You are here: Home / Archives for Blogaholic / My Blog

Where I Blog

August 30, 2010 By

Where Do You Blog?


I’m always a little late to the party, thanks to a day job, but I saw through a few different sources that Centsational Girl is having a Where Do You Blog? Party. The idea is to show the world where you spend most of your time blogging, and do the whole linky thing on her blog to join the party.

Without further ado, here is a picture of my disaster area desk:

Where I Blog


Besides my giant monitor with my favorite drawing from this blog post on it, my desk has on it: some bills that need to be paid, writing books, html and css books, my college writing portfolio, a calculator, some pictures, colored pencils, pens, tissues, a big K hiding behind the tissues, some organizing boxes that I can shove things in to forget about, my headphones, a notebook for blogging ideas, some cards from my husband, and a whole bunch of crap – I’m not sure exactly what all is there. There’s also the purple curtains that are always closed because Mister sits behind me and doesn’t like the sun on his monitor.

Below my desk is a turquoise filing cabinet with more stuff in it (not sure what), and on top of that are boxes with CD’s and software in them. What you can’t see is what isn’t in the picture – a huge pile of books and magazines in front of the filing cabinet, which prevent me from opening it, and to the left of my desk is a huge pile of bills that need to be filed in the giant 4-drawer filing cabinet next to Mister’s desk. Obviously, I excel at piling and suck at filing.

I’ve never been good at having an organized desk. Check out this post for a picture of my desk before I met Mister. But because I’m a Gemini, my desk at work is as neat as a pin. Seriously. I get annoyed after the cleaning crew has been in because I have to move everything back to its just so position. If they did the same thing at home that they do at work, I’d never notice because my desk already is a train wreck.

I really need to clean that mess off one of these years. I’d like some space to keep more books handy, which I think would go where all the pencil cups are now. I’d love to paint my little corner aqua, but Mister already has a hard time with my file cabinet, which is probably why he doesn’t say anything about the pile of books in front of it. I’d love a sliding keyboard tray. The desks we got didn’t come with them, but if there was an easy, inexpensive way to attach one to a glass desk, I’m open to suggestions. It would help keep my desktop clear so I have more space for writing. Right now I have to shove my keyboard back to have enough surface space.

So where do you blog? Did you participate in Centsational Girl’s party?

Filed Under: House, My Blog

Pictures of Me

August 25, 2010 By

I don’t have a ton of pictures of myself. I haven’t been a ham in front of the camera since before I hit puberty. After that, I was much more interested in being behind the camera. Then one day, it seemed that I wasn’t really taking pictures anymore. Mister likes to take pictures, and it’s not that we don’t try to take any, but sometimes we’re just so busy living life to stop and take a picture, know what I mean?

I talked to my mom the other day. I remembered that Grandma had a couple of those collage frames in her dining room, and since the photos in them hadn’t changed for the last 15 or 20 years of her life, I can remember quite a few of the pics that were in there. I remember one in particular that is really dorky, but I want to put it on my about page. I was probably 7 or 8, at Grandma’s house in the yard, wearing a red t-shirt with white iron-on letters spelling my name. Very dorky, but perfect for an about page.

I uploaded some pictures and created a set of pictures of me on flickr. There aren’t too many, because like a lot of people, I’m very picky about what can be considered an acceptable picture of myself. You will see the picture from my header, which is me pretending to look at the sunrise over Salisbury Beach, MA. I say pretending to look because even though I had sunglasses on, it was really bright so I had my eyes closed while Mister took the picture.

Salisbury Beach at Sunrise

I love seeing pictures on blogs – I think they can really enhance a story. What I don’t like, however, is including an image for the sake of having an image. I did that quite a bit when I was first starting out, but now I try to stick to pics that are in my personal collection. I also think that pictures help draw people in more. I don’t use pictures as often as I’d like to, but I’ve been trying to do something about that lately. Also, organizing the photos on my hard drive would help a lot – and probably provide me with some inspiration.

Do you like to take pictures? Do you use your pictures on your blog? Leave me a comment to tell me about your favorite post that includes your photos!

Filed Under: My Blog

Feeling the Blog Love

August 20, 2010 By

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been posting a lot more. My new personal blogging series has inspired a renewed interest in blogging for me, and I’ve been spending a lot of time reading and gathering post ideas.

The 3 posts per week schedule has been working out pretty well for me. It’s not so much that I feel pressured, and as Mondays are designated as the Personal Blogging day, I’ve been able to come up with plenty of material without feeling overwhelmed.

With my renewed blogging interest comes the desire for a new theme. I’ve had the current one for quite some time now, and while I do like it, I think it’s time for a change. I have one picked out, but need to do some behind-the-scenes stuff before I can make it a reality (coming up with the moolah is one of those behind-the-scenes things), so I’ll be looking to do that by the end of the year. In the meantime, I did revise my header image a bit – spiffed it up so that it looks a bit more professional and used a cleaner font.

Another thing I’ve been doing is trying to get out and make new blogging friends. As an introvert, I find it hard to get out there and actually say hi, so I’ve been trying to do that a bit more. Comments and communities are a way to do this, and like I said, I’m trying. One thing I love about blogging is the community of it all, but sticking to the same 3 blogs to comment on is going to limit my world, and the whole point of the internet and blogosphere is to make it bigger.

Other things I have going on around the blog: slowly but surely revamping my categories to make them a bit more relevant, composing a Personal Blogging page that will include links to all my personal blogging posts in addition to links to other blogs and articles I find relevant, reading and writing and coming up with more ideas, and general tweaks here and there, like correcting spelling or grammar mistakes as I come across them in older posts. It’s never too late to edit an old post!

