I am frus­trated. Nothing I do for the design of my new web­site is any good. Is there any client out there more dif­fi­cult to work with than yourself?

Part of the problem is how large my per­sonal web­site has become. There’s quite a few parts to it. There’s my resume, my port­folio, my blog, my Learning Chi­nese site, my Google Maps exper­i­ment, and the inter­ac­tive journal from my trip to Taiwan. And those are just the major pieces.

Part of the problem (I think) is that I’ve been trying to shoe-horn all of these things into the same design – at min­imum, the same grid system. I think it’s time I give up on that. Each one of these items serves a par­tic­ular pur­pose and deserves it’s own design. Sev­eral items, like this blog, the inter­ac­tive journal, and the Learning Chi­nese site, already have their own designs. If I tackle each item sep­a­rately, I will prob­ably have more suc­cess. Maybe.

Easing the pain of my frus­tra­tion is a brand new bottle of Zaya rum that my fiancee was nice enough to track down. It’s not easy to find. Only a few places around here carry it reg­u­larly. I do need to drink it in mod­er­a­tion. Besides being expen­sive, it’s quite strong. I may have had too much last night.

The other remedy for my malady is a bit of fresh berry pie. I don’t make berry pie often, and I almost never make it during the winter. It’s impos­sible to find fresh berries that are good enough to really jus­tify a pie. How­ever, I just couldn’t resist. I pur­chased frozen berries. I know, it’s a culi­nary sin. What else am I going to do? I’m not going to spend 5 dol­lars a pint at Whole Food for blue­ber­ries from South America.

My pie crusts have improved sig­nif­i­cantly. One reason is that I now weigh out my ingre­di­ents instead of mea­suring by volume. Another reason is the switch from short­ening to lard as my fat. I also started mixing the dough by hand rather than use a pastry whisk to cut the fat into the flour. Finally, I started buying better flour. As a result, today’s pie crust is flaky and deli­cious. Yeah, the pie’s not even cool yet and I already tried some. I can’t resist.