for the next five honorees:

Florizelle for Le Divan Fumoir Bohémien

John Coulthart for { feuilleton }

Tellurian for hanuman

Xenmate for a near life experience

Marion for Mapping the Marvellous

For those who wish to accept the award, here are the rules:

1. You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributes to the blogging community, no matter what language.
2. Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his/her blog to be visited by everyone.
3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her/him the award itself.
4. The Award winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of “Arte Y Pico” blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.
5. To show these conditions.

My thanks to Capitán Langstrump for the honor. I hope you'll find something of interest among my choices for the next round -- which is the point of the whole thing, after all.

Seven things

I've been tagged by Katkmeanders for the Seven Things meme, with the following rules:

1) Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
2) Share 7 facts about yourself.
3) Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
4) Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

I'm incredibly late, but let's see what I can do. It shouldn't be that hard to find seven new things to tell you, since I'm not exactly chatty about my life...

1. My blood type is B-. If it were B+, not only would I have a larger potential donor pool, but it would make a great personal motto, too.

2. All my computers are named after deities. I have three: the old laptop is "Muse", the retired tv computer is "Osiris", and the current desktop is "Ishtar".

3. My wireless networks are named after divine abodes. At the old apartment it was "Parnassus", and at the new one it's "Asgard".

4. What's that fear called where you're afraid peanut butter will stick to the roof of your mouth? I have that.

5. It's so hard to find good, quality, art calendars (if you know this blog you know what I like) that I've found myself starting reruns from past years. Last year my calendars were the Spirit of Japan calendar (a well-chosen gift from poshevanescence...I miss the calendar already), and the Edward Gorey Mystery calendar, which was my second Gorey calendar in a row. This year I opted for the Among Trees calendar, which is the same one I had four or five years ago -- reruns! There are new photos, but some are the same, like January. Pomegranate consistently has lovely stuff, but I'm quickly exhausting their catalog of themes; Calendars.com has nothing and infuriates me with its refusal to honor unsubscribe requests (beware!). Where am I going to continue to get new, fresh, beautiful calendars year after year?

6. I got fuzzy pink bunny slippers for Christmas. Though they're a bit ludicrous for my tastes, I've always secretly wanted a pair. (I'm wearing them right now.)

7. One of these facts is a lie.

There. That was silly, but I can't refuse a meme.

I'm afraid I will have to refuse to tag this time, though. I'm not even sure I could find seven people who do memes at all, especially if I give a break to my usual few whom I usually bug whenever I get a meme. So this is one of those end-of-the-line "take it who will" tags. So take it who will!

Thank you for the tag, KatK! Now to something more substantial...

Thinking Blogger Award

Loyal reader Princess Haiku has honored Blue Tea with a Thinking Blogger Award, which is passed on by meme and bestowed by recipients on blogs thought to cultivate and inspire thought.





As a purveyor of minigames and pretty pictures, I think I'm more likely to make you go "Ooh" and "Ahh" than "Hmm", but I am flattered all the same, and I can certainly think of five more worthy honorees to pass it along to. So here, then, are the Five Blogs that Make Me Think.

1. Dream Tree. A thoughtful and poetic blog about fantastic, dreamlike art -- my kind of aesthetic -- and other ephemera. Regular features include a Science News roundup, and the exquisite Wunderkammer series of articles showcasing the origins and history of rare and unusual objects and artifacts.

2. Damn Interesting. Mini history lessons and briefings on strange, surprising, little-known events and phenomena from times past. Perfectly titled.

3. The Huge Entity. Essays and meditations on philosophy, consciousness, history, technology, religion, and other "excruciatingly large things". Wide-ranging and far-reaching.

4. Next Nature. A link blog highlighting trends, products, projects, research, discoveries, and arts that challenge and redefine the boundaries between human and nature.

5. Apothecary's Drawer. An eclectic blog exploring diverse topics in arts, science, and culture, with brief, link-riddled posts that manage to be both fascinating and informative.

