Perhaps you, my three readers, should construe this entry as something of an apology. I've been trying desperately to write something useful or interesting since returning on Friday night, and I must be honest—the words aren't ready to come just yet.

Think of the writing like yeast dough—of course you could bake it immediately after combining all the ingredients together, but the experiences haven't had time to synthesize themselves into a cohesive whole. They're technically together, but they aren't ready. When the words are ready, they'll come; of this I have no doubt. I can no more stop the words than I can avoid my need for sleep.In the meantime, I have a small present for you: another skin. This one's still getting a couple of minor bugs worked out, but I think it's just about ready for prime time. If you want to try it out, follow this link and see what results. I've only verified it with IE 5.5/6.0 and Mozilla. I know there is a slight CSS bug in Konqueror, but it's not a painful one. I don't know about Opera or other browsers yet, and I'm willing to bet that Netscape 4.7x pukes on it. (Oh, come on, it's like shooting fish in a barrel—it's too easy to even be a guilty pleasure!)

The skin doesn't even have a name yet, but I'm taking suggestions. I've temporarily named it 'greenery' in the hopes that something better would occur to me, but nothing's come to mind yet. Drop me a mail if you think of something.

The photograph is one that Aaron took of me while I was in Illinois. Ask nicely and I might post the original version. When I first saw the picture, I hated it; I'm so sorry to say that out loud since I'm sure that Aaron's reading this, but it's the truth. I wanted to sneak into his computer room after he was asleep and delete the photo from his computer. But I didn't do it—it would've been a trespass on his personal space, and he would have (rightly) taken it as an affront.

The truth, and oh, how I hate to admit it—the picture is, indeed, a very good one of me. I've been wanting to do a slightly experimental skin for some time, and I knew that I wanted to do something that actually involved my face. (The only currently-available skin that includes a photo of me is gothgirl, and in creating it I chose the least-representational image of myself that I had on hand.)

As I pondered the skin, I realized that I already had a lovely image on hand, if I could just work up the courage to use it. A bit of my not-so-patented "photoshop-fu" and some color tweaking later, I had an finished image that I was willing to use. So, Aaron—take this public statement as an admission that my initial reaction to your photograph was very wrong, and that given time, I generally come to my senses about most things.

Every now and then, I like to work on a skin with a particular person's tendencies and opinions in mind. Since I'd started off with a photograph of Aaron's, I snitched some other ideas from his site as well, including a heavily modified version of the three-column layout he's using. His color usage tends to be more subtle than mine ("subtle" isn't a word I use very often in conjunction with myself or my work) and so I opted to go with a muted color scheme based off of the cat.net design he prefers—"mint."

I wondered if anyone would get it. I felt quite justified when Geof loaded up the new skin this evening and immediately declared, "This looks like something Aaron would do."

What should I name this skin, then? If you've got an idea, fire me an email.

Travelogues soon, I promise.