Two posts today, this one and a book review. Just scroll down for the review – a terrific book, Our Man in the Dark. 

I didn’t post yesterday because I was working in New Haven, CT for the day. I’m ‘consulting’ on a production of Macbeth that has been adapted to take place in 1969 at the end of the war in Vietnam. Consulting is always a bit problematic because I am invariably called in after the play is well into rehearsal – it’s always a struggle to change things at that point. Nevertheless, I do my best. I’ll be working there for the next two Wednesdays.

The bad: I had to rent a car (we only have one car at the moment) and it ended up being more expensive than we thought it would be. Since I have to pay for everything first (I’ll get reimbursed later) I wasn’t too happy about it. Two hours there and back, plus 6 hours of rehearsal = a long day.

And I spilled coffee all over my books. It’s my own fault. I was trying to carry everything with me as I made my way to the car rental counter. Instead of dumping the coffee immediately, I carried it with me while looking for a trash can. I was so tired that I had no idea it was sloshing over everything. Not happy.

The good: the cast is very nice (including an actress I’ve worked with before) and the theater is right next to an Ikea.

After not visiting an Ikea in over a year, I’ve been there twice lately. I actually ate dinner there last night before hitting the road for the trip home. I bought a new Ektorp slipcover for my blogging chair. The white slipcovers are only $29, so when the current slipcover becomes too stained and washing it no longer does the trick, I buy a new one. It doesn’t fit the chair exactly, but it works.

And I bought hangers to use in my ongoing purge and clean-up of the house.

I’ve also been creating a new website for my coaching business. A simple, and most importantly, free site.

On another note, I’m glad I decided to bite the bullet and redesign my blog a few months back. If you remember, I discovered my designer was no longer in business and feared that I might wake up one day to discover her Photobucket account was gone, along with my designs. By the way, she never bothered to tell any of us that she was out of the business and stopped all communication with her previous clients.

Several bloggers woke up yesterday to discover elements of their blog designs were missing, replaced by the dreaded “Bandwidth Exceeded, Upgrade to Photobucket Pro today” message. I hope the problem is easily remedied, but I fear it might not be.

My advice? Take control of your blog. It’s made an enormous difference to me. I am no longer dependent on another’s work. It’s so easy now to make your own header and background. I found that googling a question like, “how to make your own blog background” or “how to design your own header” brought forth a wealth of information. It involves playing with your html code a bit, but there are tutorials everywhere. The great thing about Blogger is that you can go in and play with your code, hit preview to see what the changes look like and if you don’t like them, nothing is permanent and you can revert back to the original code.

And thank you, thank you for all the tips about the old desk. I sure got some great ideas from everyone! I’ll keep you posted.