Byzantine Blog

When you lose the sweetest little dog that was with you for over fourteen years, that followed you from one continent to another, back and forth, slept with you and spent most of her days on you rather then near you, one of the things you can do instead of going to a half-empty bed at night and crying yourself to sleep is REDESIGN... anything.

And, since dragging furniture around at 4a.m. and repainting bedroom walls might not sit too well with those you love and live with, redesigning a web site seems like the second best option.

So, I changed some colors, played with textures, added a top banner... The whole thing was done through the CSS style sheet and the most important change is that the new layout is liquid -- it stretches and shrinks to fit different resolutions. I’m using a high screen resolution and it kind of irritated me that over half of my screen was showing just the black background of my site - it seemed like such a waste of space. But making a static layout for the screen resolution higher then the standard 800x600px means some people would be forced to scroll not just top to bottom, but also left to right and that is even more annoying. So I decided to take the guesswork out and offer a layout that will do us all a favor by adjusting itself to everyone’s screen resolution.

I promised to myself a while ago I won’t use any images in the layout of the blog, because I wanted the pages light and fast loading, but more importantly, I wanted to be able to illustrate different entries with wide range of graphics, from cartoons, to photos, to all sorts of artwork, so any kind of imagery that is static and “built in” as part of the layout would, I thought, dictate the tone in a way and limit the type of graphics I can use for each new entry. Besides, I really like the look that emphasizes typography, a sort of cleaner and leaner daily newspaper style that leaves a lot of freedom in the choice of graphics for each ‘edition’. If I didn’t like colors so much, I think my first choice would be to have the “skeleton” of the blog entirely black & white with extra-extra-large title and super clean font.

That was then.

Now, it occurred to me during one sleepless night the main page of my blog is a bit too flat and could use some texture. So I incorporated the banner image, the side navigation background image and the little red squares and dots for the lists. (I’m not sure I’ll keep the last part though -- it looks a bit over the top and I seem to be having some problems with those dots in the Internet Explorer, though Mozilla Firefox is displaying them just fine.)

You probably also noticed the main content area is not entirely white any more, it now has a bit of cream in it, because the contrast seemed a bit too stark before, making the reading of the long index page uncomfortable. In case you want to give it a try on your own web page, the color is #feffe5.

It’s been a whole week since we’ve lost our dog -- I still have the lump in my throat and another one in the center of the stomach, as if someone punched me really hard. If this keeps on, you can expect more redesigns in the near future.

I couldn’t at the time, so I would like to say something about her now.

Mrvica (Bread Crumb) was a mutt, probably a mixture of Japanese Chin and Pekingese, that we picked up in Belgrade, while we still lived in Serbia. She was the tiniest little thing and so severely ill we thought she won’t survive. But she fought very hard and, with the vet’s help, woke up one morning with her big dark eyes unexpectedly cleared, bright and shiny like two brand-new buttons someone sewed on while we slept.

We carried her with us to Canada, went through sheer misery whenever we looked for an apartment to rent (in Vancouver nobody seems to want dogs and babies in their buildings), dragged her back and forth on endless, torturous plane flights whenever visiting our family and friends back home and had her follow us through the good, the bad and in-between like every good dog does (as if there is any other kind), contented merely to be with us no matter what.

Although very small, Mrvica must have thought she’s a Pit Bull and would chase any German Shepherd down few blocks if only allowed, acting as if she’d eat him alive if she could get to him. She was terribly spoiled and rude, with a personality of a Hollywood Diva, strong-willed and stubborn. She was also acutely aware of members of her own “pack,” the one she felt responsible for, and completely and totally loyal and in awe of us as if we are the most perfect things ever created on this earth. No one else could hold her or touch her (unless willing to risk a finger or a nose), though you could give her all the treats you can come up with, as long as you didn’t expect anything in return.

She embarrassed us probably a million times in her fourteen years of life, because she was so appealing, a feathery little dog with a bushy tale, bouncing off the ground in the rhythm of tiny chime bells, but with Mrvica appearances really were deceiving and every bit of cuteness would evaporate abruptly, as soon as someone unfamiliar tries to get too close. That’s how she was from the time she was a puppy, until the very last day of her life, when she managed to postpone her dying for an instant, long enough to warn the veterinarian trying to check her temperature to BACK OFF.

She dyed of kidney failure -- a progressive old-age disease that could have been developing for a year. We had no idea she was ill, since she never looked ill, until a month before the end and even then we were assured she has an infection of some sort, but certainly nothing life-threatening. Her vet explained that dogs compensate for the kidney disease successfully for quite a while - basically, they’re hiding it and it isn’t something one can do much about anyway, even if discovered early on.

Over the years I had quite a few dogs and cats, since I kept collecting whatever I find all my life (I’ve been born with this disease of not being able to pass by anything that cries) and I’ve lost a number of pets before - the birds, the fish, cats, dogs, you name it... Every one was different, every one had its own personality and unique character and I still remember each of them.

But losing Mrvica was, so far, the hardest. Maybe because it was all so sudden and unexpected, maybe because she looked so healthy and happy as if she could easily live another five years, maybe because she never left my side and was, somehow, entirely mine from the first day I picked her up... I think it is mostly because she was very special and quirky in such a surprising and irresistible way you couldn’t help but laugh and love her even more for it.

I will miss her for the rest of my life.