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Vernal
Sunday, March 1, 1998 Just as I said last month, be sure to read yesterday's entry. Lots of drama, and an encounter with another journaler. I had fun this morning, finishing Saturday's entry and doing the design for March. The font is Madfont, from the folks at Immortal Graphics. It's another of those kicky, sassy fonts, that went from being new to being overdone in the space of six months a few years ago. But I like this one! I wanted green, but no shamrocks. I also wanted to experiment with an Image Composer technique that Demetrius has posted recently: a method for embossed text sans plug-ins. The photo at the foot of the page was taken by Jason at the Chinese carryout last month. He once had the job of taking portraits at a St. Louis department store, and he does seem to have a good success rate at photographing me. For some reason there has been a high rate of technical HTML and CSS questions on the journalers' mailing list, diary-l, lately. It doesn't seem to me that the list would be a good place to ask such questions! Writing a journal doesn't correlate with expertise in these areas, in any way that I can see. I answer such questions where I can, with gentle pointers to places like the HTML and CSS newsgroups, and my favorite reference websites. I feel qualified to answer, along with some other journalers, because HTML authoring has been part or all of my job for the last two years or so. But I was surprised by some of the journalers who admitted that they didn't know what they were doing with HTML! (Anita the HTML snob)
I went over to my sister M---'s house, to pick up the rest of the laundry she did for me. What a great present! She said she'd do it one more time this year, so I'll probably choose to do this before the film festival in May. She was doing childcare for two boys in addition to her own pair, so the activity level was pretty high! But she'd already taken them to see the latest kid movie, The Borrowers, so she didn't want to put on a video. She was at the point of forcing them out into the yard, despite the drizzle, when the father of the visitors came to pick them up. It took several trips to bring all the laundry in from the car, and by this time it wasn't just drizzling, it was actively raining. I took advantage of the pledgebreaks on the PBS station to accomplish this, and I'll make sure all the dampish items are hung on the shower curtain rod where they can dry. After all, these clothes won't do me any good packed in plastic bags in the back seat of my car. I was watching "Riverdance: Live in New York". They should just have the Riverdance Channel! All Riverdance, all the time! I was torn this evening between doing the rest of my web stuff and writing this entry, and watching one of the new laserdiscs I bought the other week. I didn't have a particular one in mind, but it doesn't seem right to buy a disc and not watch it! I'll probably finish this up, then watch at least part of one. Do monthly maintenance tasks (build a new TOC, new archives listing, or whatever) delay other journalers from doing that first entry in the new month?
I like what Uncle Buck had to say about journal writing in the new, slimmer Meyhem of February 22. He discusses the importance of reporting the facts, and examining your feelings about your experiences. He also indentifies a time dimension (looking at your past writings to see how you have changed) and for a fourth angle, how other people are perceiving you. More than one person has said that I don't dig down for the emotional revelations often enough. (Well, two people, to be exact.) I have been trying. But it's like pulling a hermit crab out of its shell! The exposed flesh is tender and delicate. Who wouldn't try to protect it? I miss the diary-crit list. I think I joined too late! The original members had been critiqued, and they bailed, each for good and sufficient reasons, I'm sure. But the list is moribund now. So any thoughts, reactions, gripes, kudos or brickbats are all welcome coming from any readers.
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