marlyse.com

WOW - and I don’t mean World of Warcraft

marlyse — Thu, 08 May 2008 04:45:38 +0000

This is the thing that struck me when I was reading one of the COMMENTS to Ashley Morgan’s posting at UPSTART BLOGGER in regards to giving away a running, 5 letter .com domain including blog and which at this time already is producing income. Sit back and understand this! Any wolf would like it’s claws and any small cat would purr her fur off her butt for the chance of getting in possession of such a chance!

Of course, the domain, blog, free hosting and so on are already honey drops, but when I saw that the domain and blog to win is a Wordpress showcase blog, featuring the best Wordpress powered sites, this is where I began licking my lips as if the sweetest milk had just past my nose. If you look at my categories and digg into the ASIDES, you will find that up-to-date I have posted 223 postings on the subject of WordPress alone and I’ve created all my WP themes myself and YES, I am a huge fan of WP and thus I am sniffing this faint odor of sweet, sweet milk… that would be such an honor, to win this domain and to continue running it!

Now lets see if cats can dream enough to make this one come true.

Dad’s visit.

marlyse — Tue, 06 May 2008 03:48:02 +0000

My father is coming tomorrow for a 1 week visit. By now, the once a year visits is all what I see from my family and I cherish these days tremendously. But here I’m sitting and trying to gather my last willpower to getup and straighten up the house - and mainly the guest room - for his arrival tomorrow, but I can barely move and every step is a battle to be won. That is what weeks of non-stop remodeling after a bad incident with my back resulted in. Now I am so pumped out that I don’t even care if the house isn’t spotless clean by tomorrow. In a way, it gives me this “laid back” attitude which is so nice… but it would be MUCH nicer if it would not be combined with this total exhaustion! Oh, BTW., the basement is beginning to look REALLY cool! Here a shot of our new 200 sqft cork floor from our workout area.

paris breakfasts: Paris Cafe

marlyse — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 04:55:01 +0000

Having lived several years in Paris and calling it my second home - this site will every time when I visit tear my heart again open and the yearning to go back there floods to the surface in huge waves.

Want to get a little feel for Paris and the day to day there, the streets, patisserie, the street café’s, people and life everywhere… if so, don’t miss out visiting Carol’s blog:

CAROL GILLOTTNEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES : Paris Breakfasts is a Painting-A-Day blog that chronicles my watercolor adventures in Paris’ pastry and chocolate shops. New York is my home between jaunts. SUBSCRIBE and have a Parisian croissant delivered 5 times a week to your inbox… I paint Paris dreams…

— (Via paris breakfasts » Paris Cafe).

Locks of Love.

marlyse — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:00:00 +0000

In 2003 when we moved to Kansas it was time to cut my long hair which for months I had mainly worn in a plaid because it had gotten so out of control. When I went to the hair dresser I heard of Locks of Love and instantly went for it. The outcome of that haircut was not bad at all and having donated my abundance of hair REALLY felt good!

From their site:

Locks of Love is a public non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children under age 18 suffering from long-term medical hair loss from any diagnosis. We meet a unique need for children by using donated hair to create the highest quality hair prosthetics. Most of the children helped by Locks of Love have lost their hair due to a medical condition called alopecia areata, which has no known cause or cure. The prostheses we provide help to restore their self-esteem and their confidence, enabling them to face the world and their peers.

— (Via » Locks of Love helps disadvantaged children suffering from medical hair loss).

Reflections and Decisions

marlyse — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:02:08 +0000

After weeks of “dropping the ball” and time spent on reflections of involvement and exchange, I think that I have come to a setup which could work - at least for the time being.

Running 3 content blogs next to a photo blog next to guest writing next to revamping my other 3 sites next to remodeling the basement next to work next to spring yard work looming next to family next to living next to next to, has proven to chew me up, and feeling I needed to provide, provide, provide, licked the remains from the plate.

Next to time related issues, I needed to figure out importance to me and others of the different blogs, writing into thin air is not a result I am interested in. Plus I needed to figure out what I really enjoy, how much of it I want to continue enjoying it, and how much time am I willing to invest (currently).

The main conclusion is that I definitely like all 3 blogs and want to keep them all: this one and then TarotDivergency and mStudiosTALK.

But instead of crunching out a post a day, researching and other blog related daily tasks, I will lighten up considerably. Right now, TarotDivergency is set to 1 post a week. This is too little for my liking, I do want to get to 3 postings a week.

Having mStudiosTALK putting out a post a day is a joke (for me): there exist plenty really good design sites out there, it is nothing unique, so I’m not going to try to get market shares here! mStudiosTALK though will remain my business communication site, meaning that things related to my work will be posted to it and no longer to this one here.

Here I am not setting a schedule or limit of posts per week - many of the posts will be blogged via an RSS reader and a collection for myself not to forget about it, or just stuff I came across and thought neat - as long as it falls into the realm of my (extended) work, it will be posted there. This site on the other hand will remain my private site. And, because of the past huge collection of WordPress related posts, I will continue posting WP stuff here - it is not as much design related than CSS for example, thus I feel good about this split.

In regards to my other daily blog tasks: either it will be on a daily alternating schedule or the design stuff will happen every 2 days and the other just 1x a week - but I will definitely no longer try to manage it all on every day. I am also considering of dropping my (food/cooking) guest blogging entirely: so far it has not panned out to what had been the teaser in the first place and even though it would be nice exposure, it’s just one thing more - but then again I think I might keep that on up as just 1x a week.

Overall I feel pretty good about this concept.