The first line of Girlyshoes t-shirts is now for sale at my Cafe Press shop. The earlier version of the “I’d Rather Be Widowed” shirt was recalled, and all my shirts are now 100% image-free. Slogan shirts with the best snark from yours truly. Do you wonder about people’s taste level? Let them know with the “Got Taste?” shirt. Tired of hearing those random cell phone conversations? We have the shirt for that, too.

The Girlyshoes T-shirt Shop

And by the way, The Insufferable Mr. Pimple took my e-mail to the Human Resources office to complain about me. They told him it wasn’t an HR issue, and if he had a problem to talk to me directly. That’s three for three: his boss, my boss and the employee rights person. Has he spoken to me? No.

I spent the day so far searching in my files for more pictures, scanning pictures, cropping and editing pictures and finally, uploading pictures. There are lots more quilts and a knit bag over there in the Tante Leah section.

This is how it works: from the Tante Leah home page, linked over there on the right, the photos become only the Tante Leah photos. They are divided by category into Quilts, Knits, Tallitsim, and Beading. Clicking on the home page link from any Tante Leah page will take you to the Tante Leah home page. There are overview pages about the quilts, etc.

Happy browsing.

I did it. The Tante Leah pages are all up. The links all work. The categories work. The Photoblog is working.

Tomorrow?

A dip in the pool, and a little sewing.

And lots, lots, lots more photos in the Tante Leah section and the Photoblog.

Tonight? Martinis all around.

In this case, and believe me, I am as sick of these entries about the trials and tribulations of code writing as you all are, I have achieved a small break through in the photo pages, i.e.: the formatting is displaying more or less correctly, and the categories are right, even though the photos themselves don’t actually display… yet…but now I’ve lost the customization of my technorati tag cloud.

I’m sick of this code war. I’m sick of not sewing.

The RLA is facing losing his two classes this semester because the full-time faculty’s classes didn’t fill, so they have the right to usurp his. Of course, his classes fill because they are advertised as being his classes, and students line up to study under him. Duh. That’s why his classes are full and the full-timers aren’t.

I went to visit my mother this weekend, and she was…not alert, to say the least. But the aides laughed and told me that she’s a good eater, and she’s gaining a little weight.

At work, there is a storm on the horizon and change in the air, and none of it is good.

But tomorrow? Tomorrow is another day, and Star and the Surrogate Daughters and I are going to go to a Marlins game after work. They are playing (in the miserable cement heat sink of Dolphins’ Stadium) the Atlanta Braves. It is one of those amusing quirks of baseball that no matter how deep in the cellar the Fish are, nor how high in the standings the Braves are, that more times than not, the Marlins will beat the Braves. And that, gentle readers, is Why I Love Baseball.

Well, the University of Miami has decided, after a long, hard look at the money, to abandon the historic Orange Bowl and move to Dolphin Stadium. While this sucks and is typical of the wanton disregard for history and tradition that is traditional in the Magic City (Miami), there is a silver lining here, maybe, and that is this: since the OB is certain to be fodder for redevelopment, maybe, just maybe, this centrally located space can be turned into a baseball stadium for my sorta-beloved Florida Marlins.

The Marlins are stuck playing in the nasty cement heat sink that is Dolphin Stadium, and while being a cement heat sink isn’t so bad if you are playing football in what passes for the winter, it is absolute death in August for baseball. Not to mention the fact that the stadium does not convert well, with wonky corners in left field.

A few years ago I had figured out the perfect place for the baseball stadium, but nobody would listen to me and today that spot is occupied by something called “Jungle Island”, but which used to be Parrot Jungle. Of course, and again, this being Miami, the original Parrot Jungle was located in a tropical paradise of banyan trees, lagoons and 50-year old native plantings, but the neighbors complained about the free range Macaws and the riff-raff who came from out of the neighborhood to have breakfast with the flamingos and cockatiels, so the Parrot Jungle moved to a barren fill island in Biscayne Bay and had to build a tropical jungle from scratch. And that caused a drop off in attendance (well, the heat, the lack of shade and foliage and the rise in entrance fee from $10 to $35) and so now the newly-renamed Jungle Island is sort of struggling, when it could have been a beautiful baseball stadium with boat dockage for the sky boxes, and a view of the downtown skyline, and the wet dream of the tourist industry: an aerial view of the turquoise waters of Biscayne Bay surrounding the lush green of a real grass diamond, with the white cruise ships in the channel… telecast during a spring training day game while the snow is six feet deep in the rust belt.

Hey, I’m not bitter. Nobody listens to the prophet in his own time. Anyway. Now there is the very real possibility of a domed stadium in (almost) downtown. Will it happen? Not bloody likely, this IS Miami after all, and what better use for an obsolete (but not really) sports facility than overpriced housing in an over-saturated market?

I’ll give you odds that the Orange Bowl does not become the Marlins’ state of the art, retro-but-domed palace of play, but instead becomes Orange Bowl Towers, a state of the art condo tower with studios starting at $200,000.

The comments work. The links work. The search works. The archives work. Every entry has at least one category assigned to it. Whew. That was a lot of code and cigarettes, but it’s all up and running.

Now for the next part: the static pages, where I’ll put all Tante Leah’s Handmades, at least those which are part of the portfolio and already sold. This means going back into the Expression Engine dark forest. I’ll be searching for clues and pre-written code. I’ll be reading every page ever written about Expression Engine (all ten of them). I’ll be going back and forth between print outs of code that looks like it should work and the pages I’ve built from that code that don’t work. I’ll be editing code and I’ll be tearing my hair out. I’ll be cursing and testing and testing and cursing. And cursing and drinking and smoking and testing. It’s not really live, but you can take a peek at the first couple of pages by clicking on the link over there on your right. (Tante Leah’s Handmades)

And then, when that’s all working, it’ll be on to the re-imagined Cafe Press shop. I have t-shirts ready, and photos to go on notebooks, and all of that.

And then, it’ll be time to open the studio door and start sewing.