I don't expect all of the above to participate, but if you recipients do wish to acknowledge the award and nominate others, here are the rules as given by the originator:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award'.

Most of these honorees are culled from the "Science, Tech, Humanities, Culture" group in my blogroll, which is where I keep most of the Heavy Thinkers, and to which I direct you if you would like to discover more delightful blogs in this vein.

Now, back to the pretty pictures.

Notice

While vacationing in Nevada, I hereby declare this Amuse Yourself by Exploring My Blogroll Week. Plenty to see there.

If you're just interested in bits and pieces of quick entertainment, I would especially recommend the Art, Design, Sketchblogs, Photoblogs, Online Games, and Stuff categories under "Blogs", Other under "Comics", Flash/Web Art under "Animation/Short Films", and Blank of the Day under "Resources".

If you want to get into something, try any of the Personal; Science, Culture; Humor, Strange; Art History; or Literary blogs; any of the comic strips or series; or one of the animation series.

Or anything else in my links, really.

Have fun!

Five habits

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Blue Tea's very first meme. Yes, I have finally been tagged, by Patrick of Le Web...et le reste.

List five weird habits you have. Tag five.

1. I begin every morning with a fairly regimented breakfast ceremony, with a bowl of cereal, tea with milk, a glass of orange juice (with added calcium), a glass of water, and a multivitamin. I lay out the dishes on the table in the same arrangement every day and prepare and consume everything in the same order: cereal, juice with vitamin, tea, water. I keep three cereals in the cabinet, always Multigrain Cheerios and then two other rotating varieties. My tea I always drink in an unusual mug shaped like a gargoyle, which I really should post a picture of someday. I only use the gargoyle mug in the morning -- when I have tea later in the day I select a different vessel.

2. I take baths, always at night, and only shower when really pressed for time or when no bathtub is available.

3. I have a very strong aversion to spoilers for movies, tv shows, books, etc., and go to great lengths to avoid them. Even if it's not something I particularly care about. I'm really into the artistic integrity of a work.

4. I always finish books once I start them. There was one time in recent memory where I didn't -- a book of short stories, The Dragon Path by Kenneth Morris -- and even then I suffered through far longer than I should have. (If you've read one Kenneth Morris story, you've read them all.)

5. I screen phone calls. Always.

Take it away: LadySusan, Maktaaq, Lynn, Michael, and PoshRockerBoy.

Does this header make me look fat?

It was pointed out to me once that "full-bodied" in the tagline could be taken as suggestive of my personal incorporation rather than as a mere playful riff on the tea taster's descriptive vocabulary. I'm curious, did anyone else understand it that way?

Damn. Missed my hundredth post.

At least now I'm saved the trouble of trying to do something momentous.

Happy hundred and second post, Blue Tea!

Livejournalers...

Did you know that Blue Tea, like all Blogspot blogs, has a Livejournal feed? I mention it just in case you didn't know you could be reading me from the comfort of your very own friends page...

(And killing my stats by not visiting any more, but that's okay.)

This has been a public self service announcement by bluewyvern.

Online game entries updated

By far the most popular entries on this blog are my series of links to online adventure games. They -- particularly the ones that mention "Myst" or "Samorost" -- bring in most of the search-engine traffic, and they've probably proved more useful to the internet population at large than anything else I've banged out on my little keyboard and slapped up here.

So I have done a couple of things. One, I have gone back and edited all of the posts to bring them up to current standards: all the games now include a screencap and a link to a walkthrough. I've also updated a few links where I found a better walkthrough or game host, and made sure that all the links opened in new windows. All links to Nordinho pages have been updated.

Two, I have added a new section to the sidebar, "Archive Series: Online Adventure Games," where I will add links to each new entry as I create it. If Blogger only allowed categories, I could do it that way, alas...but I wanted some way of keeping all these links together, so there it is.

Now that all the old business has been taken care of, I can get on with the writing of new posts. The next installation in the series will be Interactive Eye Candy, a very fun one...

Blue Tea: Now with more culture!

