I spent the whole day on this blog. The entire day. I should have been putting together entries for the NATJA (North American Travel Journalists Association) awards as the last day to enter is Monday. Although at $35 per entry, should I bother? I should have been working on the TV proposal – after a meeting with the producer and director last week, plus beer, we have honed our pitch, and it’s up to me to rewrite it. I should have, could have, but didn’t. What I was doing was putting up travel articles on various pages of this blog, and I’ve just begun. Okay, so the Adventure column is empty, and the Scandalous People is still lame, with only Oscar Wilde making the cut so far, but Spa is taking shape, as is Mystical Places. Trying to dig up all the articles is one thing, trying to find the photos another – especially since these stories span at least two computers. But really, check out my different pages. And, because I just learned how to set up my stats, with the help of the community at travelblogexchange.com, I’ll know if /when you do!

Christmas is the Cat's Meow!

A month at home is a chance to get caught up. And chill out. But how can I still be so busy? This was my day:

A.M. Fact check my article on chocolate around the world. Fact check some more. And more. Try to concentrate while reading article over one more time. Interrupted by knock on door. Scramble to get changed from pyjamas. Answer door to man selling steam cleaning services. Decline steam cleaning. Get back to article. Phone rings: ‘Hello! You have been specially selected …’ Hang up on recorded phone message. Swear. Get back to article. Realize I don’t know who subsidized my trip, House of Switzerland or Swiss Tourism. Make urgent phone call to PR company. Send matching urgent email. Find out that House of Switzerland subsidized my trip. Add that to article and send it in. Answer phone. It’s my sister, Catherine. Take a minute to help word a business letter correctly. Hang up. Phone rings. It’s boyfriend, he wants to borrow my bathtub to soak his sore back. (I do have a rockin’ big soaker tub.) Let boyfriend into home. Send in second small article to Toronto Star that is due tomorrow.

Noon. Speed walk to SATW (Society of American Travel Writers) Xmas party at Duke of York Pub on Prince Arthur. Win a gift bag of spa wafers from Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic. Eat roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. And chocolate brownie. Tell my friend I hate my new haircut. She agrees it is bad.

2:30 p.m. Speed walk back to apartment. Send in photos to go with article on chocolate. Try to install a new theme on my blog. Get incomprehensible message. Send email to cirrushosting. com to tell me what it means. They help, after I have downloaded something potentially dangerous onto my computer in hopes that it will solve the problem. Finally it works. I have new theme! It’s a miracle. I’m so excited about my new technical abilities I update blog to the very newest version. Then I try to customize my heading. Can’t. Don’t know how. So much for technical abilities.

5:00 p.m. Speedwalk to Windsor Arms for VisitBritain’s annual holiday party. Plan on drinking red wine to a) make up for bad haircut and b) to console myself for lack of technical abilitiy in area of custom header and c) to celebrate stellar technical prowess for learning how to install new theme.

Hurrah. Let’s eat more chocolate.

Between Fred the Techie and Cirrus Hosting, poor bastards, I’ve finally managed to update, move, plus import and export my old files (actually, I did that last part by myself – cue to pat on back). My own domain at last. Now I have to figure out how to get the heading, the theme, etc. But I’ve done it once, surely I can do it again.

Eat me!

All this tech stuff wouldn’t have been so bad if I wasn’t writing an article on chocolate at the same time. So every time I’m frustrated in either my writing or blog-setting-up-ing, I take a chocolate-tasting break. It’s all in the name of research. Things were much healthier when I was writing about apples.

The good news is that I finally figured out how to enter my own domain – something had stumped me since October. Actually I didn’t figure it out exactly … more like I emailed my boyfriend’s techie brother Fred at sartech.ca and he told me how to get into my web applications page and then into settings. When I went to settings, it turns out I had never set the blog up with a password (who knew I had to?) and once I did that, I could  access my very own wordpress blog at my very own domain. Only ….

Only it’s never as easy as it’s supposed to be. Once I was at my new wordpress blog at wanderingcarol.com, and about to set it up, I was informed that I’d somehow set up an old version of wordpress.

The message went:

“The latest stable release of WordPress (Version 2.8.6) is available in two formats from the links to your right. If you have no idea what to do with this download, we recommend signing up with one of our web hosting partners that offers a one click install of WordPress or getting a free account on WordPress.com.”

Well of course I have no idea what to do with this download. Who am I? Einstein? (Actually, I did go to a free lecture on Quantum Mechanics yesterday at the University of Toronto, but you know that old saying … you can lead a whore to water, but you can’t make her think.) Only, wait a minute! I thought I had signed up with a web host that offered a one click install of WordPress. That’s why I went with Cirrushosting.com.

So, I’ve contacted Cirrus and have left them with it. Let’s see how much help I get. I’m hoping they’ll just magically set it up for me, but as I pay them something like $6 a month, it’s possible that this isn’t going to happen. In that case, I know who to call. Fred? Oh, Fred!

I want to blog about the Zimtstern fashion show I went to last night in Zurich but at 20 bucks to use the Internet at my hotel, forget it. It was in the hip and cool slightly dodgy area of Zurich West – dirty chic you might say – and the snowboarding fashions were much to be desired. If I were a snowboarder. Which I am not. But if I take it up I will now know what to wear.

No really, my stomach is flat!

What I wanted to know, as I searched for a suitable photo to use as a blog header, is if I put up a cheesecake shot of myself in a bathing suit, will people think I’m a) stupid, b) self-obsessed or c) ha, ha – a savvy marketer? I didn’t start off looking for a bikini shot. In fact, this is something I would normally avoid at all costs, but, you see, it’s not easy finding a long horizontal picture.

It's pretty but not thin

My first attempt was to use a landscape of Lake Bled, but when I cropped it to fit that long thin slice of a header, it either showed the top of a church or a blue streak of water.

This should have worked

Then I thought I’d use this convoy shot of a night snowmobling expedition in the Maritime Alps in Southern France, but it either cut off people’s heads or ankles.

The only really long and narrow shot I found was the one you see on the header now, which is of me working extremely hard at my job while lying in a deck chair at the Inn at Manitou in Ontario (recently voted Best Inn in North America in the Travel & Leisure Readers’ Choice Awards, by the way). So up it went.

And I may be blonde but I’m not that dumb, I managed to avoid all unflattering views of butt, stomach and thighs (if you ate at the Inn for three days you’d be be avoiding thigh shots, too). I even avoided a face shot – just in case I look stupid.