Rant/Ramble: Talking about Blogging

So, I have three blogs. I enjoy blogging. It's become a hobby. And I'm the kind of person who can't just enjoy a hobby, I have to talk about it.

I can talk about my other hobbies - I talk about perfume by blogging about it and participating in forums, and other blogs. I talk about cooking and gardening by blogging about them and participating in forums, and other blogs.

But I don't really blog about blogging. And while I've tried to participate in forums, the effort has been frustrating.

This is because the focus of blogging forums is seldom what I consider blogging. Instead, it's about setting up templates and comment systems, and the best SEO strategies, and whether AdWords produces more income than SomeOtherAdSystem. Content? Wait, content? Well, yes, they suppose that you have to write posts. Make them unique and valuable and compelling, yep. Content is king, yep yep. Now, about that SEO strategy...

So I have a pent-up urge to talk about blogging. The important part - the writing. And I just wondered, since many of you blog, do any of you have the same urge and the same frustration?

(Edited to clarify my complaint.)

Photo: By Guyon Moree. Wikimedia Commons.

Meta: YACFB (Yet Another ChickenFreak Blog)

So, see, this blog started out to be about all of my obsessions. Chicken, and gardening, and murder mysteries, and, oh, yes, perfume.

I seem to have gotten rather excited about the perfume. And that is far from a problem; I'm having a great time writing the perfume posts. But the other posts are getting drowned by perfume, and the more perfume-focused the blog becomes, the more likely it is that the occasional fried chicken or gardening ramble may bore the purely-perfume reader.

The solution? Another blog!  Woohoo!

So the non-perfume posts will commence over at Rambling Chicken, and the perfume posts will stay right here. I'll be doing a fair bit of linking back and forth, and I hope that you visit me in both places.

Photo: By Lilly M. Wikimedia Commons.

Meta: Oops. I didn't delete you, really!

It appears that I had my list of perfume links set to only thirty entries, so folks at the bottom of the alphabet were falling off.  I've corrected this, but in the unlikely event that anyone noticed that they were once there and then were no longer there, and were offended as a result, I wanted to make this quick post to explain.

Bad ChickenFreak. Fixed now.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Meta: Kreativ Blogger Award (Ooh!)

Ooh! Ooh!

Ines, the author of the very fine blog All I Am - A Redhead, has nominated me for a Kreativ Blogger award. Ines's blog is a wonderful combination of perfume, books, and other thoughts. I greatly admire her creativity and expression, and I'm excited that she's even reading my blog, much less awarding it. Thank you so much, Ines.

My understanding is that now I:

- Post the award and a link to the blog that nominated me. (Here!)
- Post seven things about myself. (Here! Below!)
- Pass the award to seven more bloggers that I admire. (Not Here! There will be Decision Making, so this may take me a little while.)

Seven things, seven things, seven things...  I'm going with purely random things that you don't know about me:

1) I love bacon almost as much as fried chicken.

2) My first "perfume" memory is a Sweet Pea Liddle Kiddle Kologne Doll. Her scent is what I was thinking of when I wrote, in one post, about the magnificence of scents that you loved when you were four.

3) I had (have?) a crush on Jack Klugman. You know, Quincy? (Himself does not look at all like Jack Klugman.)

4) In winter, I prefer wearing a zillion layers (tee, bigger tee, longsleeved polo, light sweater, medium sweater, big sweater) to wearing a coat.

5) My teenhood cat took against me when I went to college and never spoke to me again. Don't worry; she attached to my mother and was content. She just held a grudge.

6) I hate sweet pickles.

7) I'm planning to buy a tricycle for exercise and grocery-hauling. Because when I ride a bike I fall over and I don't enjoy that. (Neither do the groceries.)

Thank you again, Ines!

Meta: Apologies For The Updates

So, I'm new to blogging.

I'm new to exactly how I want to organize this blog, including tags and such things. And I just discovered why the search isn't working the way I want, and that it's because my tags are all wrong.

I'm telling you this to explain why, if you're in any way subscribed to this blog, you're about to get several zillion updates as I fix up the tags on just about every single post. This won't be a trend. I hope.

My apologies. Will it help to look at the kitty?

ChickenFreak

Photo: By Petra15. Wikimedia Commons

Answers: Those acronyms

So what are those silly acronyms that I keep using?

SOTD: Scent Of The Day
BOTD: Book Of The Day
DCOTD: DeClutter Of The Day

I think that's all so far. But it's only a matter of time.

Edited: Declutter Of The Day has become my second blog.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Answers: So what is a munchy book?

So you may notice that I have a post tag of "munchy books". I feel an obligation to explain what on earth I'm talking about.

A munchy book is a book that's suitable to be a reading snack - to be picked up and read for twenty minutes before falling asleep, or in the bathtub, or while waiting for the oven to preheat. Or when you want to gorge, it's the book that you take with you to the park for an afternoon, knowing that you're going to enjoy yourself.

A munchy book is so packed with stories or thoughts or factlets or theories or amusing phrases that you can open it at almost any page and start enjoying yourself. It's also likely to add to your store of knowledge, even if it's your store of knowledge about some esoteric and relatively useless topic.

Now, that's not to say that a munchy book is _only_ suitable as a snack food.  In fact, a really good munchy book, the kind that's worth re-reading and reading aloud to those around you (thus driving them mad, but the stories are so good that you just can't stop) is quite likely to also be a very good book.

Photo: Sakurai Midori. Wikimedia Commons; click for details.