New theme?!

Wow so…where to start?! First of all, yes, this is a new theme! Although…I can only take credit for the top banner, at least it’s a step in the right direction, no? The quote is from Margaret Atwood’s poem ‘Spelling’, and the image consists of two photos I took today and then played with in good old Paint Shop Pro.

Recently I’ve really been missing web design, especially with my new job where I have shiny Photoshop and FTP installed on my computer, dying to be used. Also, I’m working next to people who spend all day designing homepages and taking and editing photos – with all that creativity flowing, it’s easy to feel inspired and wanting to get back to my own stuff. But the most important element is time. Since moving here, I’ve made friends at work and at Games Workshop in town (like the geek I am), but of an evening there’s not a whole lot to do. Rather than going out any night of the week student style, every one works full time and will usually go out on a Friday night. Most of my new friends are – despite being late twenties/early thirties – married, living with their partner, and a couple have kids or kids on the way. Suddenly I’ve jumped into this whole world that theoretically could be what my life is like for the next 40 years, and that’s kind of scary.

Back to my original point…I have a lot of free evenings. Keeping in touch with people through MSN and phone (and Facebook) is great, and what I’ve been doing. The rest of my free time involves watching TV, DVDs, reading, playing Catan, browsing websites, and painting. But now I have free time like I did in college, it’s definitely time to get back on track, especially as how my web design got me a lot of interviews in the first place.

The best thing about having a full time job is definitely coming home at the end of the day and not thinking about work until the next working day. Leaving work at work, and not feeling guilty about not having finished an essay, or going on a journey without taking some work, or keeping up with reading, is a big psychological thing for me. I don’t feel anxious. I feel free.

Oh, I also upgraded WordPress – I was running 2.1, and the latest version is 2.6 so yeah – I got a bit behind! I had a suspicious feeling something was going to go wrong even though it’s the easiest thing ever, and it did. It looked fine in IE, but was just a blank page in Firefox. I realised that FTP hadn’t properly uploaded the files and so reuploaded everything. Still nothing. I was slightly panicked (and feeling stupid) by then, so I had a quick google around and found someone had tried just switching to the default theme in the admin panel and then switching back again. Which weirdly enough, worked like a charm. But by this time I was completely shattered, because it was about 2 am and something I’d anticipated taking 10 minutes or so had taken about 3 hours. Crazy! (I was playing Catan at the same time though). The theme still needs a bit of tweaking, and my original plan to start proper updates this weekend kind of went out of the window, but at least this is all sorted and working now (hopefully).

I’m moving house again, even though I’ve only lived here three weeks, because someone’s been going in my room. They backed up all my files onto CD and also broke my laptop screen (there’s no lock on my door but I’m faithfully logging  out now)…which has cost my £150 to get fixed. It’s with my parents now because my dad’s friend fixed in, and I’m collecting it at some point next month when I go back. For now I’m using my trusty old laptop that I got in my first year of uni. I cleared it out a while back but it’s still fairly slow. From the third floor the wireless connection isn’t great either, but sitting in the lounge right next to it seems to be fine.

I’m also moving because the house is too far away from work. I’m walking about four miles a day just to work and back, although I got used to it surprisingly quickly. It’s like there’s a little puppy inside me on weekends when I’m not walking that far saying ‘Walkies please!’ (yeah…I’m so weird), hence why I decided to go into town yesterday and go for a couple of hours’ walk today. It’s getting darker earlier though, and leaving the house around 8:15 and getting back around half 6 five days a week is getting pretty tiring. Also travelling to Nottingha and Manchester for occasional weekends is getting pretty tiring too. Next weekend Joe is coming to visit, and we’re going to London which is less than an hour on the train – definitely beating the 4-5 hours on trains to get to Notts or Manc. I’m pretty excited about that, even though I can’t really afford it at the moment, since because of the way the months fall, I’ve been paid for exactly 1 week at work, and I’ve had to pay 2 months’ rent and deposit for 2 different places lol. I should be moving at the beginning of Noveber, which is great. The new house, whilst it isn’t as beautiful as this one on the inside, is still pretty damn nice. The street has amazing views across town, the area is pretty countrified, there’s buses nearby to town, and it’s only a 20 min walk from work. Best of all, just around the corner there’s a pub, supermarket, hairdressers and takeaways, which is fantastic. Where I live now there’s a chippy, hairdressers, and a Tesco which is great, I’m getting so reliant on having a shop open late nearby lol. So really the only disadvantage is that the massive 24-hour-except-Sunday Asda (and its friends Borders, Next, Boots, a library, gym) is now quite a bit further away. And definitely not on my way home. But it’s definitely worth it, especially as the rent is super cheap – £5/month more than I’m paying here, and it’s an ensuite room. Also I’m hoping for discounts as one of my new housemates apparently works at Borders

According to WordPress this entry is now over 1,000 words, and I’ve said all I’ve got to say for now, so I’ll leave it here. I’ve written out lots of brand new stuff for the site and I have lots of plans and projects to put in place after I’ve sorted, moved, deleted, added and upgraded stuff, so I’m pretty excited about it all! And for the first time in ages, I’m returning comments. So go ahead and spam me!