Blogger: Overwhelmed Edition. THANK YOU!

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you! THANK YOU!

I posted yesterday morning asking if people wouldn’t mind sending some money my way to help me get to this summer’s Empowering Women Through Secularism conference here in Dublin. I wasn’t expecting to receive much- I know that lots of us are low in cash these days and I’d never want to presume. I figured, though, that if I got enough to cover half of the cost or so, that I could come up with the rest myself.

What happened next left me astonished. And overwhelmed. Those pics above? Those are my overwhelmed faces the morning after. You should’ve seen me last night.

In a matter of hours, you wonderful readers responded not just with donations, but with reblogging, RTing and sharing my post and, well, with words that had me blushing cherry-red. I have no idea how I lucked out so much with my readers and followers. But damn, I did.

So here I am with an entirely unusual problem. I now have all of this extra money, and I want to do something worthwhile with it. I think it would be ungrateful and inappropriate of me to, say, blow it all on a fancy new set of bearings for my roller skates. (I’d pretend the thought never crossed my mind. But I’m only human. Of course it did)

I see this money as being for two things: the Tea Cosy, and supporting women and secularism. 

I’ve wanted to transfer the Tea Cosy over to wordpress.org for several months. With a self-hosted blog I’d have far more freedom to do what I like with this space- to include more and different kinds of features, to play with how the site is put together. WordPress.com is a great place to start a blog, but I’ve been feeling a little frustrated by some of its limitations recently, and it seems like time to strike out and give the Tea Cosy a home of its own.

I’d like to use the extra money I’ve been given to do that, and if I have any left over, I’ll donate that either to this summer’s conference or to another secular & feminist cause. I’d be happy for any suggestions you have in that regard, and I’ll let you know what ideas I come up with.

What do you think? I feel both grateful and delighted with all of your generosity, and that I want to use this money in a way that benefits all of you, as well as me.

Let me know!

And, if I haven’t mentioned it enough times yet? THANK YOU! You’re all, as we say here, a shower of ledgebags.

Who should I be reading? Link me to you!

You may have noticed- I hope you have!- a few changes around the Tea Cosy in the past few days. While my writing mojo was off down a drain somewhere (or, more likely, composing epic poetry about my fabulous new bruises and hip-checking the fridge door), I took care of some housekeeping.

I hope you like the new theme! I also, eh, *coughcough* added a tip jar just in case any of my readers are fabulously wealthy even after donating to the Abortion Support Network and fancy throwing a few squid my way. As I’m entering the fabulous world of interning, I’m going to be pretty darn broke for the better part of the next year, and, well, I’d love to be able to afford to fancy this place up a bit.

Most importantly, though, I’ve also been sprucing up the blogroll for the first time in.. years? There’s tons of my favourite people over there to your right for you all to check out. However, as you all know, there’s an awful lot of fantastic blogs out there and I only have the one me. I’m almost certain that a bunch of you lot have excellent blogs that I’ve spent many a happy hour reading. Let me know where you’re at! I’d also love to hear of any other blogs that I’ve missed. Who do you think I should be reading?

Change is Afoot, and I Go Hiking

You may have noticed (I certainly did) that things have been a little quiet around here for the past few weeks. I’ve been distracted both by important things- sorting myself out with places to work and live after this month- and by even more important things- diving headfirst (sometimes literally) into roller derby fresh meat, exploring Dublin and surrounds on my new bike, and perfecting my brownie recipe. That last one is mainly important directly after the first two, by the way.

Because I’ve been delightfully successful in all of these, some changes are afoot! Since I’ll be spending a bunch of hours every week at work (hurrah!), I’ll have less time to devote to posting here. I’ve decided to keep to a schedule of two sizeable posts per week, since that leaves me plenty of time to go to work, fall off my roller skates, and post 100s of pics of my bruises all over Tumblr.  What this means is, of course, that there’ll be plenty of space for guest posters! I’ve loved everyone’s guest posts over the past month or so. I’ll be out scouring the country for people with interesting things to say. Beware the gleam in my eye when I hear you expounding on your favourite topic in my presence. You have about 2 minutes to get out of there before I start haranguing you for articles.

Now that that’s out of the way? Have a bunch of pretty pictures of a ‘nice quiet walk in the countryside’ I went on last week, courtesy of wicklowwalks.com. Shortish walk, they said. Easy, they said. More mud than you have ever seen in your life, they conveniently omitted. Good thing the views outshone the mud, many times over.

That tall thing on the left? Steeper than it looks. Definitely steeper than it looked.