The Sewing Mom

I feel like I’ve been going non-stop for the last 2 weeks, basically ever since school let out for the summer. I get up early in the morning, work 5-6 hours, then spend the afternoon and evening trying to entertain my daughter, clean house, cook dinner and do the laundry. Throw in a couple of softball tournaments and, over the last few days, all the landscaping work I’ve been doing, and I’m exhausted. Guess that’s why it felt so good to just sit and do absolutely nothing this morning except lift my cup of coffee from the end table to my mouth.

Let me tell you though, by the end of the afternoon, I sure could have used a nice cold energy drink to keep me going, a BluFrog energy drink would’ve certainly done the trick!

Speaking of BluFrog, check out their “It’s a Blu World” contest for a change to win a grand prize valued at up to $3,500, a trip for 2 to the winner’s choice of either, New York City, Chicago, Orlando or Aspen. Oh man, I’d love to go to Aspen, that would be so amazing!

There are 3 ways to enter the contest, 1) leave a comment on the BluFrog page, 2) Twitter about the contest, or 3) write a blog post about the contest and leave your post URL here. Don’t wait to enter, this contest ends July 17, 2009.

I was so surprised to receive notice from The Bee that she was bestowing an award on my blog. This was even more surprising because the author of The Bee was lurking and didn’t come out of lurk mode until recently, but I’m certainly glad she did! She has a fun and interesting blog that I didn’t know about until she left me a comment and I hope my readers will also check out her blog.

So, I want to thank The Bee for bestowing these awards on The Sewing Mom!

What a total pain in the a$$ my computers have been over the last couple of weeks!

We have 3 computers in our house, one I use strictly for work.  The other 2 are my own personal desktop and laptop computers.  The first, the desktop, went on the fritz 2 weeks ago.  Woke up one morning and the dang thing was dead, just like that.  No warning, no hestitation, just dead.  I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t even had time to take it in to have it looked at and I use the laptop 80% of the time anyway, so it was easy to put that task off.  Then, yesterday, the electrical cord to the laptop started crackling and shot a couple sparks and I quickly unplugged it from the computer to keep the computer safe.  Of course, that meant that I only had a limited battery life, so I just shut it down.

Of course, all of this has meant that I’ve had even more limited time on the computer because I also needed to let my daughter use it.  It’s not so bad when both are up and running, if she’s on one, I can hop on the other.  But, having only one, and then none, was tough on both of us! I especially want to apologize for not returning EC drops yesterday and not responding to comments.

I ran to Best Buy today and bought a new cord for the laptop and that got me back in business.  I still need to take the desktop in to see if can be repaired.  In the mean time, I did actually get a sewing project completed yesterday and started a second one.  I have to admit, while I was bothered by the fact that I couldn’t return comments and drops, it was very nice to not be on the computer yesterday and actually get tome other stuff done around here! 

Over the past 4 or 5 months, I’ve had a number of issues with my current web host and it has not only been frustrating, but very disappointing as well. I pay for a service and for the customer support that should come along with that service, but I don’t feel I’ve received the quality I deserve in either of those areas with the company I’m using right now.

So, while making my decision as to what I’m going to do, I’m doing some webhosting research and I’m particularly interested in what other customers, especially bloggers, have to say about this issue. I know that I’m not the only one who has suffered at the hands of their web host, and I’d also like to hear positive experiences, something which I have not experienced lately. I’m not necessarily impressed by web hosting awards, but I am extremely interested in the experience, good and bad, that other bloggers have had.

A couple of months ago, I actually reached a level of frustration that made me seriously consider leaving the blogging world all together. I do however really enjoy blogging and I’ve “met” so many other bloggers with similar interests and great blogs. I would miss everyone and not having my blog would take away my ability to show-and-tell my creations!

So, I will continue to check out sites like webhostingrating.com to help me to make my decision, and, in the mean time, let me know your thoughts!