My blog categories clearly needed an overhaul. I had a ridiculously large number of very different kinds of blogs lumped together under "Personal" -- including some group blogs and some where the lives of the posters were essentially never mentioned. Well, that has been remedied with the addition of a new "Culture" category, featuring some emigrants from "Personal" as well as some all-new entries. As a general rule, I included in this category blogs which featured more writing than linking, and concerned themselves with broader issues, like news, trends, politics, and "kids these days", more than personal events. It's of course all very fluid. I am grouped together with "culture" blogs in more than one blogroll, though I don't fit these guidelines -- I'm certainly more linking than writing, for one. But I'm not really sure if I consider this a link blog, either. To me, real link blogs are Bibi's Box or Boing Boing (I file them under the name "Stuff"), beside which I pale in comparison.

I also decided that a couple of blogs, like No Milk Please and Citizen of the Month, were clearly humor blogs that had no business hobnobbing with the personals; they have been moved into "Humor, Strange" where they belong (making the group collectively a little more humorous and a little less strange).

The "Tea" category has had to be renamed to "Tea, Coffee" to accommodate Café Metaphoric, my first all-coffee blog, which was too interesting to exclude.

There are still some standouts that defy easy categorization, but I think overall everything is much better aligned now. As always, I hope that this little bit of blogroll news promts you to further exploration. Have fun.

Strange network problems

have kept me away for three or four horrible days. Hopefully resolved.

The measure of a blog

Based on AOL's recent purchase of Weblogs Inc. ($25-$40 million), some people are attempting to calculate the worth of any given blog based on Technorati stats.

Thus, by some accounts:

My blog is worth $10,161.72.
How much is your blog worth?

Via This Blog Will Be Deleted By Tomorrow.

Alternatively, instead of being turned into dollars, my blog can be rendered as a beautiful plant (click to enlarge):





OrganicHTML offers little in the way of introduction or explanation, but apparently it renders different aspects of a webpage as various plant parts, incorporating the colors of the page design. I wish I knew what some of the things were, like the little spinning flower stalks, but I'm guessing that the abundant flowering branches represent outgoing links, with which this blog is pretty well endowed.

For comparison, my Blurty, which is trying to crawl away:





And my poor little website, which apparently died.





Via scribblingwoman.

The Underside Gallery

Have you been all the way down?

More content will likely be added in the near future...

Newish

Some things of note... I've added several new animation links, particularly some new series and entries in the Flash/Web Art category, that are well worth checking out. There are a couple of new blogs, also. I would especially like to draw your attention to BibliOdyssey, a delightful blog I've just discovered that explores old books, etchings, lithographs, and that sort of thing. Lots of great images.

Finally, I've added a new "Reading" category to the sidebar, which I figured was more sophisticated than the summary of media I'd consumed that used to follow my chattier blog entries.

Browse, and enjoy.

Sorting

If everything in my sidebar suddenly looks strange and confusing and you can't find anything any more, it's because I have begun to introduce a new sorting system -- blogs and most other links will now be arranged alphabetically, rather than by chronologically by day added as before. Some blogs which were buried in the mess may rise to prominence -- especially those beginning with numbers and A's -- while others, once leaping out at you, may have settled down quietly among their alphabetical fellows. Take advantage of the shakeup to peruse the links and discover something new.

And as always, there have been a lot of new blogs added in the past couple of days, particularly those in the now-bursting, newly-renamed "Collage, Mail Art" category, thanks to a load of great blogs brought to my attention by Out of Lascaux. Some new blogs in Folklore and Personal, too, and others.

The story of Blue Tea

When I was a child coloring with my mother, her daring and unorthodox use of color would often shock me. Much to my astonishment, she insisted on green suns, pink grass, and purple trees, while I meanwhile dutifully adhered to the hues prescribed by schoolroom tradition and rudimentary observation.

One day much later, we had purchased a new box of Crayolas and sat down together for some nostalgic doodling. True to form, she began picking out bright crayons and drawing things that weren't usually associated with those colors. She drew, among other objects, a sturdy, squarish mug of swirling, steaming coffee, and it was blue.

