My Thanks, and I Need Your Email Address

First of all I want to thank everyone for their very nice comments to my previous post.

We went to the funeral home Monday evening to see J's dad. There were more than 500 people who came through and signed the guest book. The funeral Tuesday was packed. He really was a very good and much loved man. His wife and daughter are doing as well as can be expected. Andrew was on the phone with J tonight for almost two hours. I know he's not the only friend who is keeping an eye on her.

As for the sisters who lost their mother, well, they're hanging in there too, but they are still pretty torn up. It's going to be exceptionally rough for them for quite a while I'm afraid.

And now, Janie, I need your email. I have that link for you, but you don't have a contact email set up in your profile, and I can't find your AOL email address for some reason. So please email me or leave a comment and leave me your email. I think Donna had brought this up before -- whenever we leave a comment it shows our name as a link to our profile. And if the person whose blog we're commenting on is getting emails for each comment, then that email comes from a "no-reply" address unless we put a contact email in our profile. So, Janie, when I got your comment email, it told me it was from "Janie", and it linked back to your profile, but I don't know which email address is yours.

Okay, I'm off here for now. We just got back from a quick visit to my Mom's. I'll post another entry before we leave for Florida. Eler Beth is feeling better, thankfully, so the trip is on.

It Has Been A Tough Weekend

Two deaths hit very close to our family late last week, and it has been a long and hard weekend for us.

Sometime Thursday night the mother of two of our good friends committed suicide. The girls are 17 and 15 and very close friends of Andrew's. Actually we are all very close to them; they are like family. They were "adopted" by a retired couple who are friends of ours, and that's how we really got close to them. K and B (the retired couple) are devastated and grieving as well, and having to deal with the girls' grief. I'll call the girls Ann and Sue because I don't want to use their real names or even their initials right now. Their personalities are very different from one another and they are grieving differently. I put my sister, Dennice, in touch with them over the weekend because Dennice has done grief counseling in the school system where she works, and I think that helped and reassured K, who was very worried about Ann who is withdrawn. We spent quite a bit of time with them over the weekend.

The other death was just as tragic and unexpected. The father of Andrew's ex-girlfriend had a massive heart attack on Friday. He was at work operating a forklift, and they said his expression changed, he fell over, and was dead instantly. His wife was in shock on Friday, but was able to cry on Saturday, which was good. The daughter, J, cried non stop Friday and Saturday until she started vomiting. She told Andrew on the phone today that she still isn't eating and that she can't cry anymore because she's dehydrated -- there are no tears. We are going to the funeral home this evening. The funeral is tomorrow, and I'm not sure if we'll be there, but we'll spend the evening with them tonight. J's mom is someone whose family my family has known for many years, so there was a connection there even before Andrew and J were dating. He and J are still good friends and we and her family have many mutual friends. As a matter of fact, J is friends with Ann and Sue, and all of the crowd that Andrew does things with knows all three of the girls. So we really have a "community" in mourning right now. But at least both families have a LOT of friends and family who are sharing their grief and going out of their way to do whatever is needed for the girls.

I'm not sure how much I'll be online today. This is the first time I've had time to sit and just relax, so I think I'll visit some journals (I can't say blogs anymore), if not now, then when we get home tonight.

Andrew is going to Florida next week, and instead of flying him down, Eler Beth and I have decided to drive him down over the weekend so I can see my sister and Eler Beth can visit the beach. It will be a quick trip, so I won't be able to meet up with anyone this time, but in the Spring we're taking a longer trip down, Thomas too, so we can do some ocean fishing, and when we do that I expect to meet up with Martha, and possibly others.

I'll be back later.

What Reading Level Is My Blog?

I thought this was cool, and I'm going to have to put it on my sidebar:

I Wonder How We Underline A Word? -- And Other Random Thoughts

Hmm? Does anyone know? There is no underline option here, and I don't see any shortcut for it either. Does anyone know a shortcut key?

