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| Tom in the doorway that walks out to the garden at the new holiday home in Boveglio, Tuscany, Italy, where we stayed for three months in 2013. |
Note: To all of our readers visiting our site via a smartphone, please click the “View web version” tab under the word “Home” at the bottom of the page to access the web version enabling you to access all of our archives on the right side of the page. We’ll be updating our site shortly, making these extra steps unnecessary. Thank you.
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| The back of the property. |
Almost every day over the last few weeks, I have been working with our web developer to redesign our website, updating its features, and making it easy for our readers and, hopefully, more manageable for me to edit and update daily.
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| Can you picture this table filled with friends drinking wine, talking loudly, and dining on homemade Italian food? Unfortunately, no one spoke English in Boveglio, leaving us little opportunity for socializing other than a few occasions. |
Using the Blogger app over these past eight years has been tricky. Line spacing and editing have been difficult not only to use but often weeks or months later. A previous post will have lost its original editing with peculiar and unpredictable paragraph and line spacing.
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| This is the clock tower that chimes at odd times, next door to our home. |
Our new site, using WordPress, which is a popular web tool used by millions of sites, will make your viewing as easy as it was in the past and our process of preparing the posts less complicated and cumbersome.
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| An old wishing well in the yard. No bucket. |
Our advertiser’s links will be new, and our links for Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook will be easily accessed with one click. Of course, mine and Tom’s email links will be simple to find and use with just one click.
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| Another fountain in the garden. |
We wrote a new “About Us,” which we shared a few days ago, as shown in this post, which we’ll update each year. Once we upload the new site, it’s normal to find some necessary changes over the first few months with feedback from readers and observations we make. We’ll look forward to any comments from you.
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| The road outside our holiday home. |
With this new site, it will be easy to find our archives on the home page on your smartphone, where, in the past, these weren’t accessible without a few extra steps we’d been explaining and posting each day at the top of each new post. Plus, we’ll continue to have a translator link for our non-English speaking readers.
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| Yes, we fit all of our luggage in this tiny Fiat we’ve rented for the summer, and this was when we had 18 pieces. Now we have six, including carry-on bags. |
We’ve discovered that more readers read our posts on their phones than on an iPad, tablet, laptop, or computer. Many have mentioned they read our posts while sitting on a bus to and from work while waiting for their appointments at a doctor or dentist’s office or other places of business.
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| The spaces between the houses were too narrow for cars but were suitable for horses and buggies many years ago. Photos of our walks in the area will continue as we explore. |
Each time I’m forced to wait for a meeting or appointment, I know that the first thing I do is play with my phone, read various posts, play games, and check social media.
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| View from our veranda and the best spot for a WiFi signal was impossible from inside the house. |
Speaking of social media, as mentioned above, over the past eight-plus years since we began posting on March 15, 2012, I haven’t made any effort to use Instagram and Twitter, although I have an account for each platform.
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| The view to a part of the garden from the veranda. |
I realize I am years behind in using these prevalent forms of social media. Why didn’t I pursue these excellent means of promoting our website? It all boiled down to having already spent so many hours a day online researching new locations, managing photos, and preparing our posts. I was uninterested in spending more time online.
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| For Euros $23, US $30, we purchased enough food for a few days: four pork chops, one bag of jumbo shrimp, four pieces of swordfish, one pound of sliced ham, two heads of Bibb lettuce, one pound of carrots, eighteen eggs and one tube of mayonnaise (yellow box on the right). The villa has seasonings, olive oil, red wine vinegar, and balsamic vinegar. |
Lately, we wouldn’t have much to share when staying in this hotel in Mumbai, India, for the past 87 days. However, in the future, regardless of where we may be or if we continue to remain in lockdown for months to come, I’ve decided to start using both Twitter and Instagram at least once a day.
Right now, I am too busy to start, but once the site is live by the end of this month, you’ll easily be able to click the links and hopefully, if you prefer, follow me on those sites for snippets of information. It’s an easy way to communicate with all of you.
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| Continuation of the walk in the area where there are other homes is located. |
Of course, my tweets won’t be politically motivated. They will all be about our site, our current situation, and our travels yet to come. Luckily, I am not particularly obsessive about communicating online, so hopefully, I won’t get overly engrossed in posting/tweeting once the new site is up.
Today? Not much is new. We’ve both been sleeping later, often until 8:00 am, which seems to make the day go more quickly. By the time I finish the day’s post, usually by 1:00 pm, I spend a few hours handling various business tasks and, when done, may play Scrabble online, a quick and easy way to pass the time. With my hourly walks and some reading, the days seem to fly by.
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| Flowers, herbs, and vegetables were planted everywhere for our enjoyment while there. |
We hope you are doing well, feeling well, and able to get outdoors for some fresh air.
Photo from one year ago today, June 18, 2019:
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| What a view in Connemara, Ireland. For more photos, please click here. |
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