Sad News

If any of you remember Alan, now is the time to say goodbye.  If you've lost the link, send me an email using the link above the lime clock in the sidebar.

Into history

Recently one of our favourite cafés closed down. Le Duperré has been open under that name at least as long as we’ve been in La Rochelle – over 30 years. Its place was opposite the statue if Admiral Duperré and was the first café on the port as you turned left from the big clock tower.

Over the years it was our favourite place for breakfast with children or friends. If I had blood tests before eating in the morning, having breakfast at the Duperré was a treat (Photo of a breakfast there). We met up with J-M’s parents for the first time outside the Duperré – though we didn’t have a drink there on that day because it was full up. I met blogging friend Caroline and her partner there when they came to La Rochelle too.

Every morning before work, Rob would go for his cup of coffee. You might have seen him, with his black bushy beard, sat at a table outside looking at his phone of reading the newspaper.

It has reopened under a different name and the waiter is the same at least for the time being. Before long we’ll be saying;

“Do you remember when it used to be called Le Duperré, how long ago was that?”

Thanks to LinkedIn

I found a missing blogger.

Nearly a month has gone by…

I’m sorry that there hasn’t been an update for so long. Rob went back to work this morning – 5 weeks after his accident. Our 27th wedding anniversary passed without divorce proceedings due to my driving. It’s not that I drive badly I just don’t drive like him and get nervous when I’m constantly ‘given advice’.

I met up with another blogger for the first time ever in my blogging career. Caroline and her partner were passing through La Rochelle on their way home by car. They usually wave as they fly over, so it was nice to see each other for real. We sat on the port and drank coffee and chatted. I wish I could have stayed longer. Here’s the proof:

 (Weather was a bit windy)

 Dom and J-M came for the weekend as it was Rob’s birthday on Saturday. Dom made one of her wonderful cakes; Chocolate on Chocolate (can’t get more wonderful than that). It’s always good to see them and we all spent Sunday morning browsing around local Brocantes/boot sales/garage sales. I found a lovely leather wallet and the partner to a candle holder we found last year under similar circumstances. Dom’s paper has now been accepted completely for publication. She’s just submitted her second and I think, has started on a third.

That about wraps up the update.

ExposeYourBlog !: Contests !

I’m going to be boring and post this on all of my blogs. As we approach the second birthday of ExposeYourblog!, we’ve re-launched both the surfing and referral contests. All you need to do to win credits surfing is to be amongst the top five surfers of the day. Credits awarded are based on the percentage of blogs surfed, so the more you surf the more you can win – daily and weekly! The referral contest means that you can win credits for referring more members than anyone else daily and weekly. New members must activate their account by surfing and adding their blog. To get links, go to your “Tools” page and click on “My Downline”, scroll down and you’ll find banners and links that you can use to promote ExposeYourBlog!. Or you could write a post about why you enjoy surfing on EYB! and include a link in your post – just like I have.

Don and I are really proud of the blogs on EYB! There are blogs to suit all tastes and you’ll find excellent writing, art and pictures as well as members who interact with each other. We’re building a very special blogging community and hopefully members feel as it EYB! Is being run by real people who care about their members – which is true.

As always Don and I can be contacted via a PM in the forums (don = “Admin”, to contact me “Anji”), via a support ticket or email; forumadmin@exposeyourblog.com . We’d love to hear from you, feedback and ideas are always useful.

Gentle Otter

This week Keith at A Taste Of Garlic wrote about a non French blog for a change. Now I’m directing you to a post on that blog about something happening today – not in the middle ages. If you have a minute please send a few words of support. Don’t forget to have a look at the rest of the blog while you are there.

Perhaps you could help too?

Today I’m writing about two very important blogs created by a blogging friend, Dirty Butter. We met up because of the chat box on ExposeYourBlog!. We discovered that we have a lot in common, though we live across the world from each other. We sell old stuff online (DB antiques and collectables – me vintage postcards) and we both used to teach.

Can you help? Every parent knows the agony of their child losing his/her favourite soft toy. Here is an amazing blog to put searchers and toys together. Anyone can help, anywhere in the world… spread a little happiness!

