Goodbye November

Phew! November is finally drawing to a close. And what a month it has been!!!!!

I succumbed to my internal desire (with some prodding from a few internet buddies) to join National Novel Writing Month, completely unsure of whether I could possibly write a 50,000 word novel in the space of 30 days AND still do justice to my blog! If you haven't noticed my quiet sidebar announcement yet, I am officially a Nanowrimo WINNAH!!!!! Yes, you may bow down to my brilliant ability to say a lot of nothing in plenty of words. :-)

In an effort to balance the scales and pledge my commitment to maintaining this blog, I also decided to join National Blog Posting Month. That sure was a LOT of fun and a great way to find new bloggers and make new friends.

I am curious though as to whether I picked up any NEW regular readers from participating in Nablopomo. I know I had many visitors from the website and the randomiser but I also know I have visited MANY blogs and have only returned to a few. So if you found me via Nablopomo in some way and have decided to become a regular reader - can you let me know? (curious minds and all that....)

I am feeling very proud of the fact that not once did I make a post along the lines of "I got nothing but have to post because of nablopomo". :-) Not that I'm criticizing anyone who did. I just thought I may have to resort to that myself so I'm pleased that the ideas kept flowing despite the pressure to post EVERY DAY.

It is interesting how it can change the dynamic within your own mind when you have an OBLIGATION to post every day. But I did get used to it after a while and settled back to my normal routine of posting whatever seemed to pop into my head.

Now, being the sensible person that I am, I figured writing a novel AND maintaining this blog was enough to do for the month of November. Yeah right? Instead, I thought it would be nice to start a
new blog. Something rather different from this blog and also an opportunity for me to explore wordpress just a little. I had no idea how familiar I'd actually become with blogger until I attempted to use and understand wordpress. LOL. But it's been fun and as much as I find it difficult learning technical stuff, I do enjoy learning and stretching myself. So it's been a worthwhile exercise.

Now, apparently as long as I THINK I am going insane, I'm not. So as long as I'm *aware* that starting BLOG NUMBER 3 , also during the very busy NOVEMBER, is kind of a crazy idea....I'm safe from the men in white coats (are there really men in white coats?????? I've always wondered that......) Now I will admit I'm fairly passionate about blogging and all that but I NEVER imagined I'd be someone to ever have more than 1 blog, let alone 3.

I'm sure by now you're all in awe of my brilliance!!!! After all, she's written a novel AND maintained not 1 blog, not 2 blogs but 3 BLOGS!!!! (yeah okay, only 1 of those blogs was posted on every day - this one is still my first priority). All the while still reading and commenting on other blogs, attempting to learn more about blogging, trying to attract new readers to her blog because her whole self esteem now revolves around whether people read and comment and LOVE her. LOL.

Not to mention cooking nutritious meals for her family (ummm...... shhhh.... don't tell anyone that her DH is quite handy in the kitchen), ............love her children to bits (yes dear, I love you...now can please go away....can't you see that mummy is BUSY), .......wrap Christmas presents (yes, wrapping 1 present qualifies me as having STARTED my Christmas wrapping!!!!!!), prepare for a birthday party, wrap birthday presents......do some Christmas craft with her kids.....

It's a bird, it's a plane, no it's.......... "supermom" (note the Amercian accent there!) .......... LOL. As IF!!!!!!!

Wondering how all this could possibly be happening?????? You should see my poor neglected house!!!!! *sob*

Well, this is what my desk looks like. Actually that's not too bad a shot really, it can get a lot worse than that. Sadly, I don't work well in a cluttered environment and yet I continue to do so . Ooh, you can see my laptop in this photo so now you can kind of picture me typing away, talking to you! :-)

No, I didn't cheat and get Rufus to write my novel for me! He just looks a lot neater sitting on the chair than sprawled on the floor.......

Usually I have a mug and a cup and at least 1 plate there somewhere along with a packet of lollies, some dried apricots and almonds. I like to eat while I'm "thinking". Just like "umm...." in a conversation gives you time to think about what you want to say next, stopping to stick something in your mouth gives you time to think about what you want to type next.

