Announcement: Bloggiesta 2.0 Begins!

Bloggiesta kicks off this morning! Participants will be spending time during the next three days tackling those nagging blog-housekeeping tasks that we have so much trouble getting around to doing – and encouraging each other along the way! If you need some ideas about what to work on, the challenge announcement post at Maw Books has lots of suggestions; there’s no minimum time commitment required, but Natasha suggests putting enough into it to make it feel like a challenge, whatever that means for you. You can spread your Bloggiesta time across the weekend, a bit at a time, or clear your calendar and plunge right in – whatever works!

I accomplished a fair amount during the first Bloggiesta last June, and signed up for this round right away, but I think my participation will be more limited this time. This happens to be the first weekend my husband and I have had to ourselves since the week before Thanksgiving, and we have some plans for it! At the same time, I don’t want to bail on Bloggiesta entirely, so I’m compromising by keeping my to-do list pretty small:

• Complete drafts of two posts for the LA Moms Blog to meet my commitment for January
• Create templates for my upcoming book-review posts (including 3 blog tours and a couple of challenge books)
• Trim my Google Reader subscriptions, checking the Trends for rarely-read, dormant, and duplicate feeds
• Review my blog widgets for items to be updated
• Organize my book review listing alphabetically (thanks to Molly for reminding me I’ve been meaning to do this!)
• Draft announcements and create buttons for upcoming reading projects

I’ll keep an eye on the mini-challenges for other ideas, but these are my top five priorities for the weekend. I’ll let you know on Monday how it all turns out. Are you joining the Bloggiesta fun, too?

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New Arrivals in my Google Reader

So much for starting out the year with “out with the old, in with the new:” superstition says not to clean or get rid of anything on January 1 (?). Somewhat related: achievable New Year’s resolutions

I lived in the South long enough that I still self-identify as a Southerner at times – enough that much of this “Southern women’s primer” sounds right on target to me

They really aren’t growing up as fast as we sometimes think they are; but once they can read, you might want to think twice about the reading material you keep around the house. Somewhat related: is it time to protect your kids from your blog?

The productivity benefits of occasional laziness; the secret to motivating yourself (hint: don’t talk to your brain)