ME and Ophelia

- - -

MY NEW BLOG "A BREATH OF HOPE"
Is now a group blog

Yesterday, I messed around with my new blog A Breath of Hope. And changed the template. I like the font but wasn't keen on some of the fancy design bits and bobs. I like plain.

Last week, American blogger Patrick Hall at The Horn of Africa blog kindly emailed me offering to do any tweaks so I could concentrate on blogging. Tweaking stuff takes me hours. So I took up his offer, and entered his details into my settings to make him a member of the new blog.

To my surprise, Patrick's name showed up in the sidebar under the heading of "contributor". I apologised to Patrick in the comments and said I would delete it. But then I got to thinking. Maybe it was a good thing. I may have trouble keeping up a second blog. My voice feels different over there. Like being in the guest room here at home. It feels kind of strange.

I'm a regular reader of Patricks and enjoy his neat posts. He must trawl a lot of stuff to find the unusual and timely stuff he comes up with on the Sudan. He's bound to come across news of the aid agencies. That's how the idea of turning it into a group blog came to me. So I invited Patrick, he's accepted and I've set him up as an administrator for him to access the template any time.

This morning, I emailed Patrick my wish list of tweaks. This afternoon I spent a few hours publishing at the new blog. I kept getting interrupted here. Phone ringing. Painter/decorator popping his head through the open window to chat. Just as I was about to post, I noticed he was ready to wash a paint brush sitting in a pot still containing half an inch of white undercoat acrylic paint. So, I asked to borrow brush and pot to touch up a few nicks on the woodwork around internal door jambs. Seems my cleaner must be a bit heavy handed with the vacuum cleaner. I can't think what else would cause the paintwork to chip so near to the floor. There's been no furniture moves, nothing gets knocked against the woodwork - except the vacuum. And I don't use the vacuum. I used to love vacuuming. True. There's an art to good vacuuming you know :-)

And then I remembered when the new windows were installed, the workmen chipped some of the paint on the wooden frames. So I touched up the nicks. With still a quarter inch of paint left, I went hunting around on my knees looking for nicks. It's amazing what you see when you crouch down to Ophelia's level and look very closely at things. Then I remembered the bathroom ledge...and a piece of wood near the kitchen sink....and down the side of the the back door.

After 20 minutes I'd used up the paint and washed the brush nice and clean. Last year, I'd used Tippex White Out on one door jamb (my brother squeezed a wardrobe through one doorway and scraped a little paint). Today the Tippex got painted over. Heh. Knee joints and spine are tingling numb, throat hurts and I feel ill all over. But nevermind. It's better than looking at some annoying nicks in the paintwork. Good job done.

Then I published the post at the new blog. Went to view and found that while I'd been painting, Patrick had visited and done some tweaks. Hey, this is great. Sort of like having company. The blog was blue - now it is Swiss Red Cross red, it has links inserted and a Google search bar. Fancy bits and a wavy lines have gone. And the colour of the titles changed to red. Thanks Patrick! Look forward to reading your first post :-)