<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Ballastexistenz]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[https://ballastexistenz.wordpress.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[Mel Baggs]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://ballastexistenz.wordpress.com/author/ameliabaggs/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[Updated blog theme.]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p>The theme was in bad need of updating anyway, and we&#8217;ve just changed servers at autistics.org (and various complications of that, rather than my mucking with themes, is what took my blog down the other day) which seemed as good a time to update as any.  And I&#8217;m stuck inside for the most part until the pollen count goes down, and have little else to do.  So I updated it.</p>
<p>The picture at the top is the view from my old apartment window in California.  It&#8217;s a view I&#8217;m quite familiar with because my old apartment was inaccessible to me in many ways (not just wheelchair &#8212; it was also too hot and the flooring patterns made me get stuck more easily) and I didn&#8217;t get the chance to move around a lot the way I do now.  Plus my neuropathic pain condition wasn&#8217;t treated for part of that time (the last few months before I got it treated I spent so long in one spot that I had to recondition myself to sit up afterwards), and I hadn&#8217;t got a wheelchair yet at all for part of that time (which drastically reduced my activity level as well).  So I spent a <em>lot</em> of time looking out that window, and am very familiar with that view.</p>
<p>It actually fits with the theme of this blog in many ways, because I remember getting an email from someone who couldn&#8217;t imagine being stuck in one place for as long as I sometimes have without wanting to die or something, and I remember thinking that there&#8217;s actually stuff you miss by <em>not</em> being stuck in one place for that long, just as there&#8217;s stuff you miss when you <em>are</em>.  I know every detail of that tree, of the lives of the birds in the birdcage across the courtyard, of the various plants, and so forth, to a level that most people who just walked by or glanced out the window sometimes would not.  There&#8217;s a whole lot of life to be experienced whether you&#8217;re stuck in one place or moving around all over.  That&#8217;s part of the basis for my post <a href="http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=204">Life&#8217;s Infinite Richness</a>.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m still working out some of the annoying formatting problems of the new theme, but everything should be back to normal relatively soon.  For instance, the stylesheet was inexplicably making <em>all</em> images left-oriented and inline regardless of where I tried to put them, and I fixed that, but there&#8217;s still a few more minor irritating bits to work out.  (Such as link categories, which have stopped holding any meaning even before I changed themes.)</p>
<p>Can any Firefox users tell me whether the comment fields are now autofilling to something <em>other than</em> the name you usually use?  Mine are inexplicably filling in with Ettina&#8217;s name, my email address, and Ettina&#8217;s Blogger profile.  But they&#8217;re only doing it in Firefox, not Konqueror.</p>
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