Wow. That didn't take long! The new look has been up for about 8 hours now, and I already have feedback:

i like the doggie site ... this one looks a little dull compared to the yellow/green of the other. plus the dopey looking bella is entertaining. :)

Hi, Mom!

Okay, despite claiming I was going to disappear and read Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince last July, I hadn't done it. As work kept creeping up, I kept pushing off reading it, and pushing off reading it, avoiding all talk of the book with a loud, "LA LA LA LA LA!", covering my ears, and fleeing the room.

Late last week, I dumped the CDs for the book (unabridged, read by Jim Dale, highly recommended) into my car, and popped one in as needed when driving up to the City and back, as well as commuting to work.

Yesterday, it became apparent that I needed to finish the book, and finish it now. Although I'm hoping that completing the book, as I have just done, will open the flood gates for more reading (in particular the stack of books Mike has given me to read), I have this in particular to say about HP6:

J.K. Rowling is a complete beyotch.

WTF? What the heck was she thinking? She killed him off! I freakin', stupid, I cannot believe this, CRIED!

Sirius, fine, blah, blah, blah, the only people who cried on his death were Harry and JK. Wasn't enough, was it? NoooooOOOOoooo. Had to make the rest of us cry, too, was it? Well, it worked. And now I'm mad. Just plain mad.

And Kris is laughing at me now. Stupid book. Made me cry.

Kris invited me to play in a ProTrade challenge, ProTrade being a fantasy football meets the stock exchange type of website, where people can buy stock in players and receive dividends. A challenge is a group of people who compete amongst themselves. The main difference between regular fantasy football (or any other fantasy sport) and ProTrade is that only one player can own a player in the fantasy sports, where as multiple players can own a part of a player in the ProTrade model.

So, despite my reluctance to participate in any fantasy sports (Me. Sports. Not so much.), I signed up for the challenge. I, of course, used the "pick my players for me" feature, allowing the site to draft me five players to play.

And I rocked!

I was consistently at second place in the challenge last week. Kris squeaked by me on Monday night, his having players who played on Monday night and my not. No problem.

Well, along comes Friday night (last night), and Kris tells me I should trade my players out for players who are playing on Saturday. These players can earn me dividends, so I'd be throwing (admittedly ProTrade fake) money away not trading in and getting some playing players.

Eying him suspiciously, I listen to him, trading away Peyton Manning and Joe Jurevicius for some lame-o players that not only didn't early any dividends, but actually lost money.

Did I mention that Kris was the one who made these new picks for me?

Yeah.

So, I drifted down from third, to fourth, to fifth, to dead last as the buy-sell fees ate away completely ALL of my fake-dividends.

Weak sauce, indeed. Weak sauce for freakin' listening to Kris. Suuuuuuurrrrrre, you're just trying to help me. Suuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrre, there wasn't the slightest ulterior motive on that "you should trade players" comment.

Another argument for buy-and-hold demonstrated, though the fake market of ProTrade. Those fees'll kill ya.

BTW, you can't post "crap" in the ProTrade forums. It's considered "profanity." Go fig.

Too cold to be much other than winter. It's rainy (as many people associate with winter in the Bay Area). It's windy (as I associate with winter in the Bay Area). It's cold (as most people associate with winter in general).

What better time to put up a new theme than winter?

It was long past time to change the theme, anyway. Too many people think I actually like my dogs with the old one. Why else would I have pictures of the at the top of the page?

Hint: the picture of Bella made me laugh, and Kris was annoyed that I didn't put up a picture of Annie up, too.

As if I'm not allowed to have a favorite.

My favorite being, of course, Ariel's cat.

[Background image "flaked" courtesy of chris at absentfocus.com, via kaliber 10k. Use from Chris granted for non-commercial use.]