Contrariwise

Whew. I tried to upgrade to WP 2.5 over the weekend. I was exhausted, and it was late, so I figured I’d just get everything uploaded and head off to bed. Yeah, not so much. I wound up breaking things so badly that it took at least another hour of fiddling around to figure out what I’d done wrong. My blog disappeared for two days! In the end, I just had to delete the .htaccess file I created recently. I’m not sure what was so bad about it, but I’m back in business and trying to get used to 2.5. It doesn’t look different from the front, but everything on the back end is new and shiny. I like it, though…now that it works.

Kate Wicker hosted the Catholic Carnival this week. She has a great “Feast Before the Fast” theme, since Ash Wednesday is next week. I’m not quite ready. We just finished celebrating Christmas!

I submitted a post to the Carnival again, the one about FOCUS Conference, which I also sent to our five FOCUS missionaries. Imagine my embarrassment when, of all days, WP started malfunctioning on Tuesday. I got everything fixed by the end of the day, but I’m still not quite what went wrong. Something about the redirect from my hostess wasn’t working properly, but it’s all good now.

Jen at Daughter of the King ponders her spiritual game plan for this Lent. Last Lent went very well for me. I gave up secular tv and watched a lot of EWTN instead. I resumed praying the rosary every day; I tend to fall in and out of the habit.

My crowning achievement seems strange at first: For Lent, I resolved to take never pass up vegetables. I did this not because, as Fr. Frank lamented, I see Lent as a diet plan. I did it because I realized that food was one area of my life that I hadn’t yet given over to God. I needed to grow up, be healthier, and stop being so picky. Those first few salads and broccoli florets were tough, but I’m so much better for it. I was humiliated to admit my childishness and do something I absolutely did not want to do. Now, not only do I eat vegetables, I also like red and green apples, and I’m working on oranges. Soon I’ll eat the whole pyramid!

I haven’t definitely decided what to do for this Lent. Unfortunately, I am running out of time.

Finally, Heidi at Silent Canticle gives us her thoughts about writing for free. I don’t blog for the glory of God any more than I do everything for God. Blogging for God sounds like it could go the way of Christ the Lord. I’ve never written anything for pay, though, and I copyedit for free (except at CASL, where I was paid hourly regardless of how much work I did). I blog as an extension of the personal journals I’ve kept since middle school. She makes a good point about using the talents God has given us, though. The few posts I’ve had that seem to have really reached people make the whole process worth it.

I’ve been doing a little work in the background over the past few days. I didn’t do much tinkering with this theme after I applied it, but it needed work. I finally validated the XHTML, which wasn’t difficult. I did lose the neat sidebar section headers, though, and I can’t remember how I got them back in the dynamic sidebar in the first place, so I’ll have to go without them.

Live Comment Preview is not working with this theme, so I installed the WP Ajax Edit Comments plugin instead. If you see any horrifically clashing colors or notice any malfunctions, email me (see sidebar). It’s hard to test as the blog owner.

I also need to get trackbacks to show up, though I already lifted some code from my old theme to keep me from having to login when I post comments, so that shouldn’t be hard. I’d like to get back to actually writing soon instead of doing all the technical background work, though I’m glad I can actually do that work myself.

Edit: I didn’t have trackbacks because I didn’t trackback. I’m a genius. I also added NoFollow Free, because if you comment, you deserve some love.

Well, sort of. I would still like to have the navigation in nice little tabs in the header, as well as putting the search bar there, but this will do for now. If only I could figure out how to get my fanlisting code rotator working again, and add cute little pixel icons for the time and date, and get those single-page navigation links aligned properly,…. and stop being such a perfectionist.

I’ve been meaning to get a new WordPress theme for a while. I actually wanted to use a different one, but I don’t think my hostess allows me the storage space I’d need for it, so I went with this one. My goal is to add a bunch of different header images that will randomly fill in for that one up there. I’m still customizing it, so be sure to let me know if you see anything that’s gone awry.