Rachel’s Reflections

It’s been six months since I posted.  The last time I posted, in April, I was “swimming to Saudi.”  Well, I didn’t make it.  I only made 3000 meters.  I’ve been trying to improve my swimming since, and this last month I broke 3000 meters.  So while I’d like to complete and win a swim challenge, my goals are much smaller now–just to beat whatever I did the last month.  Maybe someday I’ll be a good enough swimmer to win a challenge.

The reason I left my blog was because I just had too many other things to do.  Something had to slide.  I realized I couldn’t do everything.  Plus I was bored with it.  So I took the summer off and worked on other projects I had to do, like earning my EXW (expeditionary warfare) qualification and studying for my Navy advancement test.  The results: I did earn my EXW qualification!  So now I have a shiny pin to wear on my uniform.  And as for the advancement test, I don’t find that out until the end of November.

I’m thinking of changing the look of this blog.  I like this theme, but the header picture thing isn’t working for some reason.  Also I probably won’t blog very often.  My goal is twice a week, but it may only be once a week.  That might change in December, depending on my schedule.  Last year I posted every day in December.  I did an Advent Calendar of Christmas hymns and carols with special note of the Advent Sundays.  It was a lot of fun, and time permitting, I’d like to do it again.  After our trip to Rome last December (making sure posts got up on time when on vacation with limited internet access was challenging) I thought I might do an Advent theme of Renaissance paintings.  They’re beautiful, there’s a lot of them, and they’re in the public domain.  I’ll have to wait and see.

Current projects include a few things for work and participating in Nanowrimo this November.  So during November I might not post at all.  If that’s the case, just check back in December.  If you want to look me up on the Nanowrimo website, my username is rbicha.

First, I’m sorry I haven’t posted since early January.  I even had some posts planned, but they just didn’t get written.  I got busy at work and then studying for my EXW and then I got sick–for three weeks.  I call it the Bahraini Crud because that virus has swept through the island and everyone I know has had it and was sick for three or four weeks.  And it’s not the flu, either, the doctor assures me.  Besides we military get vaccinated against the flu.

But now I’m well and able to do more than stagger to work in the morning and then stagger home at night and go straight to bed.  But posts will probably be sporadic as I still need to study EXW.  I really need to get my pin.  (EXW=expeditionary warfare specialist: it’s a military qualification I’m required to get.  The pin is proof I got it and something I get to wear on my uniform.)

As you can see I updated my theme.  Not sure about the picture; I may change it.  Right now it’s showing a view of the Bahrain financial harbor (bunch of office building skyscrapers) as seen from my apartment’s balcony.

I’ve decided on a focus for my blog.  Ever since I started it in November 2007 I’ve been writing about whatever whenever.  Mostly I’ve just been trying to figure out what I’m doing with a blog and getting used to the idea of what it is and how it works.  But now I’ve decided that I need to have more of a focus.  And while obscure holidays was a lot of fun to do over the Christmas holidays, it’s not something I think would make very good subject matter for a blog over the long run, particularly since I was/would be pretty much paraphrasing from and even copying and pasting from Wikipedia.

So I thought about what I could say that maybe not very many other people were saying, and I came up with the obvious–Bahrain.  So I decided I would focus my blog on Bahrain.  And that’s why I changed the subtitle of my blog–to make it more obvious that this blog will be about Bahrain.

I don’t know how good I’ll be at this.  I’ve been having problems getting pictures off my camera, so I don’t know if I’ll have many photos.  And I may be too busy to do much more than report on what the newspaper is reporting.  By the way, anyone can read it any time they like–it’s online at Gulf Daily News.  (And it’s in English.)  There are other newspapers, too, but that’s the only one I read.

So here’s my first bit about Bahrain:  The weather is absolutely lovely today.  I sat outside for a while and read.  It’s sunny, around 70F/21C, and when sitting in the sun, feels good with short sleeves.  It’s warm but not hot yet.  Perfect weather.

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My blog’s already gotten its Christmas present–new clothes!  As you can see, I updated my blog with a Christmas theme.  I really like the snowflakes that fall down.  That’s the closest I’ll get to snow here in Bahrain!

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November 16 is the one year anniversary of this blog. As of right now, I have 57 posts and 6 drafts.  Those drafts are from our trip back in May.  If I ever get the pictures added to them, I’ll post them (in the May archives).

So all together that is 63 blog posts I wrote in a year.  That’s a little over 1 a week.  I thought for sure I’d end up with an average of at least 2 a week, but ever since our trip in May I’ve been super busy (working 60+ hours a week all summer and fall), and haven’t really wanted to do this blog.  But I’ve missed it, so I’ll try to keep it going, although I can’t guarantee I’ll post more.  Maybe my goal for this next year will be at least 2 posts a week or a total of 100+ over the next year.  I think that is a reasonable goal.

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Update: Removing the Polaroid plugin for now.

On the sidebar is a new page called “Polaroid Washington, D.C.”  It displays my Washington, D.C. pictures, which can be seen in the post Leave and Washington, D.C. or on the page Washington, D.C., as Polaroid pictures.  Jeremy thinks it’s cool; I think it’s stupid.  I’d like your opinion.

Do you like it?  And no, you don’t have to agree with me.  If my readers like it, I will keep it and publish other picture pages that way.  If my readers don’t like it, it will go away.

So let me know if you want me to keep it or not.

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Hey, I just added a “widget” to my sidebar!  That was some way awesome computer skills in action, folks!  I stole the idea from this blog: 4tunate.  It’s a world map that tracks visitors to your blog.  I saw it and thought, “How can I get me one of those things?”  So I clicked on it and it opened a larger world map.  I thought, “Hey, cool!”  And I looked right away for Bahrain, and sure enough there was a big, red dot.  So she doesn’t know it, but her Bahraini visitor is me!  But anyway, I looked around that site and at the top it said, “Get your own, free: easy as 1, 2, 3.”  So I clicked on it.  And do you know, they’re right?  It WAS easy?  Computer people don’t explain things in easy terms very often.  So these guys get an A+ 100.  All I had to do was register, then login to the site, and it gave my html code to copy and paste into my blog.  AND–this is the important part–it had step-by-step instructions for HOW to do it.  I clicked on the link and, lo and behold, there were a lot of choices for the different kinds of blogs.  So I looked down the list until I found Wordpress, which is the kind of blog I use, and clicked on that and would you believe I found step-by-step instructions that were helpful and complete and easy to follow?  Hard to believe, I know.  But I did.  I followed them AND IT WORKED.  That’s amazing too, isn’t it?  So I was able to add this thing ALL BY MYSELF and without Jeremy’s help even.  That is like super, totally amazing!  I’m so proud of myself.  So I had to share the news.

So now I can track where my visitors are from.  Even if there’s only like three dots I think it will still be cool.

I wish I knew why the weather widget doesn’t work anymore….  Any ideas, Jeremy?

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