Catching up now, because I didn’t blog on Sunday. Did you miss me? (No, don’t answer that, LOL.)
Lots going on. Of course, there were Fathers Day festivities, held at my house. The traveling daughter called too, which is always good! We also celebrated my mom’s birthday, which was last week. We tend to combine birthday and holiday celebrations in my family: mine and my husband’s go with Mothers Day, my mom’s goes with Fathers Day, my brother and my daughter’s go together, and my dad’s goes with Labor Day. Thanksgiving used to also be to celebrate my Grandpa Powell’s birthday, which sometimes fell on Thanksgiving, and my other grandpa’s was often combined with my dad’s and Labor Day. Only my grandmas had birthdays that weren’t near a holiday or anyone else’s. I like combining them; it’s easier on the person hosting the celebration, and also fun!
But the main reason I didn’t blog last week was because I moved my website to a different server. I was working on the site last Thursday night and started having problems getting pages to come up, etc. to the point that I called GoDaddy tech support. Calling ANY tech support is usually a last resort for me, as it seems to always involve long hold times, then a long conversation with a tier-1 support person reading from a script, talking to me like I’m a clueless user, and asking me to do things I’ve already tried. I was pleasantly surprised with GoDaddy’s tech support. They picked up right away on the fact that I’m a programmer and not clueless, and took care of the immediate problem–then informed me that one likely cause for the slowness was the fact that my site, set up in 2008 (!) was on an “ancient” server (his words). He offered to set up a hosting plan on a newer, faster server for me, and credited me for the unused prepaid time on the old one, and got me a new customer deal for another year of hosting which came out to be about half price.
There were a few hitches in making the move, and a few more calls to tech support, but it’s done, and this is now running on the newer server. Google likes faster (not to mention everyone else), so that’s a good thing. I had my writers group meeting on Saturday and did a lot of venting (which I really needed to do). I felt much better after that, plus it’s always fun to see my writer friends!
Much better than Hand Under Blanket, it’s Foot Under Couch Cushion!
Isis has been naughty this week, too. She has chewed up THREE TV remotes, two in one sitting! Unfortunately, DH was too angry to think to get a dog-shaming photo. She is now not allowed to roam the house when DH and I are gone or asleep, and has to go back into her crate. Although I do wonder if perhaps she’s trying to tell DH he watches too much TV? 😀
What I read this week: still haven’t finished the current novel, though I am enjoying it! I’ll report on that next week.
ROW80 Update: This week–Thursday, actually–wraps up ROW80, Round 2. I am continuing to get my newsletter goodies and promo stuff in place, though I really didn’t accomplish much due to the website move. I still have another website to move, for another business, so plan on getting that done later this week, now that I’ve (I hope) discovered all the gotchas involved. I also want to resume the marketing stuff that got interrupted by the aforementioned gotchas.
As for Round 2, my primary goal was to get my WIP finished, revised, and off to the beta readers. That was DONE about three weeks ago–and three of the four readers have returned it to me. So far, the feedback was just what I was looking for. No worries on the fourth, because I’m still working on this promo stuff, and want to get that done before digging into edits. But so far, so good. I didn’t get everything done I would have liked, but I did get the most important thing, and made a lot of progress otherwise.
What about you–did you have a nice Fathers Day? Does your family combine celebrations like mine does? What do you think about that? Do you think Isis was trying to tell my husband something? And how are you doing on whatever goals you set, whether writing or otherwise? Please share in the comments–I’d love to hear from you!
Jennette Marie Powell writes stories about ordinary people in ordinary places, who do extraordinary things and learn that those ordinary places are anything but. In her Saturn Society novels, unwilling time travelers do what they must to make things right... and change more than they expect. You can find her books at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, iTunes, and more.