Confession: I’m completely exhausted and only the thought of failing out only the second week of the Friday Confessional kept me doing it. Brianna has the flu and was up all night last night throwing up. After the second time (and second bedding change) I slept with her, nearly got barfed on the third time (and third bedding change) but after that she figured it out and managed to tell me with enough time I could get the bucket under her. I don’t either of us slept more than an hour straight at any given time. I’m just a little groggy. She had a spurt of energy for a few hours this morning but has since collapsed back to the couch and is now upstairs sound asleep. Poor thing.

I was going to post about how I think seeing other people vomit is the grossest thing ever (I’m a sympathetic puker). I worked as a nurse’s aid to put myself through college. I could deal with anything, any bodily function. Just not puke. I once discovered a body after the person had been dead for three days in the Arizona summer heat. No one but me was able to enter the apartment without a mask. I’ve dissected a number of cadavers. I can handle disgusting things. But vomit gets me. I was going to post all that and then realize there’s one thing that gets me more than vomit: maggots. I can’t handle them, not to think about, not to look at on TV, nothing. Ew ew ew ew. Now you know my weaknesses. Vomit and maggots.

Moving on!

Quick question. I’ve been using a new Firefox addon called Zemanta to help add links to my content. Some things you see (like Zemanta) are linked for me by them, just by clicking on something on my dashboard. The program will also add related content links of my choosing to the bottom of the post, have you noticed them? It does other things, but so far those are the two most useful. Oh, the “Reblog this” that you see at the bottom of the post also comes from that. What do you think? Useful or intrusive?

For Readers:

I’m sure everyone has seen this, but just in case:Harlequin is giving away 16 free books as part of their anniversary celebration. This is very cool. There’s something for everyone! You can also download them via Stanza (also very cool).

Leah (Madame Butterfly) has a rant about DRM and why one publisher has lost her business because of it. I’m not a fan of DRM from the publisher side, and Leah’s post illustrates why.

An interesting blogpost on the Kindle, what it is and how it might affect trends.

SciFiGuy lists the February 2009 paranormal, fantasy and urban fantasy releases.

Agent Nathan Bransford asked: will you ever buy mostly ebooks? Only 10% of the almost 1000 respondents said absolutely yes. I wish I knew the demographic breakdown of people voting. That would be interesting!

Twilight fans will enjoy this: Twilight done by bunnies (in 30 seconds) via Katiebabs

For Kindle owners. MakeUseOf.com tells you how to read feeds on your Kindle device for free.

In the Kitchen:
If you’ve ever had any questions about using your bread machine, you must read this post, Bread Machine Basics. I stumbled across it Googling for something and it’s an amazing source of answers for all your bread machine questions!

What do you get when you combine a pound of bacon and two pounds of sausage (besides a non-kosher heart attack?): the bacon explosion. This horrified and fascinated me so much I had to share it. via Tastespotting

How to make Skittles Vodka from tipnut.com You know you want to. Heck, I KNOW *I* want to.

For the Crafty:

Lisa begins a series of bag making for beginners. The first post is about sewing terms. Part two is choosing fabric and interfacing. I’m really excited about this series because when I sew, purses are one of my favorite things to make. I actually thought about making something and donating it to the Brenda Novak auction but that hasn’t solidified in my head.

How to make an old cupboard door into a serving tray. I love their finished product.

For Authors:

Epublishing and traditional publishing compared by an author published with both.

Agent Rachelle Gardner did some posts on the “elevator pitch”.

Agent Jessica Faust discusses the form rejection letter. It’s a fantastic post and she lists many of the reasons we use a form letter at Samhain.

Author Ilona Andrews is doing a series of one paragraph critiques. It’s interesting to see how she tears down and rebuilds each paragraph. The first one is here and she does a terrific job of relating POV to camera angle.

Anyone who’s seen my workshop on epublishing or read the articles I’ve written has heard me talk about Yog’s Law. Agent Jennifer Jackson takes this time to remind you: money flows toward the author.

For everyone:

Domino, Wondertime, Country Home and Realms of Fantasy magazines will all be shutting down or have shut down. Ouch.

Interested in politics or what President Obama has been up to? Follow the new White House blog. It’s been interesting for me, to get updates on what’s going on. I like it.

Agent Rachelle Gardner wrote a post about Twitter. She doesn’t want you to use Twitter to try and do business with her. I feel similarly. I wish I had written this post. I almost reposted the entire thing here. I might still. I like Twitter, but it’s not where I conduct business. Like Rachelle, I rarely discuss business related things there and anyone hoping for brilliance from me on Twitter is going to be sadly disappointed.

SuperBowl Sunday is this weekend (I can’t believe it’s going to be February already!) and whether you’re staying at home with just your family, having a big bash or attending one, you must check out these two posts full of delicious-looking dishes to make. The first is from Cathy at Noble Pig and oh man, did this post make me hungry! I think I’m going to try a few of those. The second is from Pioneer Woman *insert fangrrl squee* who also has a post full of dish ideas. Both posts have photos, and I dare you to go look and not drool.

Something fun: Karen Scott posts the best complaint letter ever. Ewww is all I have to say!

Picture of the week:

I’m going to give you a couple. This one, because I saw it last week and immediately marked it to use for today. The emotion of the moment is so beautiful. via Huffington Post

Then this one from Paperback Writer’s blog because, hello, who doesn’t love a picture of a cute puppy?

And from Brianna’s photos this week. This elephant is no bigger than a tennis ball but the perspective on this one makes it look much bigger. I love this picture.

