In the meantime, do visit us in our other locations (See! Shiny! Social! Media! Icons! On! Sidebar!) or, if you want to talk to MizD about a web or graphics project, drop by her design site, Elsinore Studios.

My web savvy cats have informed me that today is OneWebDay. What’s OneWebDay? It’s a day for celebrating the web because, simply put, the web is worth celebrating. Here’s more from the OneWebDay site:

OneWebDay is one day a year when we all – everyone around the physical globe – can celebrate the Web and what it means to us as individuals, organizations, and communities.

As with Earth Day – an inspiration and model for OneWebDay – it’s up to the celebrants to decide how to celebrate. We encourage all celebrations! Collaboration, connection, creativity, freedom.

By the end of the day, the Web should be just a little bit better than it was before, and we’ll be able to see our connection to it more clearly.

Now, I might be off to a late start (almost 6pm, PST), but that’s not stopping me from joining in the festivities. For my small part I’ve made a list of things to accomplish before the day is out. Fortunately for me, my “day” doesn’t end till Chopper gets home from work at 10pm, so there’s time yet. Let’s see how well I do…

A final thought for OneWebDay: As most readers of Belly Timber know, Chopper and I spent all of 2005 and most of 2006 away from our home, caregiving for my parents. We were on an island, not unpopulated by any stretch, but separated from our friends by hours in the car and more hours on an expensive ferry ride. We didn’t get out much. Had it not been for the internet — for email, for chat, for this blog, and for our other online communities — we would have lost touch with nearly everyone save for those few who still rely on phones and snail mail. (Don’t get me wrong, I love a good old-fashioned letter on paper, but how many friends of mine still write them? Let me count. Um… Yup, none.) Point is, during our island stint, the web was our lifeline. It saved our sanity more than once, it brought us opportunities well worth having, and it gave us many many new friends. I only hope that some day we’ll be able to travel and meet the friends we’ve made who live further than a day’s drive away.

And now, because it is also Weekend Cat Blogging, and Puddy and Katie have declared an optional theme of “Favourite Things,” here is Ahriman doing one of his favourite things: Color-coordinated sleeping.

A few weeks back it was the orange Top Ramen box. Today, it’s manila envelopes. Ahri is also quite fond of the blond wood of my computer desk (which indeed matches his fur quite nicely). Trouble is, he can never quite decide where on that blond wood to plant his orange butt. In fact, I think his favourite thing might just be the act of strolling back and forth in front of my computer screen while I am trying to work. Hmmm. Here’s a question. If I paint the desk a color that clashes with his fur, will he finally stop this madness?

(Much more Weekend Cat Blogging over at A Byootaful Life, wherein all “favourites” get that extra-nifty extra “u.”)

Taggity tag:onewebday

This was my weekend. How was yours?

(Weekend Cat Blogging Round-up will be up as soon as the computers are as cooperative as the cats. In brief, we had an emergency upgrade issue and everything’s in pieces. Somewhere in this office, there’s a hard drive with half a round-up post on it. I think it’s the drive on the table in the photo, but I can’t be certain. On the bright side, the cats haven’t yet knocked anything onto the floor, nor have they turned ribbon cables into playthings. Phew!)

It’s one of those days.

I’m in the middle of transferring a large number of websites, databases, lists, galleries, and so on to a new hosting service and it is tedious work. For those who don’t know, one area in which I freelance is web design and I host sites for my design clients. My current host has been frustrating of late — frustrating enough that I’ve decided it’s time for a change.

This means Belly Timber will be moving hosts as well so there’s a chance we’ll be down for a bit later this week. I’m hoping to make the transition as quick and painless as possible, but I can’t guarantee that a certain persistent orange lummox won’t step on the keyboard at exactly the wrong time and delete my database backup. He has a rather uncanny knack for getting his paws into my work at inappropriate moments, just as Angry Cat used to shed on the articles of clothing that most needed to be clean.

Yes, that’s Angry Cat from the photo archives, above. The Belly Timber Home Photo Uploading Service is on the fritz yet again. I have half a month’s worth of photos stuck on my flash card and no way to show them to you.

On the bright side, with no way to take pictures, we now have a great excuse for lazy, ugly meals.

Another (temporary) bright side: Port and Ahriman have not yet discovered the sleep-on-warm-clothes-in-the-dryer trick. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time…

(The delicious Boo-licious hosts this week’s Weekend Cat Blogging over at Masak-Masak.)

No list today. I’m tossing the list.

It’s a Portland birthday. Rainy, but filled with friends, destinations, and hot chocolate.

Perhaps, instead, I’ll make a list as I go along.

And now I’m off to explore…

This week’s Whine Blogging Wednesday is a short one. Not because I don’t have plenty to whine about. I do still have that whole House Fiasco to cover, you know. (You thought the bathroom was bad? Just wait!) Oh, and then there’s this heat. I mean what’s with the hundred-degree days, I ask you? I’m like three-eighths Scottish. I start melting when it stops raining.