I don't even want to THINK about what my weight is doing right now. If you ever make it to the bottom of my blog page - you may have noticed my weight loss ticker doesn't get updated much. That's because my weight is heading in the WRONG direction!!!!! I blame it on November really - too much sitting and EATING while typing copious amounts of........words (I was going to say crap but it hasn't really ALL been crap - at least I hope not!!!).

Here's another shot and to be perfectly honest, it was at least twice as bad as this yesterday. I'm cheating. These shots I took a couple of weeks ago with the intention of posting them in an effort to challenge myself into cleaning them up. Instead, I just kept adding to the clutter while ignoring the fact that my writing was keeping me from other more "domesticated" tasks. I should have taken another shot yesterday before I began to sort things out a little - that would have told more of the REAL story here. :-)

If I wanted to REALLY embarrass myself, I could go and take a photo of my laundry! LOL. But a girl has to have some pride!!!! I think there are currently 3 washing baskets with ironing in them and 1 with folding to be done.

What I'm trying to point out here is that yes, I did achieve a LOT during November and I'm quite pleased with that. But it did come at some COST. No-one can do everything!!!! (Well, maybe someone can....let me know if you find them). I'm kind of pleased to see the end of November and plan to spend the next few days trying to get my house back in order before it gets descended upon by 4 year olds on Monday!!!!!

Oh, and I've started a new feature on Lightening's Blogworld which mentions a few posts from this week that I really enjoyed. Hope you have time to stop by and take a look. :-)

Free Blog Reviews

I have decided to make my blogroll an active blog. Yeah, getting myself a collection of blogs - I know! So "Lightening's Blogroll" is now Lightening's Blogworld (same URL though) where I plan to blog about other blogs (hence the reviews) and also the bits and pieces I learn about blogging. I suspect the emphasis with be on "bits" since I know very little - but at least the types of things I blog about *should* be doable by the average person (on the premise that "if I can do them, anyone can").

If you would like to have your blog reviewed - pop on over there and say so in the comments section. It is going to be "first in, first served" to begin with. Over time I intend to review blogs "unauthorised" (meaning I'll review other blogs without being asked).

Other than that, I have no idea what might pop up on that blog! :-) Of course, the blogroll is still there and I do intend to add some more blogs to it soon - well, after my novel is done anyway. :-). It seems to be consuming more hours in my day than I can really spare right now (which is why I totally decided to add another blog to my list of things to keep up with! Doh!)

P.S. While you're checking out Lightening's Blogworld - be sure to stop and vote in my poll on blog advertising! ;-)

Happy Bloggity Birthday to Us!!!!

Today it is 1 year since I began this venture into blogworld! :-) *

Not including todays post I have written 232 posts in that time. Who'd have thought I'd find 232 things to talk about? LOL. Those posts are divided up in 52 different labels which I think indicates I'm not so great at sticking to 1 particular topic very often. LOL. By far my most written about topic has been frugality, followed by simple living. Given those 2 things are listed first in my description, I guess I'm kind of on track. :-)

Last November I wrote a grand total of 9 posts!!! So far this November I've written 19 and expect to write a minimum of 30 (if I'm to succeed in Nablopomo).

My lowest month EVER was February this year when I wrote only 1 post!!!! That's a pretty ordinary effort isn't it? LOL. But sometime in June I must have decided to commit to bloggging more seriously as I wrote 24 posts in June, 28 in July and have written over 30 each month since. :-)

If my calculations are correct there have been 1080 comments in the past year! Which is why I've titled this post "Happy Bloggity Birthday to Us" - because without readers and those who take the time to comment, blogging would be rather boring and lonely! So thank you very much for each and every one of those comments. I truly treasure each one!

My first comment ever came from Wendy (who has been very quiet of late - give us a wave Wendy :-) ). Followed closely by Kez (who is still a regular commenter - thanks Kez). The 3rd comment on my first post was by madmal74 (not sure if she's still reading or not).

