So I've been a little bored with my creative options blogwise, and starting to think maybe I should part with a little money in order to get some of those nifty features (like pictures that won't break two weeks later when the source site archives whatever article I got them from). The problem is which "premium" blog hosting service to sign up with. Xanga Premium is among the cheapest, but I haven't been that impressed with the look of any of the blogs I've visited that use their updates, plus I don't like that the only people who can post comments on a Xanga blog are Xanga members. LiveJournal is about the same price, and I've seen some nice stuff over there, but I'm not really into all the "friends" and "friends of friends" community thing. There's an intriguing new option from MovableType, called TypePad, but it's not only twice as much for just the most basic option, but doesn't allow HTML editing unless you shell out for the highest level. It does have a 30 day free trial though, so maybe I'll test it out. But I'm waiting to see if this itch to have a less amateurish blog is going to last, or is just another symptom of being creatively blocked -- I haven't written ANYTHING (on paper) since graduation. This is partly due to procrastination, and partly because I suddenly have no deadlines and no priority projects, so I can work on anything I want and I can't decide which of my old drafts to pick up or if I should just work on something new.

There's also the professional aspect of this, which is that if I were to have a better blog I might be able to parlay that into an association or partnership with a megablog like Gothamist or Gawker (especially in the northeastern US, blogging seems to be increasingly incestuous) or, if I should decide to go the freelance route, be able to use my blog for advertising/exhibiting my services. At the very least, it could mean I could write off any premium service costs as a business expense. This is a line of thinking undoubtedly caused by not having a permanent job at the moment -- don't take it too seriously, okay? I've been reading the Real Estate section of the NY Times too much lately, it's making me mercenary.

Here's a funny story: today at work I got labeled a "computer wiz" for (gasp) using the Mail Merge Wizard in Microsoft Word to make nametags from an Excel spreadsheet of seminar participants. Saturday I thought my boss was about to cry, she was so happy with the indices and tables I whipped up for the big reaccreditation report -- mostly caused by knowing how to use the "Bold" and "center alignment" buttons along with the Table function in Word. Oh, if only I could find another group of PC-illiterate college professors who think my understanding of basic word processing software is a rare skill deserving a full-time and well paying job.