I’ve definitely been feeling the blog love, and been loving my blog a lot more lately, which is a nice change of pace. It didn’t take me too long to become a blogging maniac when I first started out, but eventually the blog had to take a backseat to real life, and my posting frequency dwindled to just a few times per month. But I’m back now, I’ve found my mojo, and I’m hoping it doesn’t leave me again!

What are you doing to feel the blog love? What do you do to keep that feeling?

Filed Under: My Blog

Thirteen Things

August 13, 2010 By

In all my years of blogging, I can’t believe I’ve never done a Friday the 13th post. I’ve been blogging since March 14, 2006, and since then I have had 7 opportunities to write about this reputed unlucky day. On only three of those special Fridays did I even get a post up. I declared that I was still alive (the day before I wrecked my car), I did one of those lovely meme things, and I made an entry in my Encyclopedia of Me series. I was going to do another encyclopedia post, but then I looked at the calendar.

Today, you’ll get 13 Things about …me, of course.

  1. This is my 8th Friday the 13th as a blogger, and my first Friday the 13th post
  2. The Encyclopedia of Me post that I almost wrote for today would have been for M, which is the 13th letter of the alphabet
  3. It won’t be all that unlucky a day, since it’s payday
  4. I have never seen a Friday the 13th movie, because I hate horror flicks
  5. I got my first visit from Aunt Flo at age 13
  6. From my archives, both April 2006 and August 2007 have 13 posts
  7. I have visited 13 foreign cities (Toronto, Montreal, Niagara Falls, Stockholm, Gävle, Örebro, Jönköping, London, York, Edinburgh, Bath, Stratford-upon-Avon, and Paris)
  8. There are 13 states that I’ve only driven through, but wouldn’t really say that I’ve actually been to even though I spent the night in a few of them
  9. I do not have triskaidekaphobia or paraskavedekatriaphobia, but I do have another phobia
  10. August 13, 2004 was a Friday the 13th that I worried a lot because my sister lived in a trailer park in the path of a Category 4 hurricane (everyone was fine)
  11. As of this writing, both my birthday and weather categories have 13 posts
  12. Mister promises to take me to a special Friday the 13th flashlight tour at the Winchester Mystery House (but he should probably book that now for the next Friday the 13th)
  13. Coming up with a list of 13 things about me having to do with the number 13 or Friday the 13th is really hard

Happy Friday the 13th!

ETA: Even though this post is scheduled to post in the morning, I actually hit the button to publish this at 12:01am on 8/13/10.

Filed Under: My Blog

Auditory Overload

July 26, 2010 By

Mister and I share an office at home. Two computers, one room. We spend most of our time together in this room – me, blogging and devouring the internets, and him by playing his silly little game. He talks to his guildies, so I hear those conversations. Battles get loud, so I hear that as well. And everyone knows that music is a necessity, so that’s going. Then, on top of that, Mister will talk to me too. Sometimes it takes me a few seconds to realize he’s talking to me and not the guild, because I’m so busy trying to tune it all out.

Before we moved into this house, we lived in an apartment. There was no separate room for the office, so Mister’s desk was in the corner of the living room while mine was in the bedroom. Rather than spend all that time apart, I commandeered the laptop and would lounge on the sofa with that. Also, instead of music, the TV would be on, because, well, it was there. So I’d be trying to watch TV, surf the internet, and have all the game sounds going on at the same time.

It’s amazing that I get any blogging done at all. With all that noise, I can barely concentrate on what I’m reading, never mind keep a single train of thought long enough to actually write a blog post.

On my latest On the Internet post, I included some links having to do with writing and creating. One of them was The No. 1 Habit of Highly Creative People. Want to know what that habit is? Solidtude. The creative types featured in that post all take some quiet time to flex their creative muscles. That’s something I don’t often get is quiet time. I could get up earlier and use the early morning for that, but you know what? I’m not really a morning person. Also, I find that having a time limit like that is more frustrating than freeing.

There used to be a time when I would get up an hour early to spend some time checking emails and relaxing on the internet before getting ready for work. Often times I would find a LOT of stuff I wanted to read or have a lot of pent-up writing to do, but not enough time to do it. I’d end up getting in the shower way too late, rushing to work, and spending the rest of the day really distracted because I’d be too busy thinking about all the inspiration that hit me in the morning. I didn’t really like that too much. Being inspired, yes, I like. But not being able to take advantage of it while the iron’s hot, so to speak, kinda sucks.

Despite the noise and resulting lack of concentration, I’ve been trying. I have a pretty decent set of headphones that, while not noise canceling, do OK at muffling the sound a bit. If it gets too much, I’ll play music or find some quiet background noise to play to further block out all the noise. When all else fails, I step away and go someplace where I don’t have so many sounds coming at me all at once.

Mister doesn’t have this issue. He can listen to half a dozen different conversations at the same time and follow all of them. I get overloaded and stop being able to follow any of them. As a result, he sometimes forgets how hard it gets for me when all the noise is going on. But as soon as he realizes how distressing it is, he’s considerate. He’ll turn down the game noise to a manageable level rather than taking full advantage of the speakers he has, and he’ll turn down the music to a soft background level. He’s awesome that way.

Sometimes, even if it’s not too loud, there can be too much noise. Do you have the same issue?

Filed Under: Grrr, My Blog, Reading and Writing