If you've never read my first post you can find it here . It explains the "Lightening" title (and yes, Lightening is not spelt "Lightning" :-) There's an explanation for that at the bottom of the page if you've not already read it.)

The post with the most comments is On Getting Older which I posted on my birthday this year. It has 24 comments listed. All the kind birthday wishes are part of why I like this post but it also signifies for me the beginning of the emergence of the "real me". Here's an excerpt from that post that sums up why I really enjoyed it:

So, I'm 33 years young and for the first time in my life I feel like I'm truly celebrating the fact that I was born. So in some ways it's really my first true "birthday celebration". Does that make it my *first* birthday? Or perhaps my first *happy* birthday. :-)

Other favourite posts I've written would have to include my series on my journey into simple living:

Post 1: A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step
Post 2: Joe Dominguez
Post 3: Tracking Spending
Post 4: You Cannot Steer a Stationary Ship
Post 5: Living the Dream
Post 6: How Did This Happen?
Post 7: Words of Wisdom
Post 8: Fast Tracking Our Dreams

And also my series on reducing the grocery challenge (I think perhaps I like writing "series" type posts. LOL):

Reducing the Grocery Budget - Part One

Reducing the Grocery Budget - Part Two

Reducing the Grocery Budget - Part Three

Reducing the Grocery Budget - Part Four

And my fairly recent post on The Spirit of Christmas . One of the most fascinating things I have discovered since the start of my blogging journey is how much I learn and grow myself through what I'm writing. If I sound like I "have it all together" then I'm not doing a good job of conveying the "real" me. I'm learning just like everyone else as I journey along the pathway of life.

Well, now I'm going to hand it over to you. Do you have a favourite post that I've written? If so, give it a mention in the comments section. If you've never gotten around to leaving a comment - now would be a great time to say hello. :-) Can we beat my previous highest comment number of 24?

* Photo used above was found at www.birthdaycakeideas.info

Writing

With nanowrimo AND nablopomo in full swing, I guess you're reading a fair bit about about people's frustration with their writing efforts. You won't mind me adding mine will you?????? LOLOL.

My novel has advanced itself by 500 words in the past 3 days. Hmmmm...... Not a great effort. My body has decided to play "funny buggers" with me and I keep fainting. I think I should have sent my body a memo stating that November was not a good month to decide to do this!!!!! When I'm not fainting, I'm getting lovely head spins and all kinds of dizzy-ness which leads to nausea and well..... I won't go into anymore detail than that.

Yesterday I finally gave in and took myself to the doctor. Actually, I didn't take myself because when I walk, I keep veering off to the left..... so I figured driving might not be a good idea. Too many places to the left of our road lead to quite a big drop and I'm scared of heights......

So, apparently I have viral labirynthitus (no idea if I've spelt that correctly) and my instructions are to take things easy and slowly and not to bend down. Do you realise how much in my regular day involved bending down????? A LOT more than I'd ever realised. And SLOW????? They took that word out of my vocabulary before I was even born.

But, I'm hoping that means that I can spend the day today writing..... I can be upright to do that and as long as I'm not feeling dizzy or nauseous, I *might* come up with something outrageously witty to write in my novel (or not.....). (Note to self.....writing a *funny* novel when you're in the midst of recovering from a nervous breakdown and struggling with depression was NOT the best idea you've had). Add to the mix PMT and yeah.......I don't think this novel is going to be quite as funny as I'd hoped.....

One thing I have been thankful for so far this month is the fact that I know how to touch type. What an awesome and USEFUL skill that has turned out to be!!!!! Unlike algebra and all that useless stuff they attempted (without success I might add) to fill my brain with during my high school years. I can still remember my early typing lessons in year 8. We had those archaic (they were archaic even THEN) manual typewriters where you needed a black belt in martial arts just to get a mark on the page. And the teacher banging his pen on the desk and calling out "a a a space....." while you typed in time. LOL.

