Extreme Makeover – Blog Edition

Last summer, when I started this WordPress blog, my goal was to teach myself some new skills. I set-up the whole thing up on my own, from end-to-end. It definitely wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Six months later, I decided it was time to revisit this again and give the site a makeover. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been doing a lot of research to see what changes I would make. I initially talked to a professional about doing it for me, and while she was very reasonably priced for what I wanted to do, ultimately, it was still out of my price range for what I wanted to spend on a hobby. Since my initial goal was to learn new skills I decided try to make the changes myself. I took the site down over the weekend (another thing I just learned how to do) and completely changed the look. What you are seeing right now is the result of much trial and error. I wish I took better notes the first time because it would have saved me a lot of angst.

The major changes I made were:

* changing the theme
* imported my Blogger site (the first 2 years of my blog)
* added video

Also, if you click on the Home page, you’ll see a new “Featured” panel. I thought that was kinda cool.

Version 1.0 was the Blogger site, Version 2.0 was the first instance of this site and this is Version 3.0 (do I sound like a Product Manager or what?). Over the next couple of months I’m going to try to learn more elements of design, so maybe the next version will come out in the next 2-3 months. So if you see things that change, or don’t look right, its just me tweaking with the site, trying out new things.

Sunday Spa Day
I would be remiss if I did not share my spa experience from yesterday. I had a gift certificate for one of those communal spas in Japan Town. I’d never been to one of those spas (let alone J-Town). It was…different. I guess I was expecting something like the Roman Baths at the spa at Caesars Palace. It was anything but.

When we got there, there was a 3-hour wait for the communal baths for those who did not have a spa appointment. I thought, “Wow, this must be really something.” We checked in and headed to the locker room which was extremely small. There was also a lot more nakedness than I remembered there being at Caesars.

Anyhow when I walked into the room for my massage, the absolute first thought that came to mind was, “this is just like Taken” (the movie). I found myself in a large room, dimly lit, that was sectioned off by curtains (like in a hospital). Each section was set-up like your typical massage room in a spa, but it was open at the top.

My massage started off really well. I told the therapist where my trouble areas were, etc. About 15-minutes into the massage I hear someone walk in to speak to the therapist. He walked out, but since there were only curtain sectionals, I could hear everything they were whispering. The first thing I heard was, “its the wrong person.” Then I heard him say, “Well, we already started the session so I should just finish it.” Then a lot more whispering. After about a minute, the therapist returned and explained to me that there was a mix-up with scheduling and they would need to switch therapists. Then the scheduler stuck her head in and told me, “We got mixed up between your name, “Naomi” and another customer named “Kiyomi.” I just looked at her and said, “OK”, but really I was thinking, “Are you kidding me? This is a Japanese spa. You confused Japanese names?!”

Well the correct therapist showed up about 2 minutes later and proceeded to confirm requests I made when I booked the appointment – verbatim. That made me not be mad anymore and the massage turned out to be really, really good – and about 95 minutes, 15 minutes longer than what I originally booked.

Still, the whole experience was weird, not really the relaxing experience I expect to have at a spa. Don’t think I’ll be going back to that one again.

Saturday Run
I also had a really, really good run on Saturday. You can read about it here.

Favorite Photo of the Day
I absolutely love Julia Roberts’ look at the Golden Globes last night!

Related posts:

1. Why I Blog