My Blog Book

Friend Hazel encouraged me to turn my blog into a book. I laughed at the thought... it would cost too much money and only be of interest to me. But I have been worried about losing this journal/blog if I could no longer get on the web. I don't, after all, trust technology. And how would I remember what I did last week without these ramblings?

Then one day when I logged on here, a pop-up window appeared saying "Turn your blog into a book!" or something like that. I clicked and was taken to a place that turns blog posts into books... just like Hazel said. It didn't seem terribly expensive. I signed on. Unfortunately, I never could download the program I was supposed to use to edit the book so just gave the go ahead to print the thing.

Ramblings from Fink Family Farm, from the beginning in October 2009 to the end of 2010, arrived a few weeks ago. I love it. But I should have edited it. Words are broken in strange ways and photos are not where they should be. One page may have "f" while the next page has "or". Put them together and you have "for". It's sort of like a puzzle. When my text says "the photo on the right", the photo is almost certainly not on the right in the book. But it's there. Somewhere. On that page or the next. Or the one before.



If I make a book of my 2011 ramblings, I'll try to figure out how to download that editing program.

Nevertheless I'm having a wonderful time rereading what happened around here a year ago. I had completely forgotten about most of the incidents I write about in this blog. Yesterday, I read about making butter walnut ice cream last May. Johnny was laid up with his back then, too, and I had cajoled him into cracking walnuts for me to make the ice cream. Today, although his back is considerably better than it was last May, Johnny cracked walnuts after I reminded him about the ice cream. This afternoon, we had butter walnut ice cream. Delicious! Without my blog book, I might never have remembered to make it again.

I look forward to finding out what else we did last year... in stolen moments with my blog book... when I'm not out creating new things to write about and taking new photos to include in a blog post. I love having my photos in a book instead of just buried somewhere on the computer that I don't trust to always cooperate.

There are some things I can't get from the book, though, like videos. When told to click on a link to view a video of an otter or grandchildren or a coyote, I cannot. I wonder if I could with a Kindle? But there's that technology again that I'm quite sure will, when it feels like it, quit working. A book is something I trust. As long as I can open the pages, it will be there for me to read and reminisce... 252 pages of memories.

Thank you, Hazel, for a great idea.