Finally finished laboriously reconstructing my template and links (and adding a few things), which I wiped out in a fit of stupidity this morning. This tedious task taught me a couple of things:

1. My links list (with, I think, one exception) is a wholly contained subset of Stephanie's. I know because I used Stephanie's list to rebuild mine. Either this means that I'm not very original or that everyone is right and Stephanie is the center of the universe.

2. I realized what I actually use my links bar for, which is as an easy way to keep track of all those blogs I follow regularly. I started out pretty egotistically, linking only to blogs that either linked to or mentioned mine, but I quickly realized that I'd have about two links in the bar if I went about things that way. So it's become kind of a map of my reading habits.

3. I had to rethink another Stephanie point (sorry, can't honestly remember if it was on the blog or over email) about how you label the links--do you use the blogger's name or the title of the blog? Well, having given my own blog a pretentious title that I'm secretly kind of attached to, I figured I'd extend the same courtesy to others. But I see opinion divided on this--some bloggers use the titles, others names. (I like David's solution, which is to make up new names for everybody.) Stephanie said she found using the titles disorienting or de-centering, but in a good way--your first thought isn't "Oh, that's just Tim again" or "Jim says..." I find I'm still new enough to blogging that the equation isn't automatic, and Stephanie, Kasey, Jim, and Eileen are the only bloggers I've met in person, the latter two only once each. So when someone posts, "David says..." or "Jordan writes..." I still have to think for a second.