I'm moving!

I'm moving out!  

 

No, not literally, figuratively.  I have outgrown my "blog house" here at Blogger.  Nothing against it - I've really enjoyed my little starter home - but now that my circle of friends is getting bigger, I need a bigger place for entertaining them.

 

So, I'm moving to Word Press.  

 

Part of what precipitated the move is the writing contest I entered, but another part is the ease of use and how good looking their themes are.  What can I say, I like pretty homes with big, inviting front porches.

 

I'm still moving and unpacking boxes over at my new place, but visitors are always welcome.  Please feel free to come by and sit on the porch.  I'll have rockers and some sweet iced tea for you.  

 

Just don't mind the mess. 

 

http://butterfliesinmyhand.wordpress.com/

  

 

Outsmarted again

Yes, I have been outsmarted.  Not by my husband, although he is quite intelligent.  Not by my clever six-year old daughter.  Nor by my three year old son.  No.  This time, I have been outsmarted by me.

 

"Huh?"  You ask.  Yes, I know.  Sounds odd, doesn't it.  But it's true.  Here's the story.

 

Several months ago - almost a year in fact - I started looking at other outlets for my blog.  Blogger works, and is sufficient, but I was really liking the appearance of some of the blogs I follow regularly and thought I'd try Word Press.  I went as far as setting up an ID and claiming the "Butterflies in my hand" name on Word Press.  Then I made a fateful decision.

 

I decided that instead of trying to move everything over, since I'm not that computer/blogging savvy, I would just stay where I was.  

 

Well, since I entered into the writing contest over at Collective Inkwell, I decided I would try and access my Word Press account in case I won the contest.  Yes, I am forever hopeful that I'll win things I enter, even when I know I probably won't.

 

It's been too long and I was apparently too clever with my ID and pas sword.  How do I know this?  Because I have two - yes, TWO - accounts with Word Press.  One, I can access.  It uses the same email as my blogger blog.  The other, I cannot access because I can't remember the email address I created specifically for that place.  And to make things even better, the "butterflies in my hand" domain is under that ever-so-cleverly-hidden email address.

 

Yes, I am outsmarted again.  And it's no fun.  So if any of you out there knows how I can access the memory in my head of the address I was using for Word Press (surely SOMEONE out there can get me to Fringe's lab in that basement at Harvard) I would greatly appreciate it.  Otherwise I might be stuck on Blogger forever.  Even if I do happen to win that writing contest.

 

 *  * * * * *

Just as an update, I have figured out what happened and which account I need to use.  I'm hoping the powers that be over at Word Press can help me merge these two accounts or something.  

 

Oh, and thanks for laughing with me on this.  All I needed to do was sign in under that other account.  I didn't need to try and figure out the email address through yahoo.  Again, outsmarted by myself.  I didn't think of just trying to sign in until a few minutes ago.  

  

 

 

Collective Inkwell - creative fiction contest

This is the first paragraph of a short story I wrote for a creative writing contest featured over at Creative Inkwell.  I hope you enjoy...  The rest of the story can be found in the comments section of here.  

Well, this is odd, he thought to himself.  It was as if he was watching himself from behind, like a witness, not a participant.  Everything seemed to revolve slowly around him; taxis and busses crawled by, pedestrians were mime artists moving through Jello, even the birds flew at half-speed.

Easter weekend, part 1

Can you believe that it's almost the end of April?  May is just around the corner.  This hasn't been a banner month for me posting anything, but as any of you with children may know, the end of the school year keeps people busy.  Projects and parties and stuff.

 

But that's not all.  There's also another - yes, another - consignment sale I'm participating in.  Thankfully, this is the last one.  All of the things that don't get sold this time around will be donated, so none of it is coming back to me.  Two good things, really.  Of course,  I feel like all I've done in the last four weeks is dig out old toys and clothes and tag them.  But in the middle of those four weeks was Easter.

 

This year, Monkey had a four day weekend for Easter.  And I found out back in December,  I think it was, that The Dead were going to be touring again and their first show (April 12th - Easter) was going to be in a city about 20 minutes from where my dad lives.  The planets were aligning just right for me to make a long weekend trip, both for me and for the grandparents.  And that's not all.

