Resurrection of the blog.

It's been awhile. No time for blogging these past few months. But since we've moved to a new host and made lots of upgrades I think it best to just start fresh. That's so liberating!

There's a lot going on with the site right now and I can't wait to continue with the improvements. We have some fun new members and new content going in rapidly.

Come on in!

usmcwives.com: Progress in millimeters.

"Success usuallly comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it." - Henry David Thoreau

I have come to the conclusion during the re-design that even if progress only comes in very small increments, it's still progress! And I will embrace every step that leads in the right direction.

With that in mind, the page is slowly but surely getting better. A lot of the time I have spent hasn't yielded any visible results but has improved the administrative capabilities of the sight or given me leads on utilities that can be added in. My biggest desire at present is to find a way to bridge the site and forum so that 1 user login will suffice for both the forum and the main site. This would be unnecessary except that the site offers a lot of bells and whistles (user profiles and the like) that would benefit us. New user registration on the site's main page is disabled (with member registration only possible on the forum) until this gap can be bridged. Duplicate accounts/logins would not be efficient. I have found a couple of options that it's remotely possible for me to use, but the technical elements of the installation process frighten me just a bit. I am, after all, self trained and not skilled in the technical arena. But we shall see!

New additions to the page include links to our forum, blog and survey as well as RSS feeds for the blog and for news articles from Marines.mil.

It looks like this at present:

http://www.usmcwives.com/Joomla

Birth.

So, the past few days have seen the birth of two things which are really still in infancy but about which I am excited. Like a dork. Seriously.

First is the usmcwives.com forum. I'm fumbling around like a lunatic trying to spruce it up, but I think it looks pretty good so far, given my experience level. I've reached out to some of my online contacts to review it and I can see that many have. I've gotten a lot of survey replies in the past couple of days. I'm stoked!

Second is the associated usmcwives.com blog. From a practical standpoint, the site doesn't need a blog. After all, I have my own personal blog and the forum itself should suffice for any chit chat. BUT..... being an imaginative soul, I'm thinking I might at some point be able to use the blog in a worthwhile manner. It can be set up so that members can have their own pages and/or input posts. I'm thinking since I don't yet know how to enable NICE profile pages on the bulletin board, this slightly more dummy-proof blog application might be an easier way to achieve the same result. At least for the time being?

And now to move off topic as is my custom: After spending all weekend helping my husband lay flooring on the first level of our house (which isn't completed yet but is BEAUTIFUL!) I was able to sneak off with my partner in crime, Jill, and take in the new Sex and the City movie this afternoon. It was pretty good. It would have been hard to live up to my expectations because I was soooo excited..... But I thought they did a solid job on it. I loved Carrie and Charlotte's latest developments in particular. I won't go into detail in case you haven't seen it. Oh, and I was also ashamed of myself not to have known beforehand that Jennifer Hudson had a supporting role. Outstanding. I've become a fan.

My blog is better than yours.

Well, not really.
Actually, no, of course not. But my blog is nifty today because I can finally say I added some designs to one of the stores. Took me long enough! This is most of them but there are a couple more on there as well. And this weekend I am FINALLY getting to do some of my bead stuff for Etsy. My snazzy charms finally arrived! =)



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Flippin' sweet.

Even though I work at/from home, I still savor the weekends. There's much less hint of a routine or schedule to go by. It's liberating. Today I will pay homage to the leisure gods by sharing some good, clean fun.

It will be necessary for continuity's sake to provide a bit of background information here about my blogging circumstances. I am new to the whole thing and wasn't sure where to begin. So I chose to cover all bases/ not put all my eggs in one basket / play the field and simultaneously post this mammajamma in 3 places. I figure that trial and error will guide me since I lack any expertise or insight. So far, so good. And how hard is it to copy and paste a document into 3 places (tweaking a couple of things in each place for formatting's sake)? I'm at least as smart as the average bear so I'm doing relatively well. With a few grimaces and "doh!"s here and there when I paste pictures in using the wrong code, etc, it's all coming together.

One version of my blog is on Blogger (aka Blogspot). A very nice resource indeed. And as I was reading headlines yesterday I noticed that one of their masterminds, Eric Case, is leaving to pursue new projects. Even from what little I have discovered I can see that this is one smart dude. I mean, I love my life, but I'd actually like to BE this guy after reading a bit about his history (how he got started and what he's done). And how can you not like a guy whose clique includes MC Hammer? To quote my husband, "That s#it is TIGHT!"

If you've fallen off of my stream of consciousness at this point, shame on you. It should be obvious that we're now talking about MC Hammer. I will confess that I love me some Hammer. It's true. I actually saw him in concert when I was a young semper trooplette. And, in case you were wondering, he did in fact "turn that mutha out." But for our purposes today my point is this: he has a nifty little blog going. And color me motivated when I found this little gem he posted back at the end of March. True, it's a bit unfair that someone else should get the full glory of the Running Man when I've been keeping the fire burning myself all these years (for this as well as the incomparable Roger Rabbit)-- but let's face it-- my exposure has been minimal at best. I will accept my lot in life and move on, just feeling validated that there are other true believers out there.

In honor of weekend bliss, I submit The Running Man. Thanks, Hammer.

-Signed,

The girl in Myrtle Beach, SC during the summer of '92 with the heat activated "You Can't Touch This" t-shirt.