And... fill in the rest with the song of your choice for the day. Is it a highway? A rock? Flower? River? Road? Movie? Game? Traffic Jam? Journey? Song?

No matter what you pick, you might want to brace yourself... because today's line up comes from JG and Morpheus, so its bound to be a bit of a one-two punch. From Morpheus, we have the clash that EVERYONE has been waiting for. The cigar smoking "looks like an 8 year old" retired mechanic known as Ribbon faces off with Jade and the glitter powered girls of Wondercute in the first Part of "A Little R & R 2: Alyss in Wondercute Land" ... and then we move from sugar coated insanity to a completely different breed of crazy as we look at JG's offering for the week. It's Part 1 of "Siblings and Savages"

Enjoy! And don't forget to comment and/or join a forums discussion about the story.

Also, if you're interested in getting news from the Whateley staff ... follow us on Twitter. @WhateleyAcademy

On the bright side, the big show that's been using up every ounce of my focus for over a month now closed yesterday and I can finally relax a bit and maybe apply brain cells to other pursuits. The down side is, that with the closing of the last show for the season; I have two weeks to load out the facility before we turn it over to the company that uses it for the three summer months. And then I'm off contract (read: unemployed) for three months before loading it all back in and diving into the next season.

In the Whateley Universe, we come back this week to Kayda 10. Elrod wraps up "There's No Place Like Poe" with this final release, Part 6. Over in the Second Gen corner, Wasamon and Souffle Girl bring us up to date on the European contingent, Erica and Calliope, in "Dorms of Our Lives." 

Enjoy! Comment! Join a Feedback Discussion! Drink Milk and Eat Cookies! Change your car's oil! (One of these things is not like the others)

For today's release, we've got something special. 

From Elrod, we have a story about the Headmistress, herself, Mrs Carson aka Lady Astarte: "Blast from the Past"

And from our newest canon author, Phoenix Spiritus, we have a new student for the Fall 2007 class in a story called "Soaring"

Enjoy! And don't forget to comment or drop by the forums for feedback and discussion!

In the past week or so, I've been trying to work through alternate means of handling some issues of publishing workflow caused by a recent Joomla patch. From what I can tell, they've done something (unintentional or perhaps intentionally to support something I don't know about) that prevents us from doing category changes to articles from the front end editor. This makes it impossible for us to use the "In Progress" "Review" "etc" categories as a tracking process before final publication visibly to the public. Not that such a system is 'required' but it does make it easier for two things: one, it makes it possible for a us to do all of this in the front end instead of giving a lot of authors access to the back end of the site. That's important because it means I don't have to go through a huge vetting process to make sure authors are trusted before giving them access. And second, because it allows almost all of the process to operate without my personal intervention, keeping the maintenance of the site as low impact as possible. 

Obviously, I'll keep working on things... it may be that it'll reverse itself in a Joomla patch because I settle on an alternative method. In the meantime, I've taken a look at the access levels system and made some adjustments based on my current understanding of them, which is far better than when I originally set up the site. Most users won't experience any changes... but authors, both WhatIFeers and canon authors, might experience some restructuring changes... and obviously, at the moment, we won't be using the whole tracking system... to minimize the need for category changes. Continue to create new articles in the appropriate "In Progress" category for that class of story... and then just leave it in "In Progress" until you are ready for it to move to official published status. If you need to prompt people to give you feedback, feel free to PM me or post in the appropriate forum thread which story you want moved and where you want it moved to and I'll get to it as soon as I can... but don't feel you HAVE to move things just because that's what the system demands. We'll get back to using things as intended when we can make it work right.

In the meantime... please let me know if you don't have access to something you think you should. Or if you DO have access to something you think is supposed to be hidden for you. Don't assume its no big deal or leave it as is so you can snoop around... just remember, if you have access to something that you shouldn't, its entirely possible that someone with far less concern for the integrity of the site also has access. And where you might do a little snooping, they might break things permanently. 

Ok... site problems aside... we have some new content lined up today. First from E.E. Nalley, we have the 4th Part of "The Bear, the Bitch, and Everything" ... and then, if that isn't sufficient to satisfy your reading urges for the evening; we also have Part 2 of "Head over Tail" from Morpheus. My Impression of this combination is that it should leave everyone happy for the week. But don't leave us hanging, let the authors know what you think. Comment or join a Feedback discussion in the forums! 

I managed to survive the opening of this musical. I ended my work day filling out my time sheet ... only 112.5 hrs for the two week period of set-up/tech rehearsals and preview week. While my boss is going to have a bit of a fit... its actually about twenty hours fewer than I had expected in planning for the opening. And could have been far worse than that, given how outdated and low end our sound equipment happens to be. The only downside is that my pay is so much lower than industry average for sound engineers, that even overtime rates are below it... But, I got a good night's sleep and while I don't have the day off tomorrow; there isn't a show, so I'll get another night's sleep before having to mix things again. And the run itself shouldn't be too rough, because we're mostly limited by Equity (actor's union) restrictions on number of performances.

Here at the Whateley site, it's another two story Monday. Both of today's stories fall in the original timeline. First, from Elrod, we have Part 5 of the latest Kayda story "There's No Place Like Poe." Elrod has been working closely with E.E. Nalley on this one and has shared the by-line on the piece. The second story is one many people have been eagerly awaiting. Originally released in fan fic format, Morpheus' "Absinthe" has been reworked and is now officially part of the year 2 story.

Enjoy! Comment! Go crazy (if you spend too much time on Absinthe, you may not have a choice)!