Weekend Catch-Up

Back Links

I've had a couple of really lovely and flattering links back to one or two of my posts, most recently "Did She Jump" on my unceremonious exit from the scintillating world of school based food prep, and "Being Five" - fairly self explanatory. (Oops and The Blooker Prize - thanks, Doris.)

The fact that these came from some great writers/bloggers inspired me to wear my gold stars in public and activate the fairly new facility in Blogger that allows these to show. It didn't work.

I believed I copied the coding instructions to the letter, but presumably not, so anyone else who has had the same game and solved it would be publicly lauded for bailing my code-ignorant butt out of this one. I really would LOVE a functioning gizmo that pointed out the things you say about me outside of the comments section here, because I am proud of that.

Viral Pop-Ups

I have done as suggested and stopped the comments from opening in a new window - please keep telling me if it did/didn't work.

To answer a very fair question (asked in a very unfair manner in one of the deleted comments mentioned earlier) there are a finite number of ways for pop-ups to get onto my blog that I know of, these being:

1. I invite them in and knowingly add the necessary code. I didn't do that.
2. I join a webring or the like, add the code for that to my blog and find that the pop-ups are piggybacking the link. Possible, and as Doris said, the only way to be sure is to eliminate all new links one by one to see if the pop-ups dissappear. This would involve forewarning any rings I belong to, so that I don't get permanently booted for having inactivated the connection. Nightmare.
3. The pop-ups are attaching themselves to the URL - to the code for my blog rather than the code for any individual addition to my blog, in which case they have gained access from the host server. I have no control over the programming behind the template, only remote access to update the look and feel, the posts etc.

I live in hope, but feel hijacked and depressed. I have had to reduce my association with surfing rings like Blog Explosion because they will not countenance pop-ups at all and I don't want to be penalised for something I didn't do and don't benefit from.

Poetry Game

I had wonderful fun. There are a couple of later suggestions on there that I really want to play with and am sorry that the moment passed and real life kicked back in too quickly. They are on the back burner for the next possible clear thinking time, but as any wife and mother will know, daring to set a timescale to that would be like asking the gods to pour mockery, laundry and familial crises down upon my head in equal measure.

Nonetheless, a few people took up the opposite challenge to create a poem of their own using the three words that I set. The out and out winner is Axeman for this little work:

It has become such an ARDOUS life

Especially 15 years after
I don't think you ever met the wife
My little VELOCIRAPTOR.

She says our love needs, well...
a bit more fondling
I say a stake
and a lot more KINDLING.

Sheer joy. Axey baby - don't stop doing what you're doing, but please, run a personal, non-marketing blog as well - you're funny.

Life

Off to do some frantic tidying up before my husband comes back from single-handedly coping with the weekend shopping and decides he's the only person around here who ever lifts a finger. Once the personal standards dragon has been sated and fallen asleep so that the man I married shines back through, I hope to catch up on some surfing - miss you guys!