Am I a blogging addict, you ask? Why yes, in fact I am.

Anywhoo, today, I come to you from the depths of my basement, where I have been unceremoniously locked until I stop swearing at my computer/finish re-skinning - whichever comes first. Now, before you think that's horrible, I've had a t-shirt made this morning that reads "Have House Guests. Will Go Quietly If Abducted." As another happy note, the basement isn't a bad place to be when it's 88F in the shade. My hamsters and I are quite happily hunkered down in here - cool, calm and not getting skin cancer.

Thus, in response to some of the wonderful compliments (thank you!) and the curious questions, I thought I would take a moment to dissuade some of the popular myths and the like.

This is an en masse reskinning project. Normally, when the site gets a new skin, only one is provided and all of the others remain. This time, however, the skin sets are going through a major overhaul to make them universally accessible and editable. Currently, when poor Ol' Sunny Butt (a.k.a., Jay) is forced to go in and update skins, he has to find all of the areas where a certain something is located, the HTML is different for all of them and it's a whole to-do. In the future, all of the HTML will be of the same format and template, meaning he will be able to do a quick copy-paste and update all of the skins. To boot, some users (namely those surfing on Macs, Palms, cellphones, crackberry's and toaster ovens) are having problems using the DHTML menus - a geeky term for those drop down menus that we switched to a while ago. The new skins won't include them (sad - i know) but it will mean that everyone who wants to is able to use the site.

It also means that some of those old ugly skins can be re-done or phased out. The house skins will be overhauled and coming back with a totally new look, but there will be a skin available for all four houses. Snowscape, Writing, April Fools and Writing Orig will probably go the way of good music in due time but will likely be replaced with new options.

As a final perk on the user interface end of things, all skins will have the same "template" - meaning that, no matter what skin a person is using, you will be able to easily direct them to the link or button that they are looking for.

Uh-oh, I think I hear someone in the cupboards. I have to go upstairs and investigate before the season has been taken entirely off of all of my cast-iron cookware.