Northwoods Woman

Has anyone else noticed that it is only 16 more days until Christmas?  Which means there are only 12 more days to get those presents wrapped and shipped out if you are going to do so.

Which is exactly what I did today (except the whole shipping part, which will happen tomorrow).

I have to be in the right mood to wrap presents, because when I’m going to do it, I want the whole shebang done in one fell swoop so I don’t have to clean off the table, grab all the wrapping crap and and make a huge mess more than once.

There is one advantage to me getting it done early this year, because as I was sorting everything out, I realized that I was missing a couple presents.  So OK, I’ve got to make a slight mess once those arrive.

*Insert appropriate word of frustration here*

On Mondays I like to spend some time in the morning writing out a few blog posts.  This is, of course, if I have something to post, which has been hit or miss lately.

But when I went onto Facebook that morning I noticed that Nichole had left a message saying that the website wasn’t working.  I also noticed that links from previous posts weren’t showing up.  So, I hopped onto my administrative page and… nothing.

Houston, we have a problem.

Now, I’ve had this happen before and sometimes it will correct itself in a few hours, sometimes I need to reinstall WordPress.  So I took the simple approach and re-downloaded the newest version and viola!  I had my admin panel back up.   SCORE!

So I went to look at the website and all that greeted me back was my header.  CRAP!

Well then, let’s see if any of the other internet engines likes me today… Chome?  Yep!  IE?  Nadda… same results as Firefox.  Ok, let’s see what the forums for my Theme have to say (since there was an upgrade a week ago, maybe the problem was just reaching me now… I was grasping here folks).

My little light at the end of the tunnel was provided when I found out that,  yes, people were having the same issues as me.  I’m NOT alone in the world!  However, the solutions had to do with inserting code here and there, and I, for one, was not about to do that.  I never fiddle with that stuff on my site to “snazz” it up (plus I’m not that smart) and I wasn’t going to fart around in that area now.

BUT, I did take one suggestion and de-activated all of my plugins to see if that was the culprit.

Nope, strike 2 (or 3, whatever we’re at now).

So my loving husband, as he was heading out the door to work, suggested that I try the computer wiz’s on the WordPress IRC channel.  Now here’s my problem with that:  I’m no slouch when it comes to computers and I can slap the jargon around with the best of them, but some of these guys scare the bejeezus out of me!  Again, I am not a coder nor do I play one on TV.  When they start getting into the “look in your <g>root/something.wtf file”, my brain turns to liquid and starts oozing out of my head quicker than you can say “I love bacon.”

Luckily Rick was also logged onto the site and when that time came, my Prince gallantly came to my rescue and took over.  Phew!

Turns out that I even had the experts baffled as to what the problem could be.  Eventually, the consensus was that it was not my theme and it was not WordPress.  I’ll save you all the details of what Rick eventually did (because even I don’t know) but it had to do with moving me over to a new server and resetting/tweaking several areas to get all components to talk to each other and play nice.  (There was probably some cussing thrown in there for good measure.  Just guessing.)

So for the next 24 hours my poor husband took precious time out of his workday (and life) to find a way to get me up and running.

And, as you can clearly see since you are reading this fine material (HA! ), he was successful.  The man is a genius!

I have the best tech support in the world.

Every year, I try (and fail) to get my daughters to get their Christmas lists to me by a certain date.  I want to be proactive and try to get my shopping in as soon as possible so that I’m not rushing to get it done at the last minute (is shopping online rushing?).

I would like to say that this year was different and I had lists for all the kids and grandkids wayyyyy ahead of time.

Yes, I would like to say that.

What I can say is that I do have some ideas, and that more coming trickling in as the over-commercialized-holiday-that-starts-appearing-in-stores-before-Halloween quickly approaches.

So when Nichole fired off a message Sunday morning saying that leggings would be a great gift for the girls, I returned the message (12 hours later because that’s when I noticed it) asking for sizes and colors.  Unfortunately, as I hit the “send” button, I realized that she was probably in bed already and wouldn’t received it until the next morning.

No biggie, I thought, and promptly went back to watching “America’s Next Iron Chef:  Redemption” (which, by the way, I highly recommend if you are a) a person that loves to watch people run around crazed trying to make a meal out of seaweed and pterodactyl intestines; or b) plan their next grocery list from the secret ingredient).

So when my cell phone went off at 4:30 in the morning, alerting me to a message, the only thing I could think of was “Oh shit, something happened“, because when it’s that time of the morning and my phone goes off, it can only be bad news.

I jumped out of bed, and with bleary eyes (and no glasses on), I squinted at the screen preparing for the worst.

Instead, I got “Paige 10 lex 8 bug 6.  Black preferably but any color.”

Just let me say that texting is not the preferred way to give me ideas, but it will certainly get my attention.