When I got to have *some* say in what I learnt at school the following year (new school, less archaic typewriters), I thought to myself "typing, that was a great BLUDGE subject....let's do that again". Kind of ironic really to think that the subject I chose for a "bludge" has turned out to be one of the most useful things I learnt my entire school life! LOL. (speaking of "bludge" subjects.....one day I might tell you of my home ec nightmares where I was paired with 3 guys who took home ec for the "bludge" factor).

Anyway, I think I will be thankful for my touch typing skills over the next few days as I'm around 6000+ words behind at the moment...... aaaarrrrrrhhhhhhhh.

Nablopomo (the blogging one) on the other hand is turning out to be quite a useful PROCRASTINATION tool....... :-) So useful in fact that I've started a SECOND blog. Yes, I am a little crazy although I was sane enough NOT to register that blog for Nablopomo as well!!!! So, I'm not necessarily writing every day on that blog - although as it turns out I have something to say over there most days. Funny that..... LOL.

I always thought it was rather odd that people would have more than 1 blog. Who has time to write for 1 blog, let alone MORE than 1. Eeeekk.... But as I've been blogging, I guess I've come to understand more the role that readers play in a blog (like, if you don't have any....you just wanna cry......). I *could* have written everything I wanted to say on the one blog but this second blog has a definite theme/niche. I imagine there'll be some overlap between the readership of the 2 blogs but perhaps each of them will have their own unique readers as well.

Have I got you completely curious now? Okay, well if you'd like to have a look at my other blog, you can find it here http://lightening74.wordpress.com . If you like it, please leave me a comment to let me know. If not, well, just come back here..... :-)

I'd best sign off now and see if I can't add a few words to my novel......

Blogrush

You may (or not) have noticed a new widget appeared in my sidebar a couple of weeks ago. I had intended to post about it to let you know what it was but just after I joined they started to do some alterations to the program so I was waiting for those to finish before I talked about it.

Since then, there has been a bit of negative "buzz" around the blogworld as to how good they really are. To be honest, I don't know. For me as a teeny, tiny little blogger it's not really all that relevant. I think the biggest issue for the larger blogs is whether they're worth taking up space on their blog (as opposed to say other advertising).

Anyway, all that aside, what is it all about? Well, firstly, it's a FREE service. Gotta love free lol. It's kind of an "exchange". You list peoples blog posts on your blog and in return, somewhere out there in the blogosphere, your blog post headings get listed in someone else's blogrush widget. It's about giving you exposure in places you might not normally get exposure. This all happens automatically once you have the widget in place on your blog.

Will it work? I don't know yet. I think it's still early days. BUT, I have found it helpful just for myself - occasionally I click on one of the blog posts mentioned in my own widget (as far as I know they let you actually click on your own which is nice for a change) and find an interesting blog that interests me.

My category at the moment is "home and garden" so the blogs you see in the widget are likely to be topics related to that. I don't get any benefit whether you click on the posts listed in there or not.

Anyway, thought I'd better explain to you what it is all about. I have moved it up in my sidebar at the moment just so that you can see what I'm talking about. It'll get moved down a bit soon. If you want to know more about blogrush, you can click on the bottom part of the box and it'll take you there. I don't get paid if you do that but if you sign up from that click then I do get some kind of bonus "points" or something.

It's not about money. It doesn't cost anyone anything and as far as I know, money doesn't change hands at all. To me it seems to be all about bloggers helping other bloggers to find blogs that might interest them. Will it work? I'm not sure. But you can take the widget off your blog again at anytime so I've decided for now that it's worth a go.

If you want to get one of these widgets for yourself and need help, just let me know. My email address is listed on my profile page - or put a comment here and I'll see if I can help.

Insanity Gone Crazy!!!!

Is that even possible???? Anyone else find it hard thinking up interesting titles for their blog posts? Maybe it's just me. No, I haven't really gone crazy but I have signed up for Nablopomo which I *think* is a spin off from Nanowrimo. I'd not heard of it until I saw the little icon thingy's popping up on blogs all over the place.

So, what is it? Basically you make a commitment to make a blog post every day in November. No crazy minimum words or anything like that. Just a commitment to continuous posting. Well, if you haven't already noticed, I tend to post *nearly* every day. So I'm thinking I *should* be able to pull this off without too much hardship.