Is everyone aware that we have a Magic Smoke/J-Land Hub blog here on blogger? I wanted to make sure that all have the address. Guido has been making entries there, and he is asking that all of us check our old journals lists to see if there is anyone we were accustomed to reading who has not journaled in a while. If so, please send him a link to their journal, their name, and/or their AOL screen name. He is trying to save as many dormant blogs as he can. Here is the link to Magic Smoke on Blogger: http://jlandhub.blogspot.com/.

We finally got my daughter's journal migrated over to Blogger. It took us several tries. At first her google email address wasn't being recognized. We tried everything that was suggested or that I could think of. Finally I went to my own email, pulled up that email from AOL with the migration link in it and clicked on it. I put her gmail address and password in from there and it worked! I don't know if it decided to work, if someone on the migration team did something to make it work, or if it had something to do with my doing it from my own browser and my own email -- surely not. Anyway, she's set up and has already been visited by several of her journal readers. She had fun playing around with the different templates and very quickly got the hang of everything. She even put up a play list on her sidebar. And thank you, Connie, for that great tag.

It's cool and rainy here today. Hopefully that will bring on the Fall colors full force!

My nephew, Jacob, about whom I've written before, made it safely to his work site in Africa. He is working on a project for The History Channel, a series where they are following the routes of certain expeditions. The one he will be working on is Stanley and Livingston. According to my sister (his mother) he, his luggage, and his equipment got there safely.

I'm finally getting around to a lot of journals and keeping up with many of them. If I haven't been by yet, I will, I promise.

I hope everyone has had a good week.

Monday . . . Again!

I just made an entry in I Stand Corrected in its new home, and I invite you to check it out. I hope I stay in the habit of writing over there.

This has been a fairly nice day here in Southern Indiana, a bit overcast, but warm. Mondays are always Mondays, aren't they, even when you're a stay-at-home Mom? Eler Beth was a bit grumbly during school today, and I was a bit grumbly in return (which is what prompted the entry in I Stand Corrected.)

I have continued saving my journals manually, even though I believe everything transferred over all right, because I want to print them out and put them in a binder. I like having a tangible version I can pull out and read (and leave for the kids to read).

Thomas replaced my brake line yesterday so all is well in that department. And I guess that's about all I have in the way of news. I hope everyone is having a good week, and I'll be back soon.

Wading Around In Blog-Land

I am having a hard time settling down to make regular entries in my BRAND NEW BLOG! (That's a family joke, by the way. Remind me and I'll tell you about it later.)

I subscribed to most of the journals I read on Google's feed-reader, and I have them organized to my own personal specifications. Now that I am "following" these migrated journals on my Dashboard I find they have also been imported into my feed-reader -- which is good, don't get me wrong, because I really prefer that over the Dashboard thingy -- but they were all out of place! So I have spent hours today organizing the blogspot journals I plan to follow, and I still don't have all of them done. And I can't seem to think about making any regular entries on my own journals until I get everyone else's in their rightful places.

While I was spending hours organizing blogs I spent some quality family time with Thomas and the kids, or mainly Thomas and Andrew. Thomas had pulled out his B. C. Rich guitar and was sitting in here trying it out, when Andrew decided to join him. It is rare that he and Thomas sit and jam together. Eler Beth had gone to the Harvest Homecoming in New Albany this afternoon with a friend, and she went to bed not long after she came in. So I sat and listened to the guys playing and talking guitars and music while I grumbled over finding and matching up Journalers with Bloggers (or Spotters, as Ken says) and AOL Journals with Blogs and putting them in their new permanent, nice and neat, well-organized homes on my computer screen. Not a bad way to spend the evening.

Is there a limit on how many blogs show up on the "Blogs I'm Following" list on the front page of your blog? I don't want just a few to show up; that wouldn't be fair. I went to my Dashboard, went down to the Reading List and clicked on Manage, and was blown out of the water by the number of Blogs I am following. Oh yes, it tells you that right at the top! I'm not going to tell you how many it said. I had no idea I was reading or keeping up with so many journals. (That's why I have them organized; it doesn't seem so daunting that way.)