Nah, the issue, as you can plainly see is fur-related, and you’re just getting a sneak peek. And really, it’s not so much an issue but a minor inconvenience, which could easily be solved by installing a bed of nails between my keyboard and the monitor. Or perhaps a lake. Or loch, as I prefer. With invisible, feline-deflecting monster.

Now, next week — next week, there’s no whining on Wednesday. Not a scrap of whining allowed. Why? Because next week’s Wednesday is my birthday and I fully intend to do right by it this time.

(When one spends one’s previous two birthdays on a tiny island away from all one’s friends, one gets rather pissy about it and one vows to do right by one’s next birthday.)

So, the plan: I am making a list. (Have I mentioned I love lists? I should do a quick site search to see how many times I’ve mentioned I love lists and then make a list of… oh never mind, you get the idea.)

This new list?

Forty Five Neat Things To Do On My Birthday. The goal: Collect a list of at least 45 neat things (that don’t take all day or destroy my bank account), and attempt to do as many of them as possible between sunrise on the 18th and sunrise on the 19th. (I should note that I didn’t invent this idea; I just borrowed it from a friend with a recent birthday because it was simply too cool not to use.)

Of course I’ll blog on the Big Day — but alas, no moblogging or voiceposting as I lack them newfangled technogadgets — and I’ll even share pictures because for some bizarre and unexplainable reason, my flashcard reader is functioning again. (Lappy is still quite dead, though, but that’s a whine for another time.)

There is one discouraging part (and I won’t whine! I won’t!): Chopper has to work that day. ALL day. From seven a.m. well into the evening. So, for the vast expanse of my daytime birthday, I’m on my own. Or, with friends just crazy enough to join me.

And I need a list.

(It’s WBW: Share your whines in the comments and while you’re at it, help MizD plan her birthday!)

2. Start a three part series and only post part one.

3. Crash your hard drive and lose two months worth of post drafts.

4. Listen to emo rock until the paint peels off all your dark elf figurines and the only posts you can write are the ones that begin with the phrase “Dear World.”

5. Post a poll about what you did on your vacation, even if it wasn’t a vacation and you really don’t want to talk about it.

6. Forget other people have blogs. In fact, forget blogs exist at all and be completely stunned when you accidentally click on that button on your Google home page that says “reader” and discover some five thousand unread posts.

7. Read a print media opinion piece on the destruction of ‘high culture’ by evil, egalitarian bloggers, and almost believe it, just for a second.

8. Teach a seminar on blogging, hand out your card, then add in a tiny voice: “but, um, remember all that stuff I said about updating on a regular basis? well…”

9. Post a gleeful “return to blogging” announcement and then forget to return to blogging.

10. Better yet, make the cat post it!

11. Reintroduce yourself to the world of blogging with a photo retrospective — on the day your hard drive goes belly up and you can’t access all your archived photos.

12. Wait till your third wedding anniversary to post because at least then you’ve got an excuse to include a pretty picture:

If Angry Cat were around today, she’d be livid. I mean tearing the paint from the walls livid. See, we don’t know for certain, but Angry Cat may have died from tainted food. And now, in the wake of that – in the wake of the Menu Foods disaster – the USDA, in their infinite wisdom, is considering a rule change that’ll further dilute the meaning of the word "organic."

That’s right, under the new rule, all those big Agri-businesses we already trust so, so much? They can call beer "organic" even if it’s made with pesticide-treated hops.

They can call food items "organic" even if they contain synthetic food colorings, fish oil from farm-raised, mercury-tainted fish, sausage casings from factory-farmed animals, and (among other things) inorganic whey protein concentrate.

Huh. Protein concentrates from crappy overseas factories. Just what we want in our "organic" foods after we’ve been so careful about finding new resources for our surviving pets.

Yeah, Angry Cat would be pissed.

But since she’s not here at the moment, I’m going to send you over to this most excellent diary on Daily Kos, and to the Regulations.gov page where you can leave a comment and tell the USDA just how you feel. (The Daily Kos diary includes detailed instructions for maneuvering through the rather unfriendly comment form. I highly recommend that you write up your comment first and then copy-and-paste to the site; the form has a bad habit of timing out.)

And by the way, because, as we all know, the USDA is indeed infinitely wise about such things and infinitely willing to listen to the average consumer, they’ve given us a teensy window of time for comments. In fact, that time runs out at the end of day TODAY. (Believe me, if I’d known about this a week ago…)

No doubt Agri-businesses had months of lobbying time. Us? We got a week. Thanks, USDA! Love you too. Here, have a burger and some fries. No clue where the ingredients came from, but you told me they were organic.

Meantime, let’s see who’s still around:

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