"Blue Coffee," I remarked. "That would be a good name for a website."

But it wasn't. I didn't really like coffee all that much, and I felt that whatever I had to offer should be more soothing and introspective, and less jittery. Tea addict that I am, just like my mother, I adjusted the title to Blue Tea.

I used the name for a short-lived website in which a version of this story originally appeared. In the days before blogs, or at least before blogs were mainstream enough for me to know about them, Blue Tea I was a sort of proto-blog, a collection of random, brief writings and rambles updated semi-regularly by hand (no fancy publishing software, no!). It never really got off the ground, and after a few spotty entries, I discontinued it, and I recently removed it from the web, to save on both embarrassment and confusion with my current endeavor.

Because I had the cute little graphic drawn up already (drawn and colored by hand, then scanned and tweaked a bit), and I had the lovely name, I decided to reuse the brand for my new blog when I migrated from Blurty to Blogger. I was still fond of the theme, and decided that my earlier project hadn't done it justice. So here we are.

Since the original project's inception, I have discovered that blue tea, along with black, green, white, red, and potentially others, belongs to the spectrum of real tea varities. I know nothing about it, really, but the odd visitor has showed up to my pages in search of the genuine article. Mine, alas, is but a metaphorical blend, but I hope a tasty one nonetheless.

Regrettable

Word verification has been activated.

You know the drill.

Evolutionary strides

Wow, I'm a Flippery Fish already. From Insignificant Microbe I skipped right over Multicellular Microorganism, Wiggly Worm, Crunchy Crustacean, Lowly Insect, and Slimy Mollusc, and went straight to the first respectable-sounding, non-icky creature on the list. I didn't think I'd make it that high...I figured crustacean or insect at best.

I've gone overboard with the listings and rankings and stats, I know. I don't delude myself. Rather than giving me a sheen of respectability, it only lends an air of desperation. Look at me, link me, love me! But ego-stroking apart, I figure all the fluff might attract a whiff of traffic. And I feel like the world needs to know about the cool things I link to. So I'll keep at it. Dry land and legs, here I come.

Unexpected visitors

Does anyone know what might cause a whole slew of blogs that clearly have no links to me and nothing to do with me -- apparently real, personal blogs as well as spam, inactive, and blank ones -- to show up in my referrers list? And it's not even a referrers list that's published on the page, just my site meter stats. Some even with multiple page views. No spam comments or anything.

I thought I had a vague idea of what goes on out there, but this one doesn't make much sense to me.

UPDATE: Well, I think I've partially solved it. I should have known -- my My Blog Log stats helpfully indicate that the "next blog" button is the most frequently clicked link today. Apparently something's just whipping through the blogs one after another. That would be why they're all Blogger addresses... Still, I'm not sure what it gets anyone.

Redecorating

I finally discovered how to add a background to the blog. (The answer was painfully simple -- I just changed the template of my test blog to one of the defaults with a background, and looked to see how it was done there.)

I like the looks of the one I have now, one that I had prepared earlier for the occasion, but doubtless I'll modify it some more or scrap it completely and come up with something else. But for now, this is nice.

Hooray for doing stuff.

Do not attempt to adjust your monitor.

We control the horizontal and the vertical.

No, your eyes aren't deceiving you. I've lightened up the background by one shade. You could say that things are looking brighter around here. Or I guess you could say that they're just grayer.

Speaking of gray, if you want to know how this blog looks to the colorblind, you should play around with the Colorblind Web Page Filter, which is quite a nifty toy.

Speaking of how this blog looks, Isomerica should really get it together and load my images, already. Sheesh. Anybody else experiencing loading problems with this page? I do hope I'm not abusing my bandwidth.

On second thought, maybe we don't control the horizontal and the vertical after all.

Now I'm spying on you.

What I really want is the referral tracker from TrueFresco, but they're not accepting new members, and no sign of when they might be in the future. So I got myself a Site Meter instead, which seems pretty neat so far (and they actually do track referrals, which I didn't know). Now the only thing I need is some traffic to track.

