back on the chain gang

So after ignoring my books blog for almost a full week, I have published Monday and Tuesday posts, dropped about 500 entrecards (over two days) and am trying to get back into the swing of things. Bad news is I dropped down from third to sixth in the Books category, which will really hurt my organic clicks. The slightly better news is that I am less than 100 points behind the third place blog and I've a feeling I will get back up in the top three over my three day Tues-Wed-Thurs weekend. The even better news is that even though my EC traffic and drops are way down, my total visitors is actually up a bit, though I haven't dug into the stats to figure out just why. Meanwhile I have Wed-Thurs-Fri books picked out and mostly read so I will publish a full Monday--Friday week for the first time in ages.

I am contemplating formally declaring myself on vacation for all or part of next month and just letting the blog slide. (Though I shudder to think of how much work it will be to climb back up if I do.) OTOH, our friend Sam is coming out from Baltimore and will be staying with us Sept 2nd-- Oct 4th (and may decide to move in with us permanently -- YAY!!) and it would be nice to be free of the blog stuff so that I can have more time to visit. Have to contemplate that some more.

regarding blog ads

Yesterday's post drew a strong agreement from Cardiogirl in the comments. Having earned about forty dollars in the program, she feels compelled to stay until she gets the hundred, despite having learned that there are other, much more small publisher friendly advertising networks. On The Thin Red Line I am showing Project Wonderful ads at the top of the page, and while they are not making me rich, they do supply a steady cash flow that can be immediately used to purchase advertising or withdrawn in any amount above ten dollars. Many, many, many months ago I invested $15 and bought at ton of advertising with it. I've since taken out $10.01 and have a bit under 5 dollars on account.

When I remember to insert the ad code at the bottom of my posts, I have Adsense ads at the bottom of the full post page. I also have a small Adsense block in my sidebar, though you have to scroll down some before it becomes visible so it does not get the impressions the PW ads do up top. With only ten dollars earned I don't particularly feel compelled to stick around to get over 100 and get paid, though I can appreciate CG's point of view. I would definitely recommend to any new bloggers to Not get involved with Adsense.

TGIF

Thank God It's Friday and I am off tomorrow and have survived the first half of my work week. The three hours of meetings that started the day seemed to go on forever. (I was So tired when Ron woke me up this morning, I was just barely moving when I left for work at quarter to eight.) Blessedly, the remaining four hours of the work day went pretty quickly and I managed to perk up and get the books moving. In other news, after almost a year my Adsense earnings have reached ten bucks and Gooooogle has sent me a PIN number that I need to go to the website and enter. Whoop dee dee. Maybe if I publish for another ten years I'll actually reach the 100 dollar payout level. Feh.

Planning to take it easy tonight and hopefully do a book post tomorrow. I am Still tired.

thursday

Back to work this afternoon--evening for my 2:45--9:15pm shift, then have to be back tomorrow morning at 8 for my 8--3:30. These Thur--Fri combos are a killer. And after being up most all day yesterday, Earthlink is off and on again this morning so who knows if I will even be able to post this. Managed to get some blogging done this two day weekend but not as much as I would have liked to. I will be back tomorrow afternoon-evening and Saturday after work.

6 Unspectacular Quirks About Me

I have been tagged by Book Calendar with the "6 Unspectacular Quirks About Me" meme. The rules are:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Mention the rules.
3. Tell six unspectacular quirks of yours.
4. Tag six bloggers by linking.
5. Leave a comment for each blogger.


1. I still don't really like memes. Even now that I have this personal blog where such things aren't off-topic, I still find the whole meme thing rather silly.

2. I have considered getting professional help for my Diet Pepsi addiction.

3. I Really like tea, but rarely drink any.

4. I often stay up quite late and Hate getting up early.

5. I hated the heat, so I left New Orleans for Boston, hated the cold and snow and so left Boston for Seattle, where it's usually "just right".

6. I do not like liver.

I know that I'm now supposed to tag six more lucky bloggers with this meme, but find that I just can't bring myself to do so. So if anyone wants to play along, consider yourself tagged.

Sometimes You Just Want to Scream

Ok, so I totally bungled the 'write everyday' thing. And many things in my life seem to have conspired to keep me from regular posting. Our uber sucky Eartnhlink DSL, which has been mostly down, but occasionally annoyingly up, just long enough to load a single web page and make you Think you are online only to go configurator on you the moment you click on anything. So I finally got off my lazy ass and sauntered down to the library with my laptop. (And now I am one of those bored, tired looking patrons who congregate at the back tables (which overlook the front gardens, go figure), typoing away on my puter and surrepetitously people watching.

At the moment I kind of envy Vienne, the Eavesdrop Blogger. She no doubt, would be listening to the conversation of the odd group at the next table and by this stage of her visit to the library would probably have written one of her great posts. But I have no clue what any of those people are saying and hope, mostly, just not to be noticed by any fellow staff members who want to Talk. Feh. If definitely feels like busman's holiday being back at the library on my day off. But it sure is nice to be online.

Yikes

So somehow I let a week slip away from me without posting anything at all. And now of course I am nervous about posting, since I haven't posted for so long. And I feel of course that I should have some sort of explanation. Though I don't in fact really have an explanation. That first day with no post just kind of slipped by and from there it sort of snow balled. I have actually read a couple of great books, and even have a books post in the editing screen (and yet have been unable to finish it up for days and Days now) though no clue when it will actually be ready to post.

So now at least I have restarted my daily posting, even though this post isn't really about anything at all. And yet it is a post. So that tomorrow when I go to post again, it will show that I did at least write a post here today. A post about not writing posts.