A second idea from DB: As everyone knows in April and May this year a lot of people in parts of the U.S. lost everything because of the tornados. In April and May a lot of young couples are busy preparing for their weddings. Imagine losing the wedding dress you’d dreamt of and saved up for. A special site created to help would be brides have their wedding after all. There have been many generous donations of dresses. Now the problem is to find the brides to fit them. If you know anyone who lost their dress or needs help with preparations because of the tornados, please tell them about this site.

As if there wasn't enough to do already, DB also has a couple of other blogs, Yesterday’s Memories and Day to Day with a Movement Disorder in which she talks about coping with Essential Myoclonus and some of the medication she has to take

Everso Slightly Drunk

I recommend you read his posts about his slightly strange family based somewhere in Canada. Not only that, he writes well.



I’m only doing this for the ExposeYourBlog! credits…

Quiz time

Not long after I started blogging I set up a quiz about the people on my blogroll. That was back in 2004. I wonder how many of these you might be able to answer this time:

1. There are four guitarists, can you name them?
2. Her name happens to sound like the past tense of what she does well
3. Someone who has been blogging since 1996
4. Two sisters
5. Who’s family has been likened to a mixture of The Osbournes and Absolutely Fabulous.
6. Who is the youngest blogger on my blogroll (Though she hasn’t blogged for a while)?
7. I see pictures at an exhibition…
8. Give her a cake
9. He travels the world as his name suggests
10. Someone who is getting more football than she bargained for.

One question is exactly the same as last time, which one is it?

BlogExplosion logging in and surfing - or not

**Update**
Perhaps I was too quick off the mark. It seems that the problem has now been fixed by an administrator. It will be interesting to see what happens next…

***

If you’re reading this chances are that you’ve come through Google or book- marked my blog for future reference. As I write some members cannot log in and if they do they are unable to surf. We are trying to find out what is going on, but as there is no administrator it’s very difficult. You should be able to log into the forums and even if you can’t log in, you can read the threads. We’re trying to keep them as up to date as possible. Please DO NOT send in a support ticket - there is no one to deal with them.

The good news is that, by chance a few days ago, I managed to find the names of some of the people at LiveUniverse that we wrote to last year. I’m not sure how many of them are still there. As some of you know as long ago as last September there were reports that LiveUniverse were unable to pay some of their employees. I’m going to try sending messages to them via LiveUniverse

I think it goes without saying; don’t buy any credits or banner impressions for the time being. If you paid using PayPal and want to get your money back you probably can – it certainly works like that on eBay.

What you can do to help

Spread the world! Post on your blog about what is happening, you can copy parts of this post if you like – I don’t mind. Ask other members that read your post to spread the word too. I’ll try to keep you updated on my blogs and the forums should be pretty active if the last few hours are anything to go by

Hopefully normal service will be resumed as soon as possible

Blogging, bloggers, blogs, blogrolls...

I’ve just spent a happy hour sorting out my list of blogs. I wasn’t happy with Blogrolling anymore, I didn’t like the advertisements; Now everyone is on the blogger list and will come to the top every time they up date their blogs. If you think that you’ve been missed please let me know.

I’ve added Helen and Lucy, so welcome to two newcomers! There was some sad news though. I’ve taken Leslie off and Titania still hasn’t come back, I know that she was having health problems, I hope that everything is okay there. Miimama –Demi, last posted when her husband was taken into hospital over a year ago, unfortunately he died in the spring.

All I have to do now is sort out the Blogrolls on my other blogs! I shan’t be doing that this evening.

BlogExplosion: very Important!!

A letter has been composed for everyone to send out to the company that owns Blogexplosion on 20th February, you can copy the letter from here.

Or you might prefer to go here for more instructions and access to a rich text format of the letter. I think anyone outside the US would probably like to send their letters a little earlier. The addresses are supplied. Just pick who you would like to address your letter to.

There is no reason why you shouldn’t compose your own letter if you want to. Please be polite. A lot of effort has gone into this project by people who care about the blogging community. If you belong to BlogExplosion, please help.

And yes, you will be seeing this post on all of my blogs

Thanks to thewatchlist, MJTaylor Spicybugz, bokonon, kelson, SelinaKimsey, sightlydrunk, bluegrassBloggo, McSpazz, lando411 and others I have surely missed for keeping the forums looking like forums. A special thanks to thewatchlist and MJTaylor who have put in all of the work for the letter.