I couldn't leave the old theme up as I'm fairly sure it will break with the upcoming update. Switching to a very-lightly-modified version of the default theme removes several variables from the upgrade process. At the same time, being a very basic theme, if *it* gets lost in the upgrade, then no major loss has occurred and the theme to the point you see can be easily re-created. And once the upgrade is done I can work on finalizing the theme, getting the colors the way I actually want, etc.
Remember that the forum theme underwent about twenty publicly-visible modifications before completion. The Golden Gallery you see is version four of the theme I started on this morning. And the forum re-theme was without an upgrade in the mix.
Also: Yo, I heard you like updates in your updates, so I added an extra update to my updates.