(Blinks, looks around)  Wow, has it really almost been a month?  It seems just yesterday I was saying to myself “As punishment for taking so long to complete my website, I won’t blog until that website is FINISHED.”  Then, every week I would say “Alright, this week,” and then the next week I would say the same thing, and, OH LOOK, it’s September 20th and I haven’t blogged in a month.

So, it was about 11PM last night, when I finally completed my website.  I sat in disbelief for about an hour, and then I moved it over onto byjillian.com!  Wah-lah!  (Opens curtain, crickets chirping) Feel free to sing words of praise here. Alrighttt, I guess I’ll post a screenshot of it, for archival purposes:

Alrighttt, and I guess since the subpage is so different I’ll post it too:

And no, it doesn’t matter how wide your screen is, or how tall, it will look the same to everyone, using Firefox 2.0 and up, and IE (Internet Explorer) 7.0.   IE 6 does not display the footer properly, and, I can only please one person per day.

Creating the design for the website was probably the hardest part.  Once I got the design down, I spent about 2 weeks figuring out how to put the footer at the bottom of the website, and I would give up every five seconds, because it would work in Firefox and not in Internet Explorer.  Because, as we all know, Internet Explorer is the root of all evil.  Yes, ALL OF IT.

Well, except for pedophiles, and Ace of Base, not that the two are related. However, they are down on that “root of all evil” list as well.

I started realizing while looking through all of my folders, that I am really good at documenting the changes I made to my blog, with screenshots and saving all of my files in neat folders.  What I am not good at, is putting a DATE to any of this.  All I have on my blog folders is “Blog Version 1″, “Blog Version 2″, all the way up until this blog, which is “Version 4″.  Yeah, that’s nice, but when I’m trying to figure out a TIMELINE, it’s not so nice. So, I incorporated a very complex mathematical equation called ESTIMATION to put a time to each of the websites.

In a word: Fun.

Alright, so I guess I overdid it with the lame “My name is Jillian, and this is my website.” on every page, but, after working on it regularly for the past few weeks, I felt like the Well of Creativity was running dry.  And, maybe I went a little overboard with the whole thumbnail-images with a blown-up part of the image, that is, until the user clicks on it to view the actual image.  It was fun making them all though and choosing different spots of the larger image.

Oh, I just found the image I was looking for about web design:

[End of Shameless Self-Promotion]

Well, I figured that I would’ve written this after having approximately 6 beverages (and by beverages I mean SHOTS), you know the whiny blog entry from that occasional blogger that is usually along the lines of, “Ohmigod iloveuguys and…Im sry for what i’ve done an i wont due it agin, I promiseeeeeee you guyz rock!!!!!111oneoneone”.

You will be pleased to know that I am neither drunk, nor have I been drinking. So, let’s get to it before that all changes…rapidly.

I am published in a book.  A real-life textbook.  I have no idea why I didn’t blog about this, uh, THREE YEARS AGO, you know, when I received said textbook?  However, sometimes I have to take a step back and say to myself, “What ARE you thinking in there?!”  It’s a mystery even to me, sometimes.

Also, before we get started I would like to personally  apologize for the quality of these screenshots from the book - I took them with my digital camera, because I don’t have scanner, yet… (Cackles)

Click on any picture to enlarge it.

First, let’s start out with the e-mail, because you KNOW that this gives credibility. I mean, something that I can completely fabricate AND make it look real.

Oh, wait.

Well, for those who are believers, most of my replies went something like “OH MY GOD, LIKE, TOTALLY AWESOME YES!” Followed up by asking them to send me a free copy of the book if that was at all possible. A week after the book was published, I received mine in the mail.

Of course, that was three years ago. The other day I was unpacking my final box and I came across this book, actually. I remembered when I first got the book, I ripped open the clear packaging and started tearing through the book, looking for something about my website.  I started to get upset, and it was then that I realized that it was 800 pages long, maybe I should think about this rationally.  I flipped to the Credits part of the book, where all of the citations are.

My site was at the top, but, I was sure that my blog was probably somewhere in the middle of the textbook, certainly not on the first page as this was saying. It was probably a typo, I thought, them putting “page 3″ as the page number my site was on. There was no way that I could be at the front of the book, it’s probably a misprint, right?

I flip to the front of the book, and open it up to the first chapter. “Chapter 1: Thinking Like a Writer”, the first page says to me in clear, textbook BOLD print.

And there it was. The most popular blog I have ever written for, Boredom on a Stick, mounted on one of the first pages of this textbook.

I first look at the screenshot of my blog on the right-hand side of the page, because, let’s face it, a GIGANTIC screenshot of my own blog on PAGE THREE, it probably would have caught your attention first as well.

Wait, you don’t believe me that it was on page three in “Handbook for Writers, Eighth Edition”?!

Oh, now you know. Yeah, PAGE THREE. I’m still in disbelief. I read the entire first page on the left, and not only do I have my own screenshot in a textbook, but I also have a quote right on the first page, after the start of the chapter-page (which, shouldn’t count anyways) Page 2.

As you can see in the middle, there is a genuine reference to my screenshot in “Figure 1.1″. And, it says: “Figure 1.1 shows part of a blog that college student, Jillian, keeps to entertain herself and her friends–and sometimes to blow off steam.”

I couldn’t write like that if I tried. It is, quite possibly, the most beautiful sentence that I have ever seen, in my life. Maybe I should take my diploma out of the frame my mother got for me, and put this in it instead. It’ll probably be the only time in my life where I can say “I was published in a textbook”.

Wow, that just sounds creepy when I say it aloud.

Oh, you just went skydiving?

I am published in a textbook.

Oh, you have a Ph.D. and own your own business?

That’s funny, because I’m published in a textbook.