Just For Fancy Musings of a self-proclaimed Fancy-Pants.

So, my genius brother puzzle-pieced all of my furniture and boxes and bags into a solid 5′ x8′ x 16′ block — not more than a half inch of space in there anywhere that might allow for shifting or banging in transit. My photos really don’t do justice to it. My mattress was [...]

As remembered from two weeks and several gin & tonics distant…
So, here I sit in my parents’ kitchen in sunny Red Bank, NJ where it’s not the heat but the soul-crushing humidity that is giving me second thoughts about having given up my life in arid LA. The POD with all of my belongings [...]

So, this will be brief, since it’s late and I have to be up early, but wanted to at least acknowledge the fact that I am, as I type this, in the midst of one of the largest life changes I’ve ever put myself through. I’m writing from a hotel room in Grand Junction, [...]

Finally put a page together for the big stuff I need to sell: http://www.justforfancy.com/YardSale/. I’m especially concerned about getting my plants into new situations before I leave, so if you (or someone you know) is interested (and local), let me know!
And with that done, I am going to do nothing else for the rest [...]

It’s been gorgeous, weather-wise, in Los Angeles this weekend, which makes my extended leave-taking a little bitter-sweet. If only the June-Gloom had infiltrated July too, it would have been a bit easier to kiss this city goodbye. But as it is, the promise of sunny+75 has been fulfilled to the letter lately, and [...]

I’ve only got four weeks left here in the City of Angels, so in honor of my impending departure, I’ve decided that for the next month, I’m going to indulge as much as possible in those things that are peculiarly Angeleno — things you can only get here, or that you can only get that [...]

Setting up the new blog has been a bit like moving into a new house, sight-unseen: I keep finding new rooms I didn’t know existed, all in varying states of readiness. Some are completely unfurnished; some seem to have some random scattered detritus lying about… I’m doing my best to tidy-up as I [...]

I gave up on the last design, and the idea of the thematic child-theme. A few weeks ago I came across the Carrington family of themes, most notably Carrington JAM (Just Add Markup), which is pretty much exactly what I’ve been looking for in terms of a truly blank slate on which to hang [...]

So, a few months ago I went on a little rant about how there is not one single solitary Dunkin Donuts shop in all of the greater-Los Angeles area, despite several false leads on Google Maps, and in defiance of what would seem to be a wide open market for the chain here in LA. [...]

Added some color, played a bit with borders & margins, &c… it’s not my favorite thing in the world yet, but I don’t hate hate it anymore. I’m messing about with the comments at the moment, but that won’t go live until I’ve found a reliable 2.7 update to the Sandbox comments template. [...]

Still hating the new design. Purely aesthetic reasons. Don’t have the concentrated time to work up anything brand new, so I’ll just tweak a few things and just hope that it isn’t causing the violent aversion in other people that it seems to in me.
In any case, I think I am going to [...]

Figures that as soon as I get my first wp theme done, I hate the sight of it. I’ll be figuring more out tonight…

So you’re looking at my first attempt at a custom WordPress theme (I’m calling it Petal, if that’s not too precious). I’m sure there’s elements I’ve completely missed/ignored, but I’m sure I’ll find them (or have them pointed out to me) as I go along…

Holy cats — I feel like Alice through the looking-glass since I unpacked all this WordPress and MAMP stuff. Or perhaps Dorothy after she goes from black and white to color is a better analogy. There’s something so thrilling about finding out that you’ve got a whole new set of skills to sink [...]

I’ve popped the lid here and am starting to play around; I have to say — while Wordpress definitely seems to offer more tools and widgets and extendibles, etc, they also seem to have a much stricter control over content. Have I sacrificed my design freedom for silly doo-dads?
More to come as I pull [...]

So, I got tired of waiting around for Blogger to figure itself out, and decided to join the rest of the serious world on WordPress. Here we are. I (obviously) haven’t done anything as far as integrating the blog into the rest of the site — it’s completely unstyled (well, except for this [...]

For almost twenty years, my family has been spending a week each August at a cabin on a lake in upstate New York — aka, the best place in the whole world. It’s the thing we all look forward to the rest of the year; it’s the one week we know we can all [...]

Four-hundred five and forty spring times past,
When sweet the rushy Avon swell’d its banks
And crimson tulips round the hillsides massed,
Was born The Bard, to whom we still owe thanks
For words so true and beautifully wrought
That though the calendar long years between
Has interposed, those words infuse our thought
And speech to-day with perfume no less keen
Than [...]

So I just applied to grad school — like, five minutes ago. Man, I wish there had been online application forms* when I applied to college the first time 20 years ago. Now all that needs doing is to get my recommendation letters (props to Anne, Chris & Kerry!) and transcripts in the mail. [...]

How is it that I’ve never heard of Neil Gaiman until this last several months??

I’ve watched movie Stardust twice this past week (it’s been running on one of the movie channels), and I love it. While I was watching it last night, I just kept smiling, and the thought occurred to me that I was enjoying it as much as I have ever enjoyed watching such old favorites [...]

It was about 9:30pm last night, and I was sitting there watching Dancing with the Stars and eating garlic-roasted pistachios (totally worth the salmonella risk) when I remembered that my taxes weren’t done yet — or, for that matter, even begun, really — and that I only had one day left.
After contemplating the idea of [...]

I’m feeling extremely pro right now. I’ve got a lot on my plate, so much that it’s getting to that point when none of it is remotely appealing — no matter how important or trivial, difficult or easily accomplished, titillating or dull. I just don’t wanna. Any of it. Meh.

Yes, I know I’ve done it again — it’s been two months (give or take) since I wrote anything here, and it’s not like I didn’t think of something new to post almost every day, sometimes more than once a day, but with one thing and another I either A) genuinely did not have the [...]

Former Senator Tom Daschle has removed himself from consideration for the HHS cabinet seat, and to that I say: thanks god.
I used to be a Daschle fan. Well, fan might be overstating it, since it’s not like a spent a lot of time thinking about him, and since I’ve never been to either of [...]