I haven’t been able to get CommentLuv to find the feed on my site since I started using this Wordpress theme, so my last posts never show up when I leave comments on other people’s blogs. I emailed CommentLuv support about it and they said:

you have not got an autofind feed url in your site header , commentluv needs to see where your feed is to be able to read it.

Does anyone know how to get this autofind feed URL thinger? I emailed my theme template designer but haven’t heard back. Surely it’s just some simple line of code in header.php, right?

Help, please.

Fixed it! With a little help from the folks at CommentLuv and a good old Google search, I’m set to go.

I added these lines after the meta tags in header.php:

<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> RSS Feed” href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss2_url’); ?>” /><meta name=”distribution” content=”global” />

<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/atom+xml” title=”<?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> Atom Feed” href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss2_url’); ?>” /><meta name=”distribution” content=”global” />

And made sure that <?php wp_head(); ?> was right before the </head> command.

It works, everyone! Hurrah!

Even though I’ve moved to an apartment, I still can’t shake the urge to make a mess redoing things in my living space. I’ve painted everything, installed a new light switch, changed out an old fixture, put up shelving, run coax cable, you name it. I like to make a space my own, and I want everything just so.

The other day I made myself very proud.

I bought an articulating wall-mount for my little 19″ flat panel TV in my bedroom. It’s such a small screen that it does me no good to have it on the wall facing my bed because it’s so far away. So in order to make it work on the wall parallel to my bed, I needed to make it move. So I bought this guy:

It was a cinch to screw it onto the back of the TV. There was a second piece that went onto the wall directly. It even had a built-in leveler so you could mark your drill holes exactly right! Putting the wall mount piece in wasn’t HARD, but it was a little scary because I had to use a 1/4″ drill bit to put in the bolts. It may not sound like much, but that’s a BIG hole to put in your wall. Two big holes, actually. But it worked.  Then the part with the arm just slid onto it and clicked in place.

Then there were power and cable cords hanging down, looking ratty. I picked up some paintable wire covers at Lowe’s and used those to corral the cables and hide them neatly away.

Check it out!

The mounting hardware is rock-solid, and the swing arm is so cool. It doesn’t sit the TV flush against the wall, but that’s the price you pay for that articulating arm instead of a flush-mount. Well worth it, I say.

Go me!

Some of my pants fit again!

Some of them still don’t, but hey… PANTS!

I was prepared to take a little of my excess escrow refund money and hit the mall for several new pairs of dress pants, since neither my khakis, gray pants, or black pants fit me without being too bootylicious for work. I’d long outgrown my nice brown pinstripe pants and so they’ve gone to Goodwill, along with my pink and grey tweeds.

I don’t know if it’s because of carrying so many moving boxes, going up and down stairs a lot more, or what – as it sure was not my diet – but I’ve lost about five pounds and my khakis and gray pants fit once more!

WIN.

NaNoWriMo’s reward is supposed to be self-satisfaction, a printable certificate of completion, and a free proof copy of your book if you send it to CreateSpace in December.

But I’m a material girl. And I do not want a proof copy of something that is going to pretty much suck. I’ll mark it up in red pen in about 2 days.

So this year, when I hit 50,000 words, I am buying this poster to have matted and framed for my study:

And this shirt because it is awesome and true:

We all make ourselves do some crazy shit once in awhile. I know a few NaNo-ers who are promising themselves tattoos (not book-related, necessarily) or little vacations or other fun things if they finish this year. 

What do you do to motivate yourself to do something as nuts as 50,000 words in 30 days?

(P.S. Thanks to Ashley for the Starbucks contest! I won Starbucks drinks, and just in time for noveling!)

Last weekend, Jenny The Reckless Chef came over to bring me squash soup and gingerbread to comfort my poor sick self, and on a whim she grabbed a frozen cobbler at the store. We don’t usually bake from a box, but it seemed like a nice, quick treat.

Disclaimer: I’d never used the oven in my new apartment.

I turned the knob to set the temperature to 400 degrees, then went to turn the knob to set the oven to “bake.”

The knob was blank. BLANK. All of the words on it had worn off.

Jenny and I pondered for a bit what order the settings might be in – off, bake, broil, clean? I turned it to the first setting and in a few minutes, the oven was nice and hot. Figuring that I’d gotten it right, I put the thawed cobbler in and set the timer for 40 minutes. We went into the living room to enjoy squash soup and watch crappy reality TV.

About 15 minutes later:

“Is that SMOKE in my kitchen?”

We rushed in there and the kitchen was in fact full of smoke* billowing from the oven. I opened the oven door.

The top of the cobbler was ON FIRE.

“Grab a camera!” Jenny screeched.**

Yeah, never mind that there was an open flame in my gas oven. This was for posterity.

It. Smelled. DISGUSTING. Even after we opened windows and fanned the smoke outside,*** the whole house was reeking of burnt pastry. We decided that we must have set the oven to “broil” instead of “bake,” so the top heating element at 400 degrees on a piece of pastry was to blame. I’d always had an oven where the broiler was a separate drawer on the bottom, so the idea of broiling something inside the oven did not even occur to me.

The charred top of the cobbler was pretty much solid, but Jenny stuck a fork down into the bottom of the pan to see if any of the berries could be salvaged.

“These are awful,” she said, wrinkling her nose but not missing a beat. “OMG, we have to Twitter this right now!”

Fail can be funny.

_____________________

* And NEITHER of my smoke alarms went off, which you can imagine made me oh-so-happy and safe-feeling, right?

** She’s not called the Reckless Chef for nothing. Her blog is full of pictures of things she’s burned, melted, and broken.

*** The smoke alarms never did go off. I will be speaking to my landlord. For that – and a new oven knob.