New LJ layout! in autumnal irregular stripes, and I love it.

I have a new LJ layout. I was tired of the old one, and wanted something new in autumn colors. When looking for potential backgrounds, I found PatternCooler (at least, I think so—I closed the tab, and now that I'm trying to find it again the website is down) which, although buggy, allows you to recolor and modify preexisting backgrounds. I love irregular stripes, so I used them—in all the reds, oranges, gold, and greens I wanted. The layout is based on Smooth Sailing as always (I like the way it handles icons), but this time I broke down and edited the entire CSS sheet. It's been a while since I played with CSS, but it was a joy to come back to. It allowed me to arrange posts with plenty of padding so that the stripes aren't overpowering, and I was able to tweak almost all of the things about the style which bugged me—like the lines above the posts, the lack of padding around mood icons, the gaps between header and columns, and soforth.

So all in all, I am incredibly pleased with this new layout. ^___^ It's brighter than I expected I'd end up with, but I like it that way. I love the link color, the negative space, and how images, icons, and my mood theme look. Seriously, I'm quite pleased and proud. I'm pretty lazy about changing my layout—I think I've had this one for nearly a year—so it's important that the final product is one that I'm willing to keep for a long while.

It's official: I can write a veritable essay on any subject, even one as mundane as an LJ layout.

Therianthropy: To embrace the cat, I must move beyond the human; white claws. Also a cat video.

I've been exploring my therianthropy more since last posting about it—but the slow work introspection and exploration is rarely worth writing about. Rarely, but not always: I've realized an interesting disconnect in the thought processes of my self-as-human and self-as-cat. (I say "self as human" and "self as cat" not because the two are separate, but because they are sometimes different—and labeling those differences makes them easier to discuss.)

( My human brain, experiencing my cat brain, and the disconnect. )

I've definitely moved beyond the avid fascination I had when discovering the therian community, and I've moved on to introspection and thought and even hypnotism recordings. It's a good change, building personal awareness and making some good headway—both in knowing myself, and improving myself overall, human and animal.

Slightly tangential, I did have an interesting experience with the recording: when told my black claws were forming, I saw them as white. I'm incredibly hesitant to assign physical characteristics to my cat self—I think that it's primarily my self-as-human which cares about appearances, and most of my "gut instincts" are probably just projections. But white claws is concrete and a bit more reliable. It's an interesting tidbit, and worth remembering at least.

Quite tangential: ( In other, unrelated, cat news: a video. )