I still haven't uploaded any of the pictures we took last weekend on our camping trip or even the zoo pictures Eler Beth took a couple weeks ago. Perhaps I'll tackle that project tomorrow. Speaking of projects, Thomas has to replace a brake line on my car tomorrow morning. I was sitting in the drive-thru at Burger King when my foot, which had been resting on the brake pedal, suddenly went all the way to the floor. I drove home very slowly, making good use of my clutch and the neutral gear, and irritating anyone unlucky enough to find himself driving behind me. But I got home safely.

I may be around to visit everyone tomorrow or Monday. I feel like I have a cold coming on, so I may stick around the house tomorrow even after Thomas fixes my car. The weather here is still very beautiful. I hope we have a few more weekends like this one and the past few we've had before the real cold temps set in. And I hope this cold I feel coming on is nothing more than that.

I hope that everyone is settling in; hope Donna and others who are still having trouble migrating can get moved over soon, hopefully Monday; and if I haven't been by to greet you in your new home or if you've just set up, please leave me a link to your blog in a comment or email me. Everyone have a good rest-of-the-weekend, and that's all I've got for now.

Pam/His1Desire

I don't know if anyone else saw this, but Pam's daughter, Christina left a comment on the last entry of her mother's UK journal. She says she has her mom's journal copied on paper, and I'm really glad to know that. I guess if any of us want it or any of the other dormant journals saved, we'll have to copy and paste them ourselves.

Dusty Pages Successfully Migrated

I was able to successfully migrate my AOL Dusty Pages journal to blogspot. I have named it Dusty Pages Archives, and the URL is here:
http://dustypages-archive.blogspot.com/

I may re-post some of my favorite entries and pictures here, but otherwise, if there's anything you want to re-read, you'll have to go to the archives. I kind of like being able to keep all my old entries and yet be making a new start here. Sort of having my journal cake and eating it too.

Thank you to the AOL Journals team members who did work hard to save our journals and make this transition smooth, and thank you to the migration team at Blogger. My migration of Dusty Pages was interrupted twice, but I was able to re-start it. The other three journals migrated smoothly with no interruptions.

I'll be dressing up my new blogs that were just migrated in the next week or so; looking forward to doing that.

Getting To Know Georgette Has New Home

Getting To Know Georgette has successfully been migrated from AOL Journals to Blogger. I hope other GH fans find me and share with me their own opinions on her and her books. The new URL is: http://getting-to-know-georgette.blogspot.com/

Dusty Pages' Books Shelves Has New Home

I'm so happy that the migration from AOL Journals went well. I do enjoy writing about the books on my shelves, and I plan to continue to do so here at this new location. Please check back in with me once in a while.

The new URL is: http://dustypagesbookshelves.blogspot.com/

I Stand Corrected Has New Home

I Stand Corrected has a new home at Blogger. We have migrated over, and I would like to invite you to save our new URL and drop by to visit us. The migration went very smoothly, and I'm so relieved!

Our new address is: http://i-stand-corrected.blogspot.com/

Can't access after journal is deleted . . .

I just tested something, and it didn't work.

I saved a private test journal to my documents, then I deleted it. I was NOT able to read the journal. I could pull up the first page of the journal, but no previous posts, no archives. So I'm very much afraid that saving to your computer and even to a CD is going to be a waste of time.

I am still copying and pasting everything just to be safe.

Email Me!!!

I just tried out three different ways to save your journal to your computer, and I print-screened each step of each way. It's probably too much to put in an entry here, and I would have to load the print-screen shots separately as pictures, so I'm going to send it out to anyone who wants it by email. You can save to eBook if you have that on your computer, or you can save to your documents, or to your desktop. I did mine using my AOL browser, but then I went back and did it using IE and print-screened each step of that. So I'll gladly send this to anyone who is having trouble, in case it will help. Just send me your email address.