There's little news to report in my life: my attempts to find a new or supplemental job have so far been unsuccessful. I continue to toil away behind a register. It's damn hot, and I wish this apartment had an air conditioner. And I'm tired of spotting cockroaches. I'm told by the exterminator that the giant ones we've been getting aren't the kind that infest, they probably just got in somehow from outside. I am still not pleased to discover them on my kitchen counter. (It's only three total so far -- one a couple months ago, and then two in the last three days. That had better be all.)

So instead of regaling you with tales of my exciting life -- that road trip used up my excitement allotment for a while -- I'll post assorted links, instead.

A recent Onion article: Bush Regales Dinner Guests with Impromptu Oratory on Virgil's Minor Works. It is to weep. Incidentally, I think this sort of fantasy is one of the reasons that The West Wing is such an appealing show.

And another: "Midwest" Discovered Between East and West Coasts. Cute. I, a recent traveler from these fabled lands, can vouch for their existence. They're stunning -- everyone should make the trek to see these wild regions for themselves someday.

The latest issue of Bookslut features a comic-book version of Neil Gaiman's speech at the 2005 Nebula Awards, which is quite cool.

Here are some amazing pictures of mammatus cloud formations in Nebraska.
Link via Boing Boing.




A Florida artist sculpts amazing pure chocolate roses. One of these sinful treats will cost you a couple hundred dollars. But who could eat one?
Link also via Boing Boing.




Chinadaily has an article about a Chinese man who has written a love story using only punctuation marks. He is now offering a reward in the hopes of finding someone who can understand it.
Link via Bookslut.

The New Yorker has an interesting article about Roald Dahl, The Candy Man.
Link via Bookslut.

According to a BBC News article, an American study has led to the startling conclusion that prayers don't save sick people.
Link via orangeguru.

That's all. Kinda boring post for today. Come back later.


reading: Ben Bradlee, A Good Life (finally finished Fast Food Nation)
saw: Supersize Me; Fahrenheit 911; Fahrenhype 911; Metropolis; The Rock; Firefly
playing: nothing really...
game of the day: One Time Never

music: a fairly eclectic mix I made today with the stunning title of "cool music"; curr. Sting, "Desert Rose"
beverage: Twinings Irish Breakfast tea

Well, I guess it's fixed. Farewell, then!

The blog seems to be working for now, so I shall take the opportunity to announce my three-week hiatus while I embark on a cross-country road trip with my boyfriend and two other friends (E and J, for future reference.) We're leaving tomorrow, so you won't hear from me for a while. At least I can leave with everything in order.

What a relief.

Blogger hates me.

One day, going to add new links to my template, I saw to my displeasure that the template was only partially loading. The page was loaded, but only a quarter of the template was there. Several times I checked only to see a twisted, corrupted template code. I left it, hoping the problem would resolve itself and the missing data reappear.

Yesterday, forgetting about the template problem, I blithely typed up and published a new post. This action republishes the entire blog -- replacing the current page with the corrupted code, and blinking my beautiful blog mostly out of existence, with only a few hideous scraps of html remaining to show it had ever been.

I sent an e-mail to Blogger for help, but I doubt they keep any backups. I was hesitant to make any updates, lest I lose any chances of the old template being restored. But when I got home (I made the ill-fated new post from my father's house, which may account for my absentmindedness), I was delighted to see that I'd left my computer in hibernation as usual, and an old copy of the blog was still open in my navigator window. I copied and saved the page code, and used it to reconstruct my template, creating a new test blog for the purpose (http://bluewyvernteatest.blogspot.com/ if you are for some reason interested -- I think I'll keep it around for emergencies). Deciding there was no point in waiting for help, I replaced the Blue Tea template myself, and hoped that the support people might at least tell me what happened and prevent it from happening again.

