Odontophobia
I’m off to have the crunchiest, chewiest dinner money can buy, because the Big Day is finally upon us! At eleven a.m. tomorrow a dentist is going to stick a needle in my mouth and then yank out two of my wisdom teeth. I plan on eating nothing but soup and Jello for a few days. Any other recovery tips? I’ll try to remember to get a good DeskCam shot of my inevitably puffy chipmunk cheeks…

“The Straight Dude’s Guide to Brokeback.” The funniest part is that they include the fact that Anne “Princess Diaries” Hathaway takes her top off, which has been the Snook’s repeated excuse for wanting to see the movie for some time now. (Link courtesy of John, who hopes that UK men will be less squeamish.)

Happy blog-birthday to me!
My blog is going to kindergarten, folks! That’s right; I’ve officially been blogging at web-goddess for FIVE years. (The archives go back a little further because I was blogging elsewhere.) As I have done in previous years, I’ve compiled some statistics about the past twelve months. Overall the trend was towards less posting and commenting (which isn’t very surprising given that it was my first full year not working as an IT drone). Here we go!

• Number of posts: 779 (That’s down nearly 100 from last year!)
• Number of comments: 2528 (Down 795 from last year!)
• Comments-to-post ratio: 3.25 (Pretty close to last year, actually.)
• Comments mentioning the Snook: 200 (Good grief, that’s like 25%!)
• Most commented posts: Half-Blood Prince Review, My Birthday, Send Emma a Postcard, “What candy would you sell your soul for?”, Cottage Cheese Recipes
• Top 10 commenters (excluding myself): Amy (173), Eileen (86), Marci (86), Niffler (80), Tricia (72), Robert (62), Frances (60), Brigita (59), Tara D (56), Max (55)
• Moblog posts: 34 (I really need a phone with a better camera.)
• Posts mentioning “diet” or “Weight Watchers”: 43
• Major redesigns: 1 (You’re soaking in it.)
• Pictures of my cat: 2 (Only TWO? I can’t believe it. This situation needs to be rectified immediately!)
• Major hair color changes: red, blonde
• Apple letdowns: Dead iPod; G5 Weirdness progresses to full-on Breakdown; Another Breakdown leads to a Major Frustration, a Complaint to the Office of Fair Trading, and three months of waiting for a Replacement Machine; and Ongoing Firewire Issues with the new machine
• TV appearances: Better Homes and Gardens, Knitting with the Channel 7 Weather Girl

What will 2006 bring? Definitely more cat pictures…

Here’s some amusing trivia for your lunch break: 100 Things We Didn’t Know This Time Last Year. BBC staff compiled it from news stories published throughout 2005. The one that immediately caught my eye was the assertion that the orange Monopoly properties are tactically best. This refutes the Snook’s longstanding belief that the red properties are the key to winning the game.

Help me, Grammar Nazis!
We were just reviewing an ad for the shop with this copy: “What Ever Your Passion, Tapestry Craft Has Something For Everyone.” And I suddenly realized that “What Ever” should be one word, not two. Right? The dictionary only lists it as one word, yet upon Googling there are tons of examples of people saying “What ever happened to…?” Of course, I’m talking about the Internets here so those might be all idiots. At any rate, we’re now having them change it. I just want to be sure I’m right. Thoughts?

New Year’s Resolutions

• I will get to my healthy BMI range, but I’m not going to beat myself up over how fast it happens.
• I will run the Nike Women’s 10K and the City to Surf this year.
• I will finally get my finances in order so I can enter my thirties as an honest-to-goodness grownup.
• I will do my best to cut toxic people – both professionally and emotionally – out of my life.
• I will read more books.
• I will take a photography class so I can hang out with the Sydney Photobloggers and not feel like a doofus.

Anybody else got any good ones?

When the Snook and I next visit Indiana, we’re soooo going to see the world’s largest ball of paint. (Link courtesy of Pop Culture Junk Mail.)

Since people keep asking us, no, they haven’t caught the murderer yet.

Dubious Holiday Achievement: The Snook and I cleaned off twenty-two episodes of Scrubs from the TiFaux. And by “cleaned off,” I mean “watched for ELEVEN HOURS CONTINUOUSLY.” We love Scrubs.

I’ve been working on the redesign of the Knitter’s Guild website all day. (Old version; New Hottness) It’s not done yet but you can take a peek if you want. All design credit goes to Hank, who kindly volunteered his time and talent and somehow refrained from balking at my stipulation that the text had to be HUGE. (Old ladies are blind, yo.) In terms of the code, this is my first hard-core XHTML + CSS site ever… which means that the Snook pretty much had to hold my hand the whole way through. He’s the best. I dunno; I just have a blank with this stuff. I’ve resisted learning it because I don’t like feeling dumb, and I just knew it was going to leave me frustrated and tearful. It did. I got used to being the whizzy Internet chick – the web-goddess, if you will – and it’s hard to face having to start over at the bottom. He knows how to deal with me though. Like I said, he’s the best. (Oh, and yeah, I still used tables to position the columns. Suck it, Zeldman!)