After half a year, I’ve finally put up a new layout. It’s one I tinkered around with today and, while I’m not ecstatic about it, I do like it well enough to release it. It helps that I’ve gotten sick of looking at the old theme. I’ve only got access to my Macbook currently, so I was only able to test it in Firefox 3, Safari, and Opera on OS X. Let me know if you have any problems in other browsers (I’m expecting some for sure in IE, at least in IE 6, because I used “fixed” background images) via a comment, please.

So with WordPress 2.6.1, I’m noticing that there’s the option to use Google Gears–any feedback on that? I’m new to Gears and have been reading about it; has it really been effective in making a page work faster?

I spent my morning picking grapes; I’ve come home for a visit with my family, and my dad’s grapevine is in full swing. I picked over a bushel this morning and feel as though I barely made a dent in what’s on the vine. Mom has an absolutely gigantic red, plastic bucket into which I’m going to dump all the bushels I pick. Usually, my parents split the grapes: Mom turns her part into grape jelly, and Dad makes wine. This year, however, Mom’s giving all of hers to my dad because there was so much other fruit for her to turn into delicious preserve-y things (namely blackberries–they picked like fourteen gallons on our neighbor’s farm).

Check out this female eastern dobsonfly that my dad found; aren’t those pincers vicious-looking? He was sanding when he noticed her sitting there; he didn’t recognize what it was but apparently folks online pointed him to the University of Kentucky’s Critter Files, which I think is pretty cool. Who knows what all is on UK’s web site, hidden in back pages.