Why did I decide to sign up? Well, I wanted to make a commitment to myself and to you (my readers) that I would continue to blog throughout Nanowrimo. My biggest reservation about participating in Nanowrimo was that my blog would suffer. Now I have as much incentive to blog as I do to write my novel. :-) That makes sense, right? So maybe I'm not insane OR crazy afterall. I might be by the end of November though. :-)

As an interesting and somewhat unexpected bonus, I have had a few visits from other Nablopomo participants. A big WAVE to anyone dropping by. Please feel free to give a little hello in the comments section, even if this blog isn't to your taste and you don't expect to come back again. It's nice to know you were here. :-)

Oh, and if you haven't signed up yet but would like to - click on the little thingy that says Nablopomo in my sidebar and it *should* take you there (I think). Yes, technical as always.... lol. Don't forget to mention in my comments if you're a part of it.... other readers might want to drop by your blog too (if they don't already). :-)

I Wanna Pretty Blog :-(

If you've been trying to read my blog today - who knows what you might have had come up on your screen. Sorry if my playing around caused an inconvenience for anyone.

I found the most perfect blog layout for me but alas, it is written for the old blogger and while I can get it to load - I can't work out how to use my blog (adding stuff etc)!!! Boo, hoo!!! Then I found one that was okay (better than plain) and written in the new style - but I was having trouble with that one too!

So, I'm back to a plain, boring blog. :-( But I was tired of pink so I hope you don't mind the change in template - even if it is from boring to boring. LOL.

I will post the next update for the electricity challenge before the day is out - but right now I'd better go and do something other than stare at a computer screen!

HTML and Exploding Braincells

Alright, now she's done it. She's gone completely stark raving mad!!!! She's even talking about herself in the 3rd person. It must be bad! Aaaarrrrrhhhhhhh......

Perhaps I should begin by making a teeny, tiny confession. I HATE COMPUTERS!!!! Always have and maybe always will. Why? They make me feel like an incompetent idiot. I've always thought they were stupid - but apparently computers can't actually BE stupid, only their operators can!

In fact, I hate computers so much that I was VERY proud of myself when I managed to go all the way through high school without having to do a single computing lesson. Okay, it did have a little to do with switching states and schools and all sorts of reasons. But the end result was that I didn't have to suffer through computer classes at school. I'm old enough that computers in primary schools were a rare commodity but young enough that pretty much all of my peers did at least 6-12 months of computing classes.

Okay, there was 1 lesson at school where I did have to use the dreaded machines. Have you ever noticed how common it is for mathematics teachers to also teach computing? *sigh* If there is one thing I hated MORE than computing - it was maths. I didn't have a lot of hope of avoiding that through high school though! In fact, I seem to remember spending too many lunch-times doing maths as well. *SIGH*. So, my year 9 maths teacher thought he'd be really tricky and teach us maths on the computers!!!! Yeah, that made maths so much more appealling - NOT! Thankfully it lasted the whole of 1 lesson. Phew!

Yes, I know. Computers do have their usefulness. Yes, I'm using one right now. Yes, I wouldn't have made so many wonderful online friends if it weren't for computers. You would have to say my computer and I have settled into a somewhat comfortable love-hate truce. I love to use it but hate it when I can't figure HOW. LOL.

When DH and I bought our first computer, the salesperson assured us that they are completely "idiot proof" and that we couldn't really do anything to our computer to *wreck* it. He was WRONG!!!! Okay, maybe you can reformat it or whatever it is they do but you can certainly lose a lot of STUFF by pushing the wrong buttons. Yeah, I need to do more backing up. Not that he was the *best* of people to give advice about computers - when ours needed fixing it turned out I had more idea of the problem than he did (even though it took him 2 weeks before he'd agree with me). There was a scratch on our disk - see, not everything about computers is *technical*.

