apropos of anything

“Thru” is not a word. It will not kill you to type the few extra letters to properly spell “through”. You won’t get carpal tunnel. I promise.

If you want to AIM it up with “thru”, that’s fine… but everywhere else, I’d really appreciate it if you could remember how to spell. Or at least remember how to use your spellchecker.

Apparently not only did I break the Featured post, I also broke the presentation in Firefox (but I swear it looked fine earlier in the evening), so I’m reverting back to the original WordPress template until I can get things fixed….

I miss my old site design.

There, I said it. It was clean, simple, pretty. It had Lucinda Grande font. If only I knew enough about the WordPress codex to be able to convert it to use with the new content management system…

Until then, I suspect I’m going to continue to play with the site design until I find one that works. I’m not sure what I think about this one yet. It took hours just to do the homepage, so if you navigate further in you’ll see the original colors and design (and I’m not completely done with the homepage either, but… it’s late); as this is by far the most complex template I’ve fiddled with so far, I don’t know if I want to spend the time doing the work for the other pages if I ultimately don’t like the design, so I’m going to leave it like this for now and see if maybe it grows on me.

Or maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and it’ll make me want to hurl.

I like the extra colors on this design. It incorporates images more than the my old WordPress template did; in fact, it almost forces me to hunt for photos to associate with each post. It also restores an area for quick links that don’t merit a full post. I’ve missed that since migrating over to WordPress. Sometimes I want to throw up a link, but I don’t really have much to say other than, read this, it’s great.

On the other hand, it only puts one full post on the homepage, which means the recent post list (that I had edited out of the other WordPress templates) becomes mandatory if I want to make any other content easily accessible. This design also doesn’t incorporate a blogroll, so I added it in anyway… which makes the right column waaaay longer than the left one. And of course, that bugs me, because I am easily disturbed by things that do not balance.

I temporarily removed the search bar to expand the full header graphic because the half-graphic just looked truncated and stumpy, so I have to remember to put that back in tomorrow, or whenever I have time to finish poking around the code.

Until then, I’d really love to know what y’all think.

Update: Somehow I’ve managed to break the featured post. Am beginning to think possibly this new design is just way too much work….

To all the new Georgia lawyers! More soon… celebrating is exhausting!

I’m listy today.

• To take a photography class. Anyone have suggestions for a good one in the Atlanta area? I’d like one that covers both digital and film.
• A volunteer buddy. If you’re interested, email me or leave a comment.
• NBC to move Scrubs to a timeslot that’s not directly across Grey’s Anatomy because I totally love Grey’s again this year. They must have moved Marti Noxon to Private Practice. (What does it say about me that every time I type her name I think “noxious”?)
• Time to make pies. This I blame on my recent Pushing Daisies mini-marathon.

And now I have to go research cookie recipes to make up for forgetting to go to Cisco’s wedding reception last Saturday night…

Waking up to the arrival of your cleaning service. Oops.

Really must stop reading blogs. Sarah at Whoorl has me wanting to straighten my hair, and Jenny at Use Real Butter has me convinced that even I can make petit fours — chocolate covered petit fours at that!

Updated: And Deb from Smitten Kitchen? Is trying to bamboozle me into experimenting with pumpkin bread pudding. Wouldn’t some chopped raisins or walnuts, or maybe some caramalized bananas, go so nicely with that?

Check out the time on this post. I had planned to be up at this time, but not for the reason that I am, which is only compounding the frustration.

Earlier in the week I tried to pay my zakat, only to discover Islamic Relief, my charity of choice because it has a four-star rating on Charity Navigator and is fully cooperative with the U.S. government, doesn’t take American Express. In April, my old Visa got converted to an Amex by my credit card company, and since I’ve always been a one-card-only girl, I don’t have any other credit cards.

I know. I should have applied for a Visa or a MasterCard the day they converted me to an Amex.

I do have my Visa check card, though. And though it makes me uncomfortable to use it like a credit card, I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of mailing in a check, haunting the mailbox for the tax receipt, and then remembering where I filed the receipt come tax time. Doing it over the Internet is just so much easier.

So I used the check card. I wanted to break my zakat up into three payments (really, mistake number two), so I only charged $X on the first transaction. It cleared just fine. The next seven equivalent transactions were all declined.

Two and a half frustrating hours of talking to Wachovia later, I was told that it wasn’t Wachovia but Visa that was blocking my donation. They said Visa has flagged Islamic Relief as a “fraud site” and therefore wouldn’t allow me to charge anything to IRW on a Visa card.

I’m perplexed. If it’s a fraud site, how did my first charge go through? How are all the other charges going through? IRW only accepts three credit cards, so surely there are other people out there donating with a Visa card. In fact, before April, all my donations to IRW were on my Visa.

(I did get fraud-alerted last year, but only after I’d made all my donations, and that was somewhat understandable as it’s not my normal spending pattern.)

More importantly, WHO flags a CHARITY as a fraud site?

I kind of have to wonder if the Wachovia fraud department just got tired of me calling them. I think I might try again tomorrow to see if it goes through then; if it doesn’t, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Anybody have suggestions for good Islamic charities that aren’t in trouble with the government, won’t get in trouble with the government, and transfer a high percentage of their donations to their recipients? (I think IRW is at 98%, which I find impressive.)

I will say, though the experience of continuously calling Wachovia and being told I’m getting cleared only to still be declined was… not my favorite, the Wachovia customer service team was exceptional. I never had to wait long to talk to someone, and that someone was always courteous, helpful, and understanding. It was a customer service experience unlike any other I’ve ever had. Even the fraud department was polite and helpful, although I still think their resolution to my problem is circumspect.

At the moment, my feet.

They’ve yet to recover from the 3-day experience. I desperately need some professional help here, but things have gotten so ugly that I’m a little ashamed to let the pedicurist see them.

In fact, it’s gotten so bad that I, who have been known to call people in Chicago in December and gloat about how I have yet to put on closed-toed shoes, am seriously contemplating ushering in the closed-toe shoe season a few months early. If I didn’t have to worry about taking the shoes off at the mosque every night during Ramadan, I might have already done it. These things are scary, y’all. Like, is that skin, or have you joined The Flying Dutchman scary.

Anybody have suggestions on how to rejuvenate some toes?