Category: Weblogs

  • Average Jane’s Blog is Old Enough to Vote

    Yesterday marked the 18th anniversary of this blog! I've even categorized this post under "Weblogs" for old time's sake.

    As you can easily see, I don't write here much anymore, but I keep it active so I can always find my favorite recipes and look up how old my pets are. Sometimes I read back through old posts just to appreciate the person I was when I wrote them.

    In the early days, I wrote a blog post almost every weekday as a warmup for going to work and writing. My current job involves writing all day, but today I lack the energy for that much extra composition.

    My primary social media hangout these days is Twitter and I can assure you that what I write there is fully as mundane as the posts that longtime Average Jane readers expect. Except now I sometimes post my Wordle scores as well.

    To mark this point in time, I'm sitting in my living room with Dottie the chihuahua on my lap, Trillian to my left, Moose running around the living room, Xena and Dr. Jones sleeping on my bed, and Kaylee upstairs in the studio waiting for me to start work.

    I've been working in my comfortable home office since March 2020 and expect to continue that indefinitely at this job because most of my colleagues work in other cities anyway.

    It feels like I'm home all the time, but I did spend more than a week in Costa Rica this January at a yoga retreat and I traveled to Denver that same month for a beautiful wedding.

    My coffee is ready, so I'll wrap this up. It's time for me to put some red beans in the crockpot with aromatics so I can make red beans and rice for dinner. Then I need to fix breakfast and start work in an hour or so.

    Thanks for stopping by!

  • Average Jane Changes Things Up

    After more than eleven years of using the same blog design for Average Jane, the search engine powers that be have become impatient with my lack of compliance with contemporary web standards. Therefore, I have changed my blog design to ensure that you can actually read my posts on mobile devices. 

    This theoretically means that I won't lose all my hard-won organic SEO mojo starting tomorrow. In layman's terms: I will still get a big traffic boost every Thanksgiving and Christmas when people want advice about making dinner rolls from scratch.

    I don't love the new design, but my coding skills have not improved significantly in the past decade so I think I'll content myself with it for now. There weren't a lot of responsive options available on my blogging platform and I'm paid up for the year, so we'll go with this for a while and see how it goes.

    Is there anything missing that you expect to find on my blog? Let me know. This was kind of a quick fix and I want to make sure that all of my remaining regulars get what they need here.

  • Average Jane On Another Blog

    TheNotMomGood afternoon! Just wanted to pop in and report that there's an interview with me at TheNotMom today. If you're visiting from there, welcome!

    I thought this might be a good time to talk about 2013 conferences. Although I've strayed away from social media in my work life, I'm still planning on attending a couple of blog-oriented conferences.

    • BlogPaws – This will be my third year at BlogPaws, this year held May 16th-18th in the Washington, D.C. area. I'm going with my friend Spyder again and we're both looking forward to hanging out with our fellow pet bloggers. If any of my D.C. area pals want to get together while I'm there, I'll probably be around Thursday through early Sunday.
    • BlogHer – I'm also planning on going back to BlogHer after taking a break in 2012. This year it's in Chicago, July 25th-27th. I'm hoping to catch up with as many friends as possible and, of course, meet new ones! I'm thinking about taking the train there, so that means I'll be in town relatively late on Thursday but available for breakfast and lunch on Sunday if you live in the area and want to get together.

    What are your plans to meet your favorite bloggers this year?

  • It’s Average Jane’s 8th Blogging Anniversary

    FirstpostI started writing this blog on February 15, 2004 and somehow I've kept it going all these years with no end in sight.

    I can't say I've ever really had a plan for the blog—it's just an online home base for me to discuss whatever is on my mind at the time, be it recipes, pets, personal observations or just a diary of what I've been up to.

    I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the readers who have hung on from the beginning as well as those who have discovered it more recently. I know it's a "take it or leave it" kind of blog and I appreciate that you've opted for "take it."

    So how have things changed since the beginning? Well, back then most of my readers came directly to my blog every day to see what was new. Then RSS readers became more popular and I presume that caused a shift in how it was viewed. Fortunately, I've had exactly the same blog template since the very beginning (except for the addition of some sidebar bling, as you can see in the image above), so you don't miss much by not coming directly in.

    Most of my traffic comes from Google and it's mostly people looking for recipes. The rising popularity of Pinterest has me going through my recipes and making a note of which ones don't have photos so I can make the food and take pictures to add to the posts.

