Moving right along

For a while, I’ve known that friends have had problems leaving a comment on my 365 page, over on Blogger.  I have been similarly frustrated by the new interface and the lack of flexibility, not to mention being at the mercy of Google’s every little whim.  Over the last few days I’ve been making a few small changes, quietly moving my four year’s worth of photographs from Blogger to a page here, just next door to this one.

The 365 link above, which used to lead to an archive of photographs displayed in an ipad-unfriendy Flash format, now holds my daily photograph and will be updated daily – or very nearly!

I’ve also tweaked a few links and removed some others, since my Kindle has made LibraryThing a little redundant and Pinterest has come along and needs a link, I think.  You might also spot that I’ve added a “search” feature, which might prove useful, too. 

Hope it’s all working fine and that leaving a comment is no longer the challenge that Blogger seemed to make it.  Let me know if you find something amiss, won’t you?

More fun on the radar

I know it doesn’t quite feel like summer here, but our annual Road Trip is on the horizon.  Though we have some fun to look forward to when Mary, Diana and Kim arrive next week for a few days and another little European jaunt the following weekend as well, I’m thinking it’s time I started getting my road trip journal together.

In preparation and to provide a little motivation, I pulled my travel journals from the shelf and stuffed them into a wicker hamper, with the intention of looking through them in the next few days to recall what works and what doesn’t.

I used to buy a sketchbook and use it as is, so many of my journals have black covers.  Some are covered with stickers and many have tags tied to the coil binding so that I can easily identify them.  These days I create my own journals using a variety of paper and “stuff” which I bind using my cinch binder, so I can a bit more flexible about the size and format.

I like to use a spring binding so that I can attach a souvenir or two;  in this case a tin of “holy dirt” from a shrine in New Mexico.

In some places it’s easy to find “journal bling” in the form of trashy trinkets and little charms to tie on the spring.  Other places, it’s harder to find these things.

So beer has to be drunk…

unless the wine is good, of course!

Sometimes, the perfect cover is found, as happened in Quebec a couple of years ago, but usually, I am content with stickers.

I always use our baggage tags as “bookmarks”, sticking them in to mark the landing spots.

This year’s road trip will involve four such landings and looks like it’s going to be a whole lot of fun.  I’d better prepare plenty of pages.

Written for me

Whilst we’re on the subject of pens, I’ve just read a blog entry which could have been written for me.  Read it here and see if you identify with it too.

This is the pen pot on my desk.  I might say that it’s not the only one in this house. 

I made a start and threw this little broken pencil in the bin.

What do you mean, is that all? ;-)

Beautifully done

Tra’s new CD is released this week.  I love the promotional video she’s produced.

Hopeless

Put me anywhere near an ink pen and I am immediately covered in the stuff.  My inky fingers were such a mess yesterday afternoon and however hard I scrubbed, wouldn’t come clean.  I ought to have thought about the fact that I was “on show” last night before I got my pens out!

To think, I was ink monitor at school.  At the age of eight, I was given a large bottle of blue Quink and every morning, I went around every desk in my primary school classroom and topped up each inkwell.  My teacher allowed me to keep a stick of chalk in my pocket too, in case I overfilled one of them.  The chalk soaked up the excess ink quickly and no damage was done.  It also came in handy for a game of hopscotch at playtime in the schoolyard.

We’ve talked about how quickly life changes recently.  We grew up in a different world, didn’t we?

Update on Saturday, June 9, 2012 at 5:41PM by Gill Thomas

Dorothy, they're Pilot Parallel Pens.  I've had them for ages and like them very much.  I'm glad to see they're still made.