the tour de blogosphere

So ... it looks like Blogger is working again and I'd like to take a moment to hug, squeeze and kiss this adorable little blogging platform's head!!! 

My brief stint at WordPress was great and I'll forever be thankful to those fantastic people in the support forum who provided a tutorial on how to upload a picture from my Flickr account.  

But .... 

In the whole six days that I spent trying to understand a new blog platform, I could never crack how to migrate my 1,600+ worth of archives from this blog to that blog and there was no way I was going to leave my archives behind. It felt like I had no idea what I was doing on WordPress and when I received an e-mail from the people at BlogHer telling me that they were deleting my ad account which is hosted on this blog, the decision to move back to Blogger (once it was operational) was an easy one.  While the little ads that I have running on this blog generate the financial equivalent of a small cup of coffee every day .... over the next 12 years - that might be enough to pay a few books when my children enter college. Or a really nice coffee machine. Assuming I ever take up drinking coffee. 

Fortunately, Blogger fixed the problem today and we're stronger for the experience. Although I wouldn't necessarily describe my demeanor last week when I thought my blog had been eaten whole by the World Wide Web as one of "patient..." 

Several of my links on this blog are quirky which will require some work. But regardless! Here we are again and I hope you enjoyed your tour through the blogosphere as much as me! I do plan to keep my WordPress blog alive because you never know if and when this one might tank again and it's good to be prepared. It's like my own little blogging contingency plan, if you will. 

One thing to mention: Last week when the world was dark and grim and I thought this blog was gone forever, I tried to reduce the size of my Blogger export file so I could import it in to WordPress. Because I didn't want to delete posts or photos, I started deleting comments. And what I hadn't realized until that moment was that I'd received more than 30,000 comments before I turned them off last year. While that might not seem like a lot of comments for some uber bloggers, it was a lot to me.  

As I was deleting the comments, I felt like I was erasing so many kind words and advice that had been relayed over the years and it totally bummed me out. I finally stopped the deleting insanity when I got to comments that had been left by my wonderful Uncle Bill and friend Deana in 2009 - just a few months before they both passed.  To add insult to injury, for all the comments that I deleted, I only reduced my export file by 2 GB (which still wasn't small enough for import). 

When I started up the WordPress blog, the default for comments was "on" and I was warmly reminded how nice it was to hear from old friends. (Hello Winecat and Twingles and so many others!)  So I've opted to leave comments "on" again.  Truth be told, I've felt guilty that so many have written to me over the past year to share a story after a post they'd read, and I've been negligent about responding. 

Borrowing from the back of a Papyrus card we recently received in the mail,  "Legends say that hummingbirds float free of time, carrying our hopes for love, joy and celebration. Like a hummingbird, we aspire to hover and savor each moment as it passes, embrace all that life has to offer and to celebrate the joy of everyday. The hummingbird's delicate grace reminds us that life is rich, beauty is everywhere, every personal connection has meaning and that laughter is life's sweetest creation." 

(I love that!) 

Thanks for all the personal connections you've made with me over the years.  I hope that going forward, I can do a better job of making those personal connections with you, too.