I said this coming week will be better. The week is supposed to start on Sunday, right? I'm going to say it will start on Monday...the start of the work week, because come hell or high water this week will be better than last week, and today has not been the greatest of days.

One of the things that has not been great is I have been getting the Blue Screen of Death for the past week:


I will be trying to figure out what's wrong tomorrow. I think one of my cooling fans is going out. Not sure which one, though. I hope it's not the one on the power supply, or the one on the processing chip, and I hope my hard drive isn't getting ready to crash...if that's the case I may be out of commission for a little while.

I'll be back when I'm operational again...

At some point today (or this evening?) The Xanga Team has posted on the Xanga Team blog, and on the Xanga Front Page (under "From the Xanga Team") that I am the Featured Themes Designer for this week.

I am honored that they would ask me to participate. Thanks, Xanga Team!

That's my special news for the day.

The link to my themes site CynaraJanesThemes is always available, however.

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I'm going to have to take DD#2 to see a different medical professional today. Her ear hurts really badly, her throat is very swollen, and I am certain that she needs antibiotics for a bacterial infection.

How is it that when a rapid strep test comes back as negative that it is automatically assumed that the infection is then viral? (To my semi-trained mind it just means it's probably not strep). It seems to happen a lot. I understand that the medical powers that be want to shy away from over prescribing antibiotics, but it is inconvenient and expensive to have to go to two different places and pay an arm and a leg both places - - not to mention causing undue pain and distress to make my child suffer any longer in the condition she's in without proper diagnosis and treatment. Can't they just get it right the first time? I know, they aren't all seeing and all knowing...I am as her mother. They should listen to me more. Ha! [ /rant ]

That said, I am pretty sure we won't be going back to the grocery store urgent care place any time soon.

I am off to call the doctor...

Be back later.

But it's Tuesday.

So I'm a little tired and frustrated today.

DD#2, Marisa, is sick, again. I don't know what's up with all this illness, but enough already! I'm going to have to get her into see the doctor, and that is never an easy task. I'll probably end up taking her to the grocery store...err...urgent care at the grocery store (see last post for more on that).

DS, Jaden, is with his dad this afternoon. His dad wanted to keep him longer than he's supposed to today, and I usually allow for those wishes, but I've got too much on my plate today to wait around. His dad is usually not punctual anyway, and more than half the time he calls me to come and pick him up, because he got busy. Whatever. Not like I have anything important to do, right? But, ohh...let me ask for special consideration with him and his schedule and it's a whole different story. I won't get into it, but it is part of my 'tude at the moment.

Usually during stressful times (which I might add happen all too often) I hunker down and do some Themes for Xanga. It's relaxing to me. It's therapy of sorts...and affordable! It also keeps me drug free (prescription drugs, I mean...the legally acquired kind). I did a custom theme recently for a Xanga friend. It turned out nicely, I thought, and I was stoked that I figured out how to make the background of the posting area and the side modules semi-transparent. I thought I would do some similar themes and upload them to the themes directory soon, but I really hated the way the thumbnail turned out in the theme directory:


It looks awful, and I guess that's because of the type of image I had to use to make these areas semi-transparent. Take a live look at this custom layout (notice the background when you scroll, visible through the post and modules), by clicking here or by clicking on the image below:


So, taking a look at those things, the thumbnail and the site, you can see that no one would ever even click on the thumbnail to check it out, right? Frustrating.

I have to run to the post office and drop off some mail. It is but one thing on my list of many things to do today. I must make some headway so I can watch American Idol tonight.

What do you do when you're frustrated?

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ETA: John commented that the thumbnails look like that because they are generated in IE6, and IE6 doesn't support PNG transparency. I use IE7, which was not the most popular browser edition when Xanga implemented themes. Perfectly understandable that Xanga would choose the most popular browser to do the thumbnail captures. It also means that the theme with the semi-transparencies will look like utter crap to some people on the live site. Heh, I'll just wait to introduce those until a later date. Hopefully that will happen.