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I’m having some hosting issues. Basically, my SQL database has a limit of 100mb and I’ve almost reached that. I’ll tell you my whole sorry tale after I get my blog transferred to a new host. In the meantime, if the blog disappears or goes down for a short time, it’s because I’ve hit my database limit and the blog has froze. Since I’m locating a new host (I have two I’m choosing between) it shouldn’t be that long before I transfer and hopefully you’ll never even know! But just in case…

If this works, then it looks like cleaning my wp_options up in my database fixed my problems. *crossing fingers*

I know some of you have asked for subscribe to comments back, and trust me, I want it there. But for whatever reason I can’t use it with this new WordPress upgrade. It breaks my Dashboard. The bizarre thing is that I did the exact same install on Jaci’s blog and it all works fine. I don’t know what’s wrong with my blog that this plugin, the Twitter plugin, and a few others cause the blog to freak out, break the Dashboard and return and Internal error when I do things (like post). I’m sorry!

This is the second theme I’m considering. Keep in mind that I fiddled the first theme throughout the day yesterday, so it ended up with my header and with some of the “issues” of it fixed.

This theme is even cleaner and more plain than the theme of yesterday. The colors are cooler, not quite as warm and deep, but I could actually change the colors if the layout of the theme itself is one you like.

What do you think?

I upgraded my version of WordPress today to 2.7. The new back end functionality is pretty slick. I did find that some of the plugins I was using actually broke the Dashboard, so I’ve had to disable them for now, though I think mostly only I will notice.

I’ve also been playing with the idea of updating my theme, because there were some things I didn’t like about the theme I was using. So I found two that I liked. You’re seeing one of them now, this is Velocity. I’m going to leave it up for 24 hours and then switch to the other on Tuesday. Most of the basics of the themes will stay the same, but I’ll update the header to be my own, once I settle on one. Please let me know what you think of this theme, and come back and give me feedback on the other one on Tuesday.

I like some things about this theme, but one thing I wish it had (which my second choice does have) is comment numbering. It makes it easier to draw winners from random.org and not have to count my way through the comments (HUGE pain). I’m also not crazy about all the fonts it uses.

Once I have a theme chosen, I’m going to work on getting smilies working again. I miss them!

Upgraded WordPress and the LJ Crossposter plugin activated, so let’s see if it’s actually working.

That was the theme for today at my house. This morning I started on the reorganization of my kitchen. I had this brilliant idea that I wanted to swap the food pantry area and the pots/pans/tupperware area, because it seemed like they’d be best suited if they were swapped. My husband, of course, thought I was insane (pretty sure he still does) but just smiled and let me at it.

(I should just mention here that the Wii Fitness Age on Wii Sports told me I’m 67–causing Josh no end of amusement–and boy do I have some sore muscles to let me know that I am, apparently, 67. Whatever. So I felt all those muscles during reorganization).

In addition to swapping those cupboards around, which of course meant taking everything out of both cupboards, cleaning them out, tossing some stuff and then deciding how I wanted everything, I also ended up organizing the cupboard where we have the dishes/glasses. Those cupboards are much emptier now because I decided to pack some things away.

PLUS, my in-laws gave us two baker’s racks for the kitchen. We already had one in the kitchen, but we wanted these because they matched, and because one has a wine rack in the bottom. Given my recent obsession with buying wines during my travels, we were rather in desperate need of a wine rack. So we had to take out the furniture that was in the kitchen (a washstand with lots of drawers full of stuff), find room for it. And where does all the stuff we have to find room for come from? It multiplies!

So that project isn’t quite done because there’s still one baker’s rack to move into the kitchen and some further cleaning up/putting away of random stuff to be done. Don’t you hate it when you have things that you want to keep, but just don’t seem to fit anywhere?

In between the kitchen project, when I was taking mini-breaks (since I was feeling every bit of 67 in my back muscles) I decided to check out LibraryThing, which someone had suggested here in the comments when I mentioned that I couldn’t seem to use Now Reading anymore. They also suggested Shelfari but I’m still boycotting them for spamming me incessantly when they first opened.

I think LibraryThing will serve my needs, though won’t be quite as convenient as Now Reading. But if you look to the left sidebar, you’ll see I added three widgets from LibraryThing for Currently Reading, Recently Read, and TBR. I might end up deleting that TBR one since I usually decide on the fly what I’m going to read next.

I also rearranged the sidebar. I’m never quite sure what people are actually looking at on my sidebar, so I’m never sure what to keep. I know there are at least a few of you who look at the “Shared Items” on the left. And yes, I’m keeping the Kindle ad because people also click through that as well, according to my Amazon Associate stats! But I did delete, for now, the Twitter updates on the left sidebar, because I figure anyone who really wants to see what I’m saying on Twitter can follow me on Twitter (unless someone shouts out in the comments and objects).

Now it’s off to cook dinner and hope that Junior gets his lap back and moves to the front in the race in Dover!

Can anyone tell me why I can’t install new plugins, because WP is telling me they need to be installed here:

/homepages/23/d161111088/htdocs/blog/wp-content/plugins

Why does it have all the extra stuff /homepages/23/d161111088/htdocs and how do I get it to recognize the regular plugins install? blog/wp-content/plugins

Installing a new plugin and trying to activate it results in a fatal error that /homepages/23/d161111088/htdocs/blog/wp-content/plugins doesn’t exist

I swear, these last couple upgrades of WP have really mucked me up. I’m ready to wipe the whole thing and start all over again. Or wipe it and not start it again.

I’ve had to deactivate my Now Reading plugin, because since I upgraded to a newer WordPress in July, I haven’t been able to add any new books. It freezes, in the same way my automatic upgrade plugin freezes, saying the page has loaded but showing no results, only blank or raw XML. If anyone has a solution for this, I’d love it, because Now Reading is one of my favorite plugins.

In the meantime, I wonder if there’s another plugin out there for tracking books read? I hate having to scrap it altogether, but I don’t have time to manually add each book. Darn it.