Now, where was I heading with this post? That's right. HTML. It does stand for something but I've already forgotten what. LOL. Not that it really matters. All I know is it's some kind of language you can make use of when blogging. Alright, I couldn't stand not remembering so I went back to the post I was reading and it stands for HyperText Markup Language. Yeah, it's all so much clearer to me now! NOT!!! LOL. Well, at least I got the language bit right.

It's all the blogs fault really. At first I was satisfied with actually figuring out how to start a blog. I figured if I could work out how to post what I wanted to say - I'd be happy. WRONG. That kept me satisfied for a while. Then I wanted to add photo's and links etc etc etc.

Now why can't I just be happy with that? Nice and simple right? Fits well with my simple living journey. But NO.... now I want to learn how to use HTML.

And yes, I do blame Snoskred and yes, you can all applaud now (I hope) cos I just typed in my own HTML code (or whatever you call it) to do that link. :-)

I read some of Snoskred's posts about blogging and think "wow, could I do that?" LOL. Recently she did a wonderful post about basic HTML. You can find that post here . Ooh, I just found out that you have to get your "<" around the right way or the link thingy does NOT work. LOL. Or it works but you just get a highlighted full-stop or something that doesn't look quite right. :-)

Well, I think I have just completed my very first HTML lesson. And my brain didn't actually explode. Well no more than usual anyway. :-)

Now - can anyone help me with a simple way to shift my blog page from 2 columns to 3 columns? I've heard it's just a simple matter of changing some HTML. HA!!! That might be simple if you *speak* HTML. But I'm not quite that fluent yet. LOL.

If you notice some strange goings on with my blog in the near future - you'll know I'm going crazy trying to figure out new weird and wonderful things with my newly emerging language. LOL.

Just need to try one more thing.

If you don't have a clue what I was doing - just trying out the way to centre/center text. :-) Yah me! I can do 2 things now. As long as I don't lose the piece of paper that I wrote down Snoskred's instructions on. Of course, that's one of the reasons I had to put the link to her post on here - so I can find it again!

Lot's more to learn but that's enough for today. :-)

Brain Strain

Today I'm suffering from Brain Strain. I blame it on the blog. LOL. When I first started this blog, I was happy (and quite frankly amazed) that I'd managed to even get a blog happening. You see, when it comes to computers, well let's just say I'd probably be the "dunce" of the class. I remember as a teenager I would get frustrated and accuse our computer of being "stupid". My dad would remind me that a computer couldn't be "stupid" and it was down to the operator. Gee, thanks dad.

Okay, so I admit it, when it comes to using a computer, I would rate it up there second only to parenting in the "this thing makes me feel like an idiot" stakes. In other words, I have no idea what I'm doing!

You may notice that I've added a little subscription type thingy to my blog. I don't really know what it does but I noticed other blogs had them so I decided to add one to mine. LOL. I'm hoping to figure out in time exactly what it does (stop laughing at me!).

Today I'm trying to figure out this Google Reader thing. It's all Kins fault really. She mentioned it a while ago and it seemed like a good idea at the time. LOL. Of course, by the time I get my head around that and get it all set up..... well, not sure I'll have any brain cells left for a post today. :-) I'm sure there's a faster way to do this - if I just *knew* what it was.

BUT, in my defense, while computers have never really been my "thing", my brain isn't 100% back to what it used to be. And I figure the best way to learn is by doing. I've already learnt to do a few things that I couldn't do before. Although, the more I read other blogs, especially blogs about blogging, the more I realise there is a HUGE amount of stuff you can do with your blog.

In the meantime, you'll have to put up with my fairly basic blog. I'm just hoping I don't accidentally delete it with all my messing around trying to make it more "fancy". LOL.

If you think this is a post about nothing - you're probably right. Most of my brain cells have leaked out on the google reader site. I must go back and see if I can retrieve a few.

In the meantime, I will add this. If I can do this - anyone can. If you've been considering starting your own blog but not sure how you'll go either in figuring out how, or thinking of things to blog about. I say, go for it!

If you're looking for me.... I'll be over at Google Reader hunting for the remains of my poor worn out brain cells. :-)