Saved To CD

Last week I was able to save my old AOL Journal onto my hard drive as an eBook. On Friday my son wanted to make sure that it wasn't connected by some link that would require the internet to read it, so we disconnected the internet and were able to open it as an eBook on the computer. All of my pictures and graphics were there except the few pictures that I had loaded onto my journal from AOL Pictures (since I've already moved those pictures for safe keeping). So now I'm fairly sure that after the journals are deleted from AOL, the eBooks that have been saved will still be safe.

So then Andrew wanted to see if the journal could be burned on a CD. We burned it successfully. When we opened the CD, NO pictures or graphics are on there, but everything else, the layout and the text are there. I tried opening the "Show Recent" comments, but it tells me it's loading and then never loads. I'm going to try again, though. (Also, it opens in a browser window -- Firefox for me, since that's what I'm set for, but it would open in IE if that's your default browser.) So if we can save the dormant journals onto an eBook, they could be copied to CDs and sent to anyone who wants them, but there would be no graphics or pictures on the CD, only on the eBook. I'm not sure if the eBooks can be emailed or saved to another format that can be shared, but I'm going to play around with that when I have some time today.

As I figure more out about this avenue I'll share what I know.

Of course, I've been gone all week, so perhaps someone else already has all this information out there? I have a lot to catch up on I know.

Home From A Lovely Weekend

I logged into my email this afternoon and saw that I had 247 waiting for me! Aaack!

We had a wonderful weekend camping. I had a few minutes on my computer Saturday, and that was it. We got home late Sunday night, and all I did yesterday was sleep! So slowly but surely I'm going to get caught up some today, see where everyone is and what's going on with the "migration", and I'll be back later to make a proper post with some pictures hopefully.

I hope everyone had a great weekend.

I'm An Idiot!!!

Guess what I just saw. Talk about a "Duh" moment!
I clicked on the add image icon.

And now I can type this the way I want it with my image next to it.
Yes, if someone finds me, please keep me safe.

It's a bit unwieldy, and isn't EXACTLY what I wanted, but it'll do for now.

Have a nice day!

Urgent Message From Guido

Guido, (Northern Trip)while out of town this weekend, took the time to leave us a message that is very important. I copy his first paragraph here:

Greetings from Inverness.

I urgently need to tell you that it has proved impossible to migrate the dormant journals, including those written by the deceased, to Blogger. If anyone does have access to them, it can be done; if not, copying the entire journal manually is the only option. Lori [helmswondermom on AOL] mentioned on her Blogger journal that saving it as an ebook is apparently an option - please check her journal. Haven't got the link here, and have only very limited time.

I am desperately sorry about this.

Guido had offered to migrate dormant journals and was more than willing to take on that daunting task. But apparently the journal owner or someone who can access them as the owner has to be the one to do it. So if you want the journal of someone who is deceased or who no longer journals on AOL, for whatever reason, you will need to save it yourself, either manually or onto your own computer as an eBook. I don't know any other way to save it on your computer, but perhaps someone else does.

I wrote about this in a previous entry, but I'm going to outline it again. Apparently a couple of other people have tried it and it worked for them using Internet Explorer. I did it using AOL software.

So, either from your AOL browser or Internet Explorer, open the journal you wish to save and expand it to fill your whole window.
Click on FILE at the top left of your screen
Click on SAVE AS
Now when I did that it opened up the Save Web Page box and saving it to My eBooks was the option already opened and ready for me.
I hit SAVE, and it did
I went to My Documents, click on My eBooks folder, and there it was in its entirety, minus pictures that had been uploaded from AOL Pictures

I don't see why this would suddenly disappear once journals are gone, but I guess anything is possible. Other than manually copying and pasting, this is the only way I know that will save it to your hard drive. But, again, if anyone else knows, please get the word out.

I got an email from someone who had read Guido's post who was panicky because she thought he was saying that our own journals can't be migrated. NO, our journals will migrate. But any journals who's owner is not available to access the journal will not be migrated. There are several journals out there that the community does not want to lose (Pam, Penny, etc.), so I know some of us will want to save them. I don't know if they can be transfered from one to the other of us as an eBook, but that is something I'm getting ready to try with mine right now.

Yes, but how . . .

