Thanksgiving...a day late!

A week or so ago I received a gift from the 591st Engineer Co. Veterans Association for the website I've kept up for them. It was completely unexpected and so very nice of them.

With winter just around the corner I've really been worried about whether or not I'll be able to keep up with shoveling snow out of the driveway. Well, I don't have to worry about that now. I used the gift the Veterans sent to contract someone locally to come and keep the driveway plowed. They'll even shovel the sidewalk and de-ice it if necessary.

I'm so excited, so grateful and so happy that I don't have to worry about having a heart attack in 20 degree weather. I'm also not dreading the snow as much.

Thank-you 591st! Love yas and Welcome Home!

Sure Wish I Could Have Kept Them...and more stuff

A week ago Wednesday I sent an email to the lady who took the two kittens. I promised her I wouldn't make a pest of myself but just wondered how they are doing and asked her if she could email a picture or two of them.

She hasn't replied.

Now, I'm scared that I should have heeded the warnings I received about giving kittens away for free, especially in October. This is going to sound weird but I guess there are cults out there who sacrifice kittens around Halloween.

I don't even want to think about it.

I've been quite busy lately. Even though my hours at the store have been slashed to the bone, I've managed to pass the time with something productive rather than worry. Sharon has been adding new stuff to her site, Crafts by Sharon, and I've been working on the PayPal portion of it, trying to figure out fair shipping fees on all the products. I really hate PayPal!

Still can't get Google to index her site. I've gone through and started validating all the pages, submitted a sitemap and done everything but get on my knees and beg. Even though no one can find her site through Google, she's still getting orders. And that's a good thing. I told her if she was indexed in Google that she'd probably have to hire someone to help her. I'm convinced that if more people saw her prices and compared them to other similar products, she'd be bombarded with orders.

I have to get busy and get Uni's site going, Uniques by Uni. I had a pretty good start on it then discovered a flaw in my design. Seems things like to stack on top of each other if the screen resolution is lower than 1024 x 768. I know why it does it and should have thought of that in the first place. But sometimes thinking hurts too much. LOL!

Hey ! I've got a new follower!

I just noticed it. Don't know how long it's been up there but it's pretty darn exciting! Thanks Becky & Joe.

Still working on Sharon's site. Gotta finish the color samples pages, product list page, cancell page, inventory page...ah, let's just say I've got lots to do yet. I have to go through and check all the links and PayPal buttons to make sure they're working properly and I'm still not happy with the greeting cards pages. Have re-done them several times and don't like any of them.

I'm hoping to get it done before I have to return to work which will probably be next week. It's not looking good. LOL

Extreme Makeover - Website Edition

For quite a while now, 3 years or more, my sister Sharon's site has been no where to be found in Google's index. Somewhere along the way I did something to piss them off and they never forgave me. It went from a page rank of 3 or 4 (I can't remember which) down to zero in one day and the page rank never came back. It was zip, zero, nada!

I think I had the site linked to what's called 'bad neighborhoods' by Google. In other words, the site was linked to other sites that were considered to be link farms and the high and mighty Google frowns on them nasty, ol' link farms. Thinking maybe that was my crime, I decided to remove all the link pages several months ago and re-submited her site to Google.

It's still no where to be found.

Yahoo finds it. MSN finds it. Heck, even Bing finds it...but not Google. Because of this, her hits (number of visits to the site) have dwindled down to near nothing. Two, maybe 3 per day. So, in an effort to appease the king of search engines I decided a while ago to re-do the site. Add new pages, new content, pay better attention to the coding, etc.

A couple days ago I saw that Google's spider crawled the site. I was elated!!! I don't think that's happened in years. I'm hoping our efforts have paid off and her site will start getting lots of hits again like it used to. (Which, of course, will lead to sales!)

I haven't finished checking all the links and PayPal buttons but I was anxious to get it up. The sooner the new content is published, the sooner it will get noticed. (Or so I'm hoping anyway.)

If you care to visit, here's the link:

Crafts by Sharon

Bright Light!!! Bright Light!!!

Something strange is happening around here. I awoke this morning to a blinding light in my eyes. At first I had no idea what it could be...then it dawned on me...it was the sun!!! Haven't seen much of it this summer so I'd forgotten what blue skies and sunshine looked like.

Still no news regarding the MRI I had last Tuesday. My knee is doing better. I'm able to walk a bit without crutches but still have swelling and can't straighten my leg completely. I'm going a bit stir-crazy, though. How is one supposed to enjoy time off from work if one can't do anything?

I've been having some fun though thanks to my niece Sherry. She's been updating her website, Studio Pashnada and I've been making some buttons and tags for her using Paint Shop Pro. That program is addictive. I can play with it for hours and not even realize how much time has passed.