Welcome! Come on in and have a cup of tea. This is the new home of The Menagerie House, still with dog, ferrets, fish, birds, kids, husband, and me, and (of course!) all the usual lunacy this collection of critters entails. But now with our own domain!!
Some of you may remember that I had been threatening to move to WordPress. But it has finally gotten to the point where I’m losing readers because my old page loads So Darn Slowly. Also, Blogger has been flakey lately – twice in the last week I haven’t been able to post stories because Blogger either isn’t recognizing me, letting me save my posts, or upload pictures. It occurred to me that it was time to make good on my threat and move to another, hopefully friendlier, neighborhood. So here we are at our new address – update your links accordingly, please. (And please let me know if this page is loading at a reasonable speed!)
Over the next few weeks I’ll be adding back in some of my old favorite links as well as migrating the original Blogger blog content over to this site. I’m also planning on hiring my friend (and fellow Interlochen alum) Julie to do a redesign of the site. She did a great job two years ago, but since then we’ve added a son and the assortment of pets has changed a bit, so I think it’s time for a blog makeover.
In the meantime I really like that bridge up there on the header. There is a similar bridge nearby that I travel across every morning while driving Liam to nursery school. It is a stone bridge dating from the late 1700′s. On mornings when there are fog and mist around I can almost feel time sliding back. I can envision horse-drawn carriages and wagons rolling slowly along a road that was, and still is, one of the main arteries in this part of the state. It is courtesy of the modern world’s rush hour traffic that I get the time to indulge my imagination. As I stand there, one link in a long and slowly crawling chain of cars, part of me is amazed that this same bridge was as important to post-Revolutionary War buggy drivers as it is today’s semi-truck drivers. I guess this is an example of one of my grandmother’s favorite sayings, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Another part of me is amazed that a stone bridge hand-built for horse-and-wagon travel can remain standing under the steady onslaught of semi-trucks, school buses, delivery vans, and other heavy vehicles that makes up morning traffic.
At any rate, the point I was trying to make is this – in the coming weeks I will be making some physical changes to the ol’ blog. What will stay the same are the cute conversation, antics, and pictures of my kids and pets. Thanks for coming by to check out the new digs. I hope you like the new look, and I hope ya’ll stop by again soon for another episode of Menagerie House Mania!
Have a great holiday, everyone!
Hey Liesl, congrats on your new digs! I’m so glad you switched over. I’ve pretty much given up on visiting Blogger blogs any more, except via RSS. They all seem to take forever to load, plus their spam protection is so offensive — not like WP’s Akismet, which is elegant and puts no burden on the visitor whatsoever — and it also bugs me that I have to give my Google account info instead of just my name and email in order to leave a comment… Anyway, I’ve updated my feed. You’re gonna have fun here.
Oh, and I’m so jealous of your bridge! There are no landmarks that old in my neck of the woods.
Enjoy the new digs! I love wordpress so far…
I almost used that picture! Love it as well, it looks like a bridge near where I went to prep school.
Looks great so far!! No problems with the site loading either.
Love the new site! Good luck during the transition!
Congrats on the new digs! Off to a great start….
Love the new site! Very cool bridge, the one pictured, and the one you travel every day. Good luck getting everything moved over!
Love it, love it, love it! Can’t wait to see how you develop it too.
I have been toying with the idea of moving, but just don’t have the time to look into it at the moment. Maybe one day, haven’t got completely fed up with blogger yet
Yay – love the new site! I always had difficulty with your site loading (but I remained patient ’cause I wanted to read ya!)
Love that pic!
Good luck with the switcheroo!
It’s BEAUTIFUL!
And it loads MUCH faster. Woo-hoo!
Heidi
Thank GOODNESS you moved. I’ve missed you!! I pretty much gave up on visiting your blog but since I was at my dad’s I decided to see if it was a problem with my computer (it’s not) and went and checked out your site. YAY!! Welcome to WP. As a former Blogspot blogger I just loooove loooove loooove WP. If you have any questions or need any help just pop me an email. Have I mentioned how happy I am that I can read your blog again?? Now if only everyone else would leave blogspot maybe I could go and check out other blogs without fear of my computer completely locking down!!
So pretty! I love it! And I do love that picture at the top, too. Aren’t bridges amazing? My husband is a civil engineer who designs and inspects bridges and I always tell him I think he would have so much fun doing his job in NJ because of the high level of traffic and age of bridges combined. Oh, and I hadn’t realized the aversion to Blogger that apparently many people have! Sort of makes me think I should follow you out of there.
hey you! glad to see you resurfacing! looking forward to all the wonder and thought and boy stories you can pour into your new “home” here!
<3
Thanks for following along, everyone! It’s great to see so many friends, especially those who haven’t stopped by in a while
I’m glad you like the new place, and I’m glad it’s behaving well for those of you who had loading issues at the old site.