Believe it or not, I actually created my own spring time theme for Wordpress. It’ll be the first thing I’ve designed in a month or so. It’s pretty simple, but I like it. I’ll try coding it and uploading it this weekend, but there aren’t any guarantees.

It feels so nice to actually design something again.

Things have calmed down a bit, and I’m still gaining more and more strength everyday. I’m really excited about this upcoming summer, though. My trip director from France, Mr. Kelly, has been helping apply for STC this summer. STC is staff training at a Word of Life camp, and I’ll hopefully, be working at the WOL camp in Florida. I’ll be gone from June to mid-August, but I think this will be a great opportunity for me to get used to living on my own, working and being at the FA Bible Institute. I’ll be paid a scholarship at the end of the summer ranging fom either 1k to 1.5k, and that certainly helps a lot.

Lately I’ve been so overwhelmed by my studies. I’ve got the SAT in a month, and with summer STC’ing and the trip to England, I can’t afford to be behind or having ‘left-over’ studies for when I come back. Basically, I need to cram 4-5 units (usually, one unit of studies is done in one month) in a span of two months. Aside from my studies, I’ve also got the Teens Involved compeition to worry about, an upcoming drama, and whatever responsibilities I have during the week.

I’m so ready for the summer vacation.

Before I forget, I’ve got something special to announce–Heather, my host, now has her own fanlisting run by yours truly. It’s called ‘Girl of the Year’ (from the FM Static song), so if your a fan of Heather (like I am), go join!

So hopefully this layout will stay up longer than the others… With the Wordpress themes, I just haven’t found the right one for the site just yet. They all contain one specific element I like, but there hasn’t been one layout where it has all the elements I like. And with my computer still broken and downstairs… I can’t exactly create the layout I want.

On the Weblog Tools Collection site, they had an interesting post, ‘What’s in your Blogging tool kit?’ I think that’s a pretty nifty idea seeing as I how love checking out the new plugin/theme releases, and I’m always figuring out the best way to update, best browser to use, etc. Anyways, here’s my tool kit:

• Wordpress for blogging tool. I’ve used CuteNews and b2 before, and Wordpress has always been my favourite. Even at my old host, I whined (yes, I’ll admit it) about not having a database connection, so I could have Wordpress installed in my site. I use A LOT of plugins, and they can be viewed here. My favourites ones, though, are ‘Breadcrumb,’ ‘Comment Plugger,’ ‘Hide/Cut Text,’ ‘Update Twitter Status,’ ‘Verse of the Day,’ and ‘Wp Grins.’
• For my browser, I use Firefox, Flock and IE. Mainly, I’m a firefox-kinda girl, but Flock also gives some nice advatages of being able to upload to both photobucket and flickr and creating hyperlinks from each account as quick as I snap. I still say IE is the tool of the devil, but my dad doesn’t believe in browsing happy. ‘Stuck in his old-school ways,’ I say.
• As a sub-division for my broswer, the plugins I use in firefox/flock are ‘Foxytunes,’ ‘Download Satatus Bar,’ ‘Del.icio.us Bookmarker,’ ‘Web Developer,’ and ‘FireFTP.’ Both are essentials (at least, in my opinion as a humble blogger/web designer slash coder of three years)
• I use Gmail and Trillian for keeping in contact with my peeps. Word.
• Feedburner organizes my feeds for you, the reader. Last.FM also organizes my music history (like no one has ever heard of last.fm before stumbling upon my itty bitty site :P).
• I also use CuteFTP as my FTP client.
• I’m signed up with the Wordpress mailing list, del.icio.us bookmarks my sites, and I frequently check the Weblog Tools Collection.

Hopefully, my list will help someone… If not, it’ll make an interesting read to someone else.

And so Avril Lavigne has a new single out called ‘Girlfriend,’ and believe it or not, I downloaded it from iTunes today. It’s kinda catchy in it’s pop sorta sense. I despise her swearing, and the fact she uses three (maybe four) guitar chords in the chorus, but it’s pop… What else do you expect? At first this ‘punk rock princess’ made the whole emo vent of ‘Yes, I am Emo Rock!’ And after two albums, she went to the pop scene like so many other good artists. She’s been pop from the start, but her new single proves it even more. I’ve never really been a fan of her, but I figure, ‘Hey, this is a good catchy upbeat song to clean the bathroom to!’

And hey, I’m so emo that I know All-American Rejects, My Chemical Rejects and Avril are not emo. Or, I’m so un-emo, that I know AAR, MCR and Avril are emo. Figure that out, kids.