 

Back when I was a child, my dad took me to the Easter Sunrise service at Old Salem.  It's the longest running service in America (this year marked 273).  I don't remember much about it from when I was a child, but it's been on my heart for a couple of years now to try and go back.  Again, the opportunity of this year's four day weekend and my plan to go to the concert gave me a chance to go back to the service, as an adult.

 

I'm choosing not to go into any great detail, but suffice it to say it was moving.  We started out in front of the old Moravian church, then walked a few blocks to the cemetery called God's Acre, just as the sun was peeking over the horizon.  It's a very traditional service, having not changed much in the last 200 years.  Although it's much more crowded now and I did see a news camera there.

 

The service threatened to lose something for me when I saw the news there filming the walk to God's Acre, but I tried not to pay attention.  The sacredness of something seems lost when it's filmed for the local 6:00 news.  But as I stood on top of the hill, watched the sun rise and listened to the brass bands play rounds of old hymns, I found the sacredness.

 

Then I went home, warmed up (it was really cold that early in the morning!!) and went back to sleep while my dad and his wife took the kids to their Easter service.  A girl needs her sleep before going to a concert!

 

This is the first post in what will probably be a series of three or four about Easter weekend.  I have photos from our Easter egg hunt from that afternoon and a bunch from the concert.  I know the weekend is fast approaching so I may not get the next post until Monday, but I will soon, promise.

 

Oh, and my story for the writing contest is done.  I think.  I'll be posting part of that here in the next few days as well.  

 

Hope to see you back soon!

 

Alive and kickin'

I'm still here.  It's been an incredibly busy couple of weeks and it's not over yet.  I just thought I'd pop in to let those readers that haven't abandoned me know I'm still alive and well.  

 

I do have plenty of things to update on later:  The Dead Show, Easter, the kids, homeschool updates and a writing contest I'm entering.

 

I hope you'll still stick around for me, or at least come back when I post again.  And for those of you who write blogs that I normally visit, I promise, I'll be back.  I haven't had time to read, either, so I hope you'll forgive me.

 

Here's to a peaceful few weeks - and soon!

 

Catching up

Yes, I know it's been quite a while since I posted something.  However, I've been a bit busy.  The kids and I went out of town for Easter while Trey's work sent him to Hawaii (tough bit, that one).  Sunday night, I went to the opening show for The Dead's summer tour.  It was awesome!!  And this week I'm getting ready for a baby shower for two of my friends that will have about 30 friends coming to my home.

 

Yeah, it's a busy few days.   

 

I took lots of pictures and have lots of stories to share about the Dead show to post on my blog, and I promise, I'll get to it, but really, I have other things I have to get done around the house, first.  

 

I hope you'll come back!

 

What would you do?

Technology is great.  That is, until it craps out on you, then it's not so great anymore.  We have an old computer and by old, I mean it's not quite four years old.  It started having issues this weekend and Trey and Apple Support spent some quality time together on the phone Saturday afternoon to try and fix it.  By the time he got off the phone, it was looking like all was good and back to normal.

 

Not so much.

 

I'm not sure, but I think he managed to back up at least the pictures and music while the computer was functioning properly, which is good.  Trey loves music and I'm a bit of a shutterbug.  I love to take pictures and one picture just won't do.  He collects music like nobody's business.  Let's put it this way:  We have just over 7000 pictures that have been taken starting around Monkey's first year and I couldn't even begin to count the number of songs we have.  Yes, we have a problem.

 

Hi, my name is Kool Aid and I like to take pictures.

 

Now, I know that pictures aren't supposed to replace the memories, but it's fun!  It's something I enjoy and the family loves it when I remember to send them pictures that I've taken.  I can't imagine losing all those pictures.  

 

So, for those of you who take digital pictures, what do you do to back them up?  Do you use an external hard drive?  Do you also back them up at an internet site?  Do you just burn them to a CD or DVD?  Or all of the above, making back-ups of your back-ups?

 

If nothing else, this may be an excuse to get a new computer...