The Final Touch

I don’t know the origin/source of these — they were passed along to me via email — but I love them and wanted to share with all of you! May all your days be days of thanksgiving!

I really have no idea why my side­bar to the right is over­lap­ping the right mar­gin of my blog posts. This should NOT be!! I’ll have to see what I can find out about it soon. So sorry, all. Hope you can see the posts well enough to not be dis­cour­aged from read­ing them. ~Heidi

photo © 2010 Allan Chatto | more info (via: Wylio)
Writ­ing to wish every­one a joy­ous cel­e­bra­tion of the turn from 2010 to 2011!

The occa­sion does present the oppor­tu­nity for a brief spelling/punctuation les­son, how­ever! This fes­tive night is not spelled “New Years Eve,” nor do we cel­e­brate “the New Years.” GAH!! I’ve heard and seen both of those too many times already! Here are our options:

• New Year’s Eve (the eve of the new year, thus the need for an apostrophe);
• Happy New Year! (we only cel­e­brate one at a time, so there is no “s” on the end);
• New Year’s, as in “We’re cel­e­brat­ing New Year’s at…” (I’ll give you this one, reluc­tantly, but only with the apos­tro­phe included to show that “Eve” is implied).

Just a tip to take with you into Jan­u­ary! For oth­ers like it, along with a wide range of pon­der­ings, I invite you to stop by this blog through­out 2011. I look for­ward to shar­ing new ven­tures with you!

–Heidi

Whew! After quite a few days of frus­tra­tion, I learned yes­ter­day (through Sab­rina Gib­son, my social-media coach) that Host­Ga­tor was the place to go to work out my Word­Press kinks!

See, though I don’t really under­stand it and prob­a­bly can’t explain it well, Host­Ga­tor is what enables me to have a “self-hosted” blog — to take my domain name (Final­Touch­Proof­readin­gAndEdit­ing) and use Word­Press blog­ging fea­tures with­out hav­ing my name buried inside a Word­Press URL. Don’t worry if you don’t under­stand that; I just fol­lowed Sabrina’s direc­tions for set­ting it up (and if you have a busi­ness you want to blog for, you might find it use­ful to learn more about this — I can put you in touch with the right people).

Until this morn­ing, I’d been tear­ing my hair out. See? It’s a lot shorter now than it used to be! Com­pare this — before the glitch –

Heidi with longish hair (Photo cour­tesy Gabriel Mann, age 5)

to this — after I’d yanked out half of my locks!

Heidi with short hair (Photo cour­tesy Gabriel Mann, age 5)

(Of course, it was a wel­come change for summer.)

Any­way… my point is that Host­Ga­tor turned out to be the place I needed to go for answers! What’s more, they are so strong in the customer-service realm that the three issues I brought to the Live Chat tech­ni­cian (and one more that I added in along the way) are now all resolved, so I am out of panic mode and back into lov­ing my blog!!

So, you should see more of me in the near future! (And I just may become a Host­Ga­tor affil­i­ate, but for now, FYI, I make no “com­mis­sion” off of pro­mot­ing them here, other than the fun of pass­ing along a great tip and resource to my friends!)

Oh, and the change in the look of the blog is “col­lat­eral dam­age” from all the tech prob­lems. I may end up chang­ing it back, or chang­ing to some­thing a bit fancier, but for now, I’m just glad to be here, back with you!

A blessed Thanks­giv­ing to all from Heidi at Final Touch Proof­read­ing & Editing!