I’m especially excited to be able to add an image gallery, a portfolio, and other areas to change this site from a simple blog to a real personal website.
So look for even more changes coming up pretty soon, and I hope you like the new Bit of Ivory!

Especially considering how few people read it these days.

Long-term plans for Bit of Ivory include making it more of a homepage than a simple blog– a photo gallery, a writing portfolio, etc. It would give it much more of a reason for existence. But that will have to wait.

Am a bit miffed that my trackback entries to The Leaky Cauldron keep getting refused for “questionable content.” Hmph. Like *I* would post questionable content. Melissa, anyway you can add me to a whitelist or something?

You will notice that I now require a name and e-mail address for commenters, and that if you have a Typekey identity, you can log in with it now. Non-Typekey comments will be moderated. Part of the upgrade to MT 3.15 is these comment features, and I mean to take advantage of them. I haven’t gotten any spam since the server move, but I doubt that will last forever, so I must do what I can to protect myself. I hate coming online and finding 300 e-mails linking me to Viagra sites or whatever. I know it’s a pain for you commenters, but I figure that people who didn’t comment when it was *easy* won’t miss the convenience.

In other news, I went to the dentist today. No cavities (thank goodness), but I have to have a root canal next week. It probably could have been put off for longer, but my dental insurance runs out when I turn 25 in June, so I need to get it done sooner rather than later. Not looking forward to it particularly, but on the other hand, I’ve had so many dental procedures that I’m not particularly dreading it either. After having your gums cut, 5 teeth ground down to little stumps, and two sets of bridges/crowns, a little root canal is cake. My teeth hurt at the moment, though. I hate it when they use that ultrasonic thing.

We’ve been having gorgeous weather around here lately. It was 64 degrees today, the hottest day of the year so far, and I drove with my windows down most of the day (not on the freeway, though. That would be stupid). I love spring: the warm weather, the flowers, the blossoming trees, the allergies. . . oh. Wait. I don’t like the allergies. It’s not fair that they’ve already hit me. And the Zyrtec that worked great in the fall is doing absolutely NOTHING for me this year. *sigh* I’m willing to put up with allergies, though, for the pleasure of spring.

You’ll also notice a few entries that didn’t used to be there. That’s because this process took longer than was originally planned, and because a direct upgrade from MT 2.661 to MT 3.15 wasn’t working, so all my entries had to be imported to the new server. I didn’t want to add any more entries until the move was complete, so I didn’t cross-post my LJ stuff here. But now that the move is complete, I have accordingly cross-posted the entries on the appropriate day. Enjoy.

And now, I’m going to bed. I’ll post a real update tomorrow.