Behind Infinity

Driving home today, I realized something incredible to me: for the first time in at least 2 years, I am totally
utterly
absolutely
caught up.

The Harvest website (http://harvestopc.org) is online, 95% functional, and the church secretary (Hi Melinda!) and I are on the same page where its future is concerned. I have no wedding photo album orders sitting on my desk, waiting to be designed and returned to Kelly Sweet Photography. I have no freelance stuff in queue. No homework (except the Thomas Oden book my boss told me to read). My room is even reasonably clean, and my direct deposit went through today with the extra hours I worked last pay period, meaning I’m less poor than usual. I still need to finish up Abby’s wedding photos, but I have plenty of time to do that later this week before I see her on Sunday. Someday I need to fix my barn roof, but it’s gone all winter so a couple more days won’t hurt it. All of the things that I should have done many, many yesterdays ago are now
DONE.

I seriously have no idea what to do with myself right now. I kind of like just lying here and not feeling guilty about it…

But I like the idea of playing with my herd even more. I think I’m going to go put a saddle on my two-year-old and see how he reacts. Should be fun.

{expressing my not-so-inner nerd with some friends at a Renaissance festival this weekend – i’m on the right in white}

I was feeling very sad because now that we’re graduated several of my good friends–the kids who I suffered through Greek and Latin with–are scattering to far-off places like Georgia and Wisconsin and the chances that I’ll ever see them again are actually fairly slim. Others are moving to New Zeeland this fall (D.V.)

But today I realized that I’ve made more new friends in the past two months than ever before in my life…good people like Ray, and Tabitha, and Jonathan-my-king-of-awesome-boss, and Dave, not to mention the Samuls, the Minatellis, Shelby, and Drew…

and then there’s all of the old favorites (some of whom are pictured above, the rest of you know who you are)

and I’m excited at all of the new chances to form relationships and learn and bless and grow.

The blog has a new look. It’s a different color palette and different style than I’ve used before–the monochromatic was a challenge and I’m still not sure it works, but whatever. The design is vaguely reminiscent of the series I did in 2006, but I tried to keep it even more minimal.

The photo cred for the header goes to my Mom, who took this snapshot moments before my friend Abby’s wedding (for which I was a bridesmaid) as we waited in the back of the church while the last of the guests were seated. Kudos also go to my friend Tommy who suggested colorizing the dress and flowers (I was originally working with the photo in black and white).

I wanted to include some fun new technologies (ajax and scrip.tac.ulous) that I’ve been starting to learn at work, but a severe case of “designer’s block” and a to-do list a mile long meant I just wanted to get this online and not spend extra time on bells and whistles…anyway, sometimes (especially with blogs) simpler is better. Maybe later.

I thought it would be fun(ny) to look back at previous versions of BehindInfinity. Some of them are fairly hideous. I’ve been spewing my thoughts all over the internet since 2004 (although only the archives from 2006-onward are public) and during that time the blog has pretty much been my playground for testing and improving my design skills.

In the early days, my blog had three absolutely hideous designs, involving pixelated GIFS and loud background images which made reading a painful task (oh wait no, it was my horrible and boring writing which made the reading painful…the images only added insult to injury). These three are forever lost–I don’t have graphics, mockups, stylesheets, or screenshots anywhere. That’s probably a good thing, although it would be hilariously embarrassing to see them again.

This design happened in the summer of 2005. I can still remember sitting on the couch in the basement of our old house with my brand-new iBook, learning CSS code (it was frustrating) while I watched Star Trek Voyager reruns.

Fall 2005, a princess-y thing. Apparently I was in a pink-and-bright phase. Yikes.

This was the very first BehindInfinity Christmas Remix, which became a tradition. The cool thing was that the ornament in the corner was different every time you reloaded the page. I thought that was pretty kickawesome.

Winter 2006–”I am a princess on the way to my throne”, right after Alanis Morissette’s song “Wunderkind” came out on the soundtrack to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Still love the song, still think the design is pretty cute. I was a sophomore in college at the time.

April 2006: “Professional Girly-Girl since 1986 / Compulsive blogger since 2004 / Aspiring classicist since 2005/ Crown Princess Forever”

Same layout, slightly brighter take. My, I was a cheerful little thing back then.

This one happened, if I recall correctly, in August of 06.

This was the October 06 variation.

Christmas 06.

Winter Blues 07.

Spring 07–I added another item to the tagline: “Equestrienne since 2006.”

Summer 07, new layout. “About a girl (and two horses and a dog and Latin and teaching and learning and family and faith and God)…about a life.” I like this one a lot.

Christmas 07 — yummy rich layout, my first foray into dark/rich colors (and very successful at that…) I think this one is my favorite out of all.

And the most recent–early 2008.

Which one is your favorite?

….and that’s all I have to say about that.
I just had to share, is all.