Cough. Sneeze. Blow nose. Cough. Sneeze. Blow nose.

And again. And again.

Unfortunately, I have sensitive skin and within… oh, say 5 minutes…of starting to blow my nose frequently, redness occurs. I look terrible. Oh, and my eyes get glassy. I’m looking good here at MHC, just in time for our 13th wedding anniversary, which is tomorrow. If I continue at my current pace, I will barely remember to fling a “Happy Anniversary” in Don’s direction.

Is anyone else having problems with blogs loading slowly? Mine, in particular? At times, my blog takes forever to load. And others? In a second. I can’t figure out the culprit, though I am leaning more and more toward Google Chrome. Chrome is already irritating me because I can’t get Picnik to work in Chrome. Out of the blue last week, I could no longer save a photo to my computer after I’d finished editing it. Many emails back and forth to Google/Blogger/Chrome help and I still have the problem. I uninstalled it. I installed a new version. Still, I get a message that “Flash Shockwave” has crashed. So now I’m using Firefox, which I already had installed, to use Picnik. And this crashing problem? Lots and lots of posts about it not working in Chrome.

Today, as I was noodling about trying to figure out why my blog was loading slowly in Chrome, I tried loading it in Firefox. No problem – fast, easy. So that leads me to wonder about Chrome…

I’ve also heard about a lot of problems leaving comments and one of my readers, Lucille, wrote me today to say she couldn’t leave comments and that sometimes she has a problem opening blogs, including mine.

That’s not good. I suppose it could be due to slow internet connections. I have a high speed connection and Wi-Fi here and I have to think the connection speed isn’t always consistent.

Any thoughts or wisdom to pass on would be greatly appreciated.

Go ahead. I’m a captive audience, sitting here in my flannel pajamas and blowing my nose.

I’ve been making some changes to the blog and I wanted to take a moment to share them with you. One change is subtle. I messed around with the html codes to make the body of the blog a bit wider. I have a little more room now both in the sidebar and the main post area. Brenda and I spent some time together on the phone and, between the two of us, we figured out how to do it.

For a long while, I’ve been contemplating changing the background for the posting area. I love, love, love the background I had with the faint vintage looking script and I am not thrilled with the idea of giving it up. However, when viewing this blog on other monitors and in other browsers, it seemed to me that the script fought with the text of my blog posts.  Since my sincere desire is to make this blog readable to everyone, I changed the background to white. This, after trying every gosh-darned color hex code out there. I really wanted a cream color. Could I find one? No. Everything I tried was too dark. Shouldn’t there be a cream or ecru color available somewhere?

Don’t worry, I still have the code for the original background in case I want to change it back. Also, my friend Mandy, who designed my sidebar labels, graciously re-did them with a transparent background, so that I wouldn’t be limited as to my color choice.

The last change is one that I came to after a lot of thought. You know that times are tough here at MHC. We, like so many others, are struggling financially. I’ve written before about my conflicted thoughts about advertising on blogs. Sometimes, when a blog becomes full of advertising, it can become something other than it was. By that, I mean it can lose the cozy, personal quality that it once had. On the other hand, I have seen many blogs add advertising in a less obtrusive way.

The furthest thought from my mind is to make MHC anything other than what it has always been: a cozy, welcoming chronicle of my life and loves. I won’t let that happen, trust me. I am tip-toeing into the ad world by adding two small ads. In my research, I noticed that I saw these ads on many blogs, far more than I realized. So I’m going to give it a whirl. But subtly.

I always welcome your thoughts, my friends.

My mom is in the hospital again. She has a urinary tract infection and the beginnings of pneumonia. She is being given IV antibiotics and seems to be responding. Will you keep her in your thoughts?

Edited to add: My friend Diane came to my rescue! She sent me to ColorPicker and I found a much more detailed chart there. I, of course, insisted I had been there. I hadn’t. Since this post is about subtle, I’ve chosen Ivory, a subtler form of white. I’ll try it for a while and if it doesn’t work for me, back to white it is. Thanks, Diane!