And then there was another, totally unforseen problem -- when I went to view my blog, I got the baffling message that "The file / cannot be found. Please check the location and try again." It works fine in the preview, and the test blog is still there, but for some baffling reason, Blogger no longer likes my domain name. If you're reading this, the problem has been resolved somehow, but gosh, I sure don't know.

Updates galore

As you can see, I've done a bit of tweaking around here. I tried to make the format deviate at least a little from the default. I'm fairly happy with the result. Things to do in the future: get the bluetea image slapped up on some host somewhere so I can put it in the sidebar, and maybe find an interesting background for the blog (also reliant on finding an image host). I'd also like to find out how to customize the comments page, but that's still a bit beyond me. Anybody know how?

I renamed the "comments" link to "sips." Clever, eh? Makes you want to comment, doesn't it?

You'll notice a few new categories on the side, and a whole slew of new links. Many of them, whether through theft or coincidence, will probably be familiar to Maktaaq, but that's just because she has good taste. Please do browse through a couple of them. Because I have good taste, too.

I suppose the next thing to do is fill out my profile. Should be fun.


reading: Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis; John Gardner, Grendel

music: Katamari Damacy soundtrack (again!)
beverage: Twinings English Breakfast tea

This is it.

Blurty is dead. Long live Blue Tea.

I've discontinued my Blurty in favor of this thing that you are currently reading. I think it's the right choice.

It's time for changes, I suppose. Last Saturday was my graduation from Bard College; I now officially no longer have to check the "some college" box while filling out forms. I am now a respected citizen of society, a holder of a college degree. My diploma is in Latin and everything.

Yesterday was when the majority of people in the world that I know and care about packed their belongings into little cars and left. Fortunately a small handful of our friends are underclassmen, meaning both that I get to enjoy their company in the coming year, and that the other alums will return to visit them from time to time. But any future encounters with these dear friends of mine are likely to be only fleeting. I am quite saddened.

Today was the first quiet day that I've had to myself in some time. I slept in, and have spent most of the day playing games and reading. Soon I need to work on finding a permanent job, but I need a little time to rest. I have a little time to get things in order before June 10th, when K and I and two other friends will embark on a three-week-long cross-country road trip, something that I've always wanted to do. With luck, I can have some prospects for work lined up for when I return. And then it will be time to work my ass off to pay for the trip.

But enough about plans. As usual, it's much more fun for me to share cool things than talk about my life.

Today I tackled an interesting-looking game that's been in my links list for a long time, but which I'd never gotten around to. It's Die Anstalt: Psychiatrie für misshandelte Kuscheltiere (The Asylum: Psychiatry for Abused Cuddly Toys), a cleverly animated cartoon game in which you play psychiatrist and use a variety of clinical therapies and techniques such as dream analysis and play therapy in an attempt to diagnose and cure the maladies of your patients, a collection of unfortunate plush toys. The game is quite engaging and ingenious. In German, English, and Italian.

I also came across an interesting article in the LA Times about a talk Marjane Satrapi gave at West Point, where Persepolis is required reading. (Latimes.com requires registration; you can use www.bugmenot.com to acquire a login without registering.)


reading: Kazuko Okakura, The Book of Tea; David Sedaris, Barrel Fever
saw: Five Minutes and a Deck of Cards (senior project by a brilliant filmmaker friend of mine, featuring two three-second shots of me in the distance); Black Hawk Down; Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith (Midnight showing on opening day!); Proof of Life

music: the Katamari Damacy soundtrack (track: "The Moon and the Prince")
beverage: gunpowder green tea

I have created a blog.

Another blog, that is. I'm toying with the idea of maintaining this alongside my current Blurty. Seeing how I like the sleek professional look. And the ability to maintain a sidebar with links and customizable stuff. That part's nice so far.

Am a bit miffed that the addresses and usernames bluetea and bluewyvern were both taken. Is bluewyvern all that common? There seems to be one shadowing me, preceeding me everywhere I go, to my displeasure. And who else uses bluetea, of all things? So I am left with the not wholly satisfying username blue_tea and address bluewyverntea.blogspot.com. So there it is. We'll see how it goes...