Thank you to everyone who left a comment answering my questions in my previous post.

I guess what i really wanted to know was how to do wrap-around text. I want my picture to sit beside my text entirely, and not just have one line next to the bottom of the picture or above or below the picture.

I've never taken the time to ask how to do this before, and I know it can be done. So I thought since this is a new venture, I'd try this new something too. :)

Two Questions

I have a couple of questions --

What about videos we may have uploaded onto AOL Videos?

How do I inserts pics or graphics into any part of my text that I want? (It's going to involve html, isn't it? I just know it is!)

Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Please be sure to schedule your yearly mammogram if you haven't already, and continue to Be Breast Aware. Get familiar with your own breasts by doing monthly self-exams.


Don't forget to click every day:

Saved As -eBook

I can't now remember in whose journal I read this -- so please, if you see this, contact me and let me know so I can give you credit or correct me if I'm wrong --

I opened my AOL Journal in the AOL browser (haven't tried this with Firefox)
I expanded it to fill the page
I clicked on File at the top of the page
I clicked on Save As
And it automatically gave me the option to save my journal as an eBook
I clicked on that, and then I went to My Documents
I went to my eBooks file, opened it, and there was my journal, complete with comments, graphics, and pictures, but minus the pictures that I had had stored at AOL (very few) because I'd already moved those.

I don't know if this is a permanent thing, but I thought it was another good option for backing up, other than copying and pasting. I navigated all around my journal in the saved eBook format, and the whole thing is there. Thought I would share, and I wish I could remember who figured this out first.

Great Backgrounds!

Okay, thanks to Janis I've found some really neat backgrounds to use. And it only took me about six tries to figure out how to get one on here! I really liked this Fall background, but I also like the "Minima" template that Blogger offers. I'll use this one for a while, and then I may just change back to minima. Or I may change to different ones each day until I find what I really like. For now, this is it.

Officially Blogging

Well, welcome to Dusty Pages at Blogger. I am going to mirror some entries for a while, but as soon as we’re allowed to migrate over I’m going to do so.

I do like that I can preview my new posts before I publish them.

I don’t like that there are so few fonts (and no sizes) to choose from. (I am typing this in Word and I hope it will transfer well.)

I’m sure I will get used to the new format in time.

I don’t think I like the template that I chose, so that may be changing.

I am really wasting a lot of time today, how about everyone else? I’m going to give myself an hour to read and comment in other people’s blogs today, and I’m going to allow myself to play around with my own some more. My kids are on their own this afternoon. Lol

I did spend some quality time with Thomas this morning before he left for work, so he can’t complain. But the house and all other responsibilities are going to be neglected today I’m afraid.

EXCEPT that it is a gorgeous day here in Southern Indiana, and I just may have to go outside and do some yard work. We actually got some rain on Monday night/Tuesday morning – our first real rain in weeks. Today it is cool, barely 60°, but sunny with a bit of a breeze. My favorite kind of weather. I guess this is a pretty good way to start out the month of October, all in all.

Moving Along

I actually got emails that I had comments left here. So at least I figured that part out.

Apparently when our old journals migrate, it has to be in a new blog. I could keep this one as a practice blog, under a different name, and then when the migration takes place, open Lori-DustyPages, migrate AOL Dusty Pages over, and then seriously begin, OR I will just continue with this one and start a new blog called Archive DustyPages for the AOL journal to go into. I can have a link on this journal to the Archive one if anyone should ever need to go there. Hmm, decisions, decisions.

In the meantime, I'm going to continue as I mean to go on, and go ahead and keep up with everyone who has sent a link to their Blogspot (can I abbreviate it to B/S without anyone taking offense?) location, and hopefully not get behind.

My book journals and "I Stand Corrected" I will wait to move over. There is a way to do shared blogs here at B/S, so Guido, Beth, and whoever else is interested, we can continue to do I Stand Corrected in a shared format.

I can't wait to get this page looking a little neater!!

Okay, well, I'm off to continue copying and pasting into Word. I'm not taking any chances.