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.