    Eight years feels like an achievement but it also seems like it's gone by so fast. This summer I'm planning on attending my eighth BlogHer Conference and I'm trying to decide if I'm going to continue going every year or if maybe it's time I turned my attention (and budget) to other goals, such as travel for travel's sake.

    But that's a decision for the future and this is now and I couldn't be more pleased with the people and opportunities that blogging has brought to my life.

    Thanks for reading! I'll resume the February Photo Challenge later today.

     

     

  • Average Jane’s Lucky 7th Bloggiversary

    Today marks seven years since I first started this blog. The posts dated earlier don't count – they're pre-blog things I wrote that I wanted to get out there. My first official post was Average Jane Goes to the Prom on February 15, 2004.

    For the first couple of years I didn't include photos in my posts, which was actually a deliberate decision. I liked the idea of keeping the blog as visually plain as possible. Obviously I've changed my mind about that.

    This blog has never exactly hit it big, but I greatly appreciate my small but loyal readership. I know I don't have anything particularly profound to say, but I'm glad there are people out there who enjoy my random musings, cat pictures and occasional recipes as much as I do.

    Thanks for reading!

  • Does Typepad Have A Secret Message for Average Jane?

    Picture_1

    Kinda makes me reconsider the interestingness and validity of whatever I was planning to write. Eh, who am I kidding? I’ll keep inflicting the minutiae of my existence on the blog-reading public until the stats meter drops to zero.

  • Average Jane Surfs for You

    It’s another typically busy week and I don’t have a lot going on that’s worth mentioning. Thus, I’ll point you to some other blog posts I found entertaining.

    Have a lovely Tuesday!

  • Average Jane Supports Other Bloggers

    One thing I love about blogging is the opportunity to find out about interesting people and the things they do. Sometimes these people go one step further and publish books, sell merchandise, etc., and I like to be able to buy or promote their stuff whenever I can.

    Two bloggers I’ve read for a long time have books coming out. I just ordered Clublife: Thugs, Drugs, and Chaos at New York City’s Premier Nightclubs by Rob the Bouncer from Clublife. Next on my list is Hack: How I Stopped Worrying About What to Do with My Life and Started Driving a Yellow Cab by Melissa Plaut of New York Hack, which can now be pre-ordered on Amazon. (I see a trend here of really long titles for bloggers’ books.)

    Of course, I have a copy of No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog by Margaret Mason of Mighty Girl and Mighty Goods. Really, who doesn’t? (If you don’t have it, I recommend it highly for those days when you find yourself *this* close to detailing your meals for the day or writing about something equally dull.)

    I know that Alice of Finslippy and Mrs. Kennedy of Fussy have been collaborating on a book. I don’t care what it’s about – I will buy it the instant it becomes available.

    I am almost out of Superhappy notecards made by Joolie of Oh, My Stars and Garters, so I’ll have to place a reorder soon because I love them so.

    Alex and Stefan of Elephant Larry have a hilarious new video online called Minesweeper: The Movie.

    Miss Zoot is raising money for the MDA and she’s offering all kinds of interesting things to bloggers who kick in $20 or more.

    That’s all the blogger action I can think of right now, but let me know if you have something cool going on that I should bump into the main post. I’m not claiming much reach, but at least you might get me as a customer or visitor.

  • Average Jane Turns Three

    Today is the third anniversary of this blog. Tempus fugit and all that…

    This is my 760th post and I’ve received 2,223 comments so far not counting spam, which I always delete.

    Over the last three years, I’ve come to realize that blogging is only a little bit about what I write here. It’s far more about being part of the group you see listed on the lower right, and BlogHer, and the giant list of blog feeds to which I subscribe in Bloglines (322 and counting).

    I’m perfectly happy hanging out on the blogger D-list forever as long as all of you keep reading, commenting and occasionally meeting up with me for a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. If I haven’t met you in person, well, we’re all relatively young. We never know where life may lead us and we have time yet for some surprises.

  • Bloggers Average Jane Knows

    Yesterday’s post got me thinking that it might be nice to give some extra link love to the bloggers on my blogroll with whom I regularly interact in real life. This doesn’t count all of the wonderful bloggers I’ve met at BlogHer (there’s pretty comprehensive list of them here and a few more here).

    In alphabetical order (I don’t want to play favorites), here are the blogs of some of my real world buddies:

    I hope to meet everyone else on my blogroll someday, too.

    Enjoy my friends’ blogs!