Well, I finally did it. I'm now an almost-official member of Open Pages. I filled out the nice little form and added the appropriate html to my index page, and now all I have to do is wait for Ophelia to add me to the list. Once that happens I can expect hordes of fans, offers to join mailing lists, and rave reviews from other journalers I respect & admire. Right?

In-between working tickets today I've been continuing my quest to check out all the Open Pages sites. I'm about halfway done, I think, and unfortunately it's just as bad as I feared. I know, I know -- complaining about the quality of OP diaries is practically trendy... but the complainers have a point. The majority of the sites are just boring. I don't worry much about page layout, since I can't manage anything particularly exciting in that regard either. But the writing, the poor spelling, the lack of grammar, the pretentious gothness or the almost-worse cheery all-American normality -- it's like being in high school all over again.

Of course, having just added myself to Open Pages, I probably ought not to talk. I can just imagine the bad karma I'm drawing down on myself. I'm imagining flames along the lines of 'If we suck so much why did you join us?'. To be one of the diaries that people delight in finding, of course.

(Arrogant? Me?)

I do need to do a lot of work on my index page, though. It's an utter mess. I hate trying to do layout. I have no natural talent for it at all.

Earl is here! As predicted, I am now a mass of squishy happy emotions. It was marvelous to find him curled up in bed reading when I got home from class last night. I suppose the ecstasy of seeing him after an absence is one of the rewards of a long-distance relationship, but I'd still rather get rid of the distance. We talked some more about it last night, and he's very encouraging, but I still have deep-rooted paranoia about the entire idea. Surely he can't really want me living down there; I'm much more convenient up here, after all, where I don't distract him from grad school. He's explained to me (very patiently, I might add) that he'd rather be distracted by me than not... but the paranoia continues to surface.

Organisation. Moving down to LA will require immense amounts of organisation. There's a neat Gordian knot, in that:

1. I can't move down until Earl is in a cat-okay apartment.
2. Earl doesn't want to move until I know where my job is.
3. Ideally we should apartment-hunt together.
4. I can't job-hunt very effectively unless I'm living in LA.

The answer to this seems to be 'find someone to apartment/Jinian sit, take a week off work, go down to LA, job-hunt, hope I find something in a week'. Did I mention that switching cities is nerve-wracking?

Speaking of the cat, she was missing this morning. It seems she got out in some mysterious fashion during the night. I panicked thoroughly, convinced my apartment manager to hunt for her, and hurried off to be late for work again. Luckily for my nerves, Joyce (the apartment manager) found Jinian hiding under someones car, and summoned my brother to perform a daring rescue. Once the cat was back in my apartment he logged in to explain to me that everything was okay. I burst into (relieved) tears and promised to be nice to him for at least five years.

It's strange, how something that unsettling can shape your day. I've been in a good mood ever since I heard that Jinian is safely home. Even the little stresses (like trying to find a patch for this stupid Sparc5) have been enjoyable. I plan on scooping her into my lap and petting her thoroughly as soon as I get home; I don't think it'll seem quite real until then.

Time to go read more web-diaries. And do some work.