July 18, Astoria: I'm still here

As I write this, I haven't posted on this blog since June 30. I have lots of photos, and may get a chance to catch up somewhat. Everyone I talk to has been getting to hear about the fantastic new shopping cart that's been added to our online gift shop. It IS fantastic. It does what we want and need it to do (it's custom made!) but in the process, since it's one of a kind and the test environment doesn't allow Daryl to completely test before a new tweak goes live, it's been quite a process. In the meantime, the credit card processing company had a fire that kicked them offline and injected some chaos into our days, we also had to get a new printer, which shut down KKEE Radio by accident when we plugged it in, and - you know - just some of the usual stuff that happens day to day. We transferred banks, and we're very happy about that, but with credit card processing accounts and a few little glitches, it's kept me so busy that all I want to do at the end of the day . . . wait! I'm not sure I've been having ends of the day lately.

I started playing a new zoo-building game on Facebook to wind down a little, and I've been posting the Astoria, Oregon, Daily Photo blog every day, then posting it to Facebook and Twitter. It's fun, but most of the time it actually takes longer to post the one photo to that blog than several to this one. It's got a growing audience, and while that is validating, it's also a little daunting to think about. I'm also enjoying networking (visiting and reading the blogs) with the other City Daily Photo people. It takes a lot of time, but it's a great way to see the world, learn a few things, make friends, and bring traffic back to my blog, which helps Google placement for the business. Cool, huh?

Today I also got back to the N.C. Hudson book for awhile. I did more posting than writing, but this is how I wanted to start the project, so I feel good about it. I hope to develop some interest in the book while I keep tabs on the project. I feel today like I got through some of the preliminaries. There are three posts for July 18.

The photo above is just another of the same old wonderful view. I could probably take one 365 days of the year and they'd never be the same.

Tomorrow Lee gets back to Portland from fishing in Canada, and I'll go there for at least part of the day, trying to get back here early on Monday morning. I'd hoped the techno issues would be over with, but that didn't happen by the end of last week, so I should be here. It should settle down soon. It's clear that the shopping cart itself is allowing more people to place orders, and that's fantastic. I still have a bunch of HTML coding to do on some of the pages because the new cart uses a more precise system than the old one and some of the old coding doesn't translate. I like the results, but it will still take some time to get it all done. For instance, since I needed a separate order button for each plastic cup color of each animal, you can now see how each of the colors goes with each animal - you don't have to guess using the drop-down list.

Until the past few weeks, I'd been walking a lot. At the moment, I'm still getting used to taking my first yoga class. It's making me feel good about myself and helping my back, but I gotta tell you that at my age and with fibromyalgia, it's a lot harder on the old bod than a 5-mile hike. My muscles are very slow to adjust to the new stresses, and I've been relying on Torch more than ever to put me back together and keep moving forward. I feel that this week I may be able to do the yoga four times a week and take walks again, too. I'm looking forward to that!