Personal Challenge - Complete!

On April 28 I posted about distractions. I have been doing everything BUT working on our website lately. So, in my April 28 post I gave myself a personal challenge to complete. I had to complete one (yes, only one) new page in two days. Well, I am proud to say I did it! It is a page about Ottawa Hospitals. Okay, so it may not be the most interesting for any of you but it is for those that live in Ottawa that are looking for information on our hospitals.

I didn't write this one down in the blog but I also created a personal challenge to find out more about Site Meter. That challenge is complete as well. I have actually signed up and I now have a traffic meter at the bottom of this page. I can now check out my stats for this blog. For our website though, SBI takes care of all that for me (phew)!

So, what will my next personal challenge be? I seriously think that this idea of giving myself personal challenges and making them publicly known by putting them in my blog will help me out a lot! I was thinking of adding some more Affiliate merchants to our website but I don't think I have enough traffic yet. Let me think about this one and get back to ya'!

Vote Ottawa Vote!

I just heard some very exciting news (well it is very exciting to me). The Canada Soccer Association (CSA) is going to host the 2007 FIFA World Youth Championship. Six cities are going to co-host the three-week long event which will bring teams from 24 different nations. Two of the cities have already been chosen: Edmonton and Toronto. That leaves four cities yet to be decided (they will be chosen on May 4th).

Now this is where YOU come in! You can vote for Ottawa! If you are a soccer fan (actually it is called football but seeing as the majority of people who are going to read this are Canadian or American, I will refer to it as soccer)....so, if you are a soccer fan PLEASE vote. Even if you aren't, I beg you...please, please, please...vote for Ottawa anyways!

It takes 2 seconds to do it! Just follow the instructions on this link to the "Support Your City Online Interactive Soccer Initiative".

Thank you, thank you and thank you!

Distractions & Warm Weather

If you live in a climate that has very cold winters then you will understand how I feel when the warmer weather arrives in the spring. I do NOT want to be cooped up indoors. I would prefer to be outdoors walking, biking, sitting on a patio etc. Needless to say I am getting NO work done on our website. I have created only a few new pages in the past month. I have lots of ideas for more content but I just can't get my act together and write anything.

Now I can't blame it completely on the weather. I am the type of person that easily gets distracted. Take this blogging thing for instance. I have been wasting time searching for interesting blogs, reading other people's blogs and trying to increase my traffic on my blog. The plus side is that the more traffic I get on my blog, the more people will visit our website.

I must remain focused. I must do more work on our site. I must create some deadlines for myself. I must just give myself one big kick in the a** and get working.

I have an idea (which I should probably think about first before I type it on this blog)...oh well! Maybe I should give myself a deadline or a challenge to complete by a certain date and write it on my blog. If I have someone else to answer to other than myself then maybe I will just ignore all the distractions and get down to work. Let's try it!

Task to complete by the end of the month (2 days to go): Create one more page/article on our Ottawa Information Guide website! Yeah, yeah - you are probably saying "that isn't so hard" but when you throw work into it, then a lunch date one day, dinner with friends one night, taking care of puppy etc...it doesn't leave a whole lot of time.

Ottawa 67s Advance to OHL Final

Woohoo! For all you hockey fans...Ottawa won their game against the Peterborough Petes last night! They won the series 4-0. This means that they will advance to the OHL final. It hasn't been decided yet which team they will play.

I must admit that I haven't watched many games throughout the season but I am happy to hear that the fans have gone out to the games to support them. With the NHL strike, I was afraid that a lot of people in Ottawa would turn their backs on anything related to hockey. I am happy to say that I was wrong.

Go 67s Go!!!

New Canadian War Museum Opens Soon!

They broke ground on November 5th, 2002 and it has been a long process but the new Canadian War Museum is going to open in less than 2 weeks. The Grand Opening weekend is on May 7th & 8th. It will be open to the public on May 8th. This is not only the 125th anniversary of the CWM but it also marks the 60th anniversary of V-E day.

I drive past it every day on my way to work and it has been non stop construction for a long time but the hard work has paid off. From what I can see of it, it is truly amazing. The building is so impressive and the architecture is hard to describe. So much thought was put into the inside and the outside of the museum. I will be honest that I hadn't visited the old War Museum since I was in grade school and I never had any desire to go again (I get too emotional). But I definitely think this museum is going to be worth a visit (or two).

If you do go, make sure to read as much as you can while you are there. One of the stories that I read (I can't remember where) that sticks out in my mind is that the width of all the corridors are no more than 9 meters. This was because soldiers had to travel in a straight line on land and they kept to a 9 meter band (4.5 meters to their left & 4.5 meters to their right)- it was considered no man's land outside of the 9 meters.

There are a lot of Museums in Ottawa and I think that the CWM is going to be a popular one to visit for a long time to come.

"FUN"draisers in Ottawa

Fundraisers in Ottawa are FUN!!!

In a previous entry in my blog I mentioned a 3km walkathon that I was going to do on May 1st. It reminded me that I needed to put some information on our website about Ottawa Fundraisers. There are hundreds of them every year!

There are some over the winter months but the majority of them are throughout the spring, summer & fall. Every weekend there are a few different ones to choose from. One of our friends who moved to Ottawa a couple years ago always comments on how many fundraisers that we have here. I am very proud that we have so many.

Have you ever particpated in any of them? I have volunteered for a few, participated in some and watched even more! They are exciting, fun & all for a good cause. Let me know what ones you enjoy participating in or watching.

Hopefully you will find some time this year to volunteer for or participate in some of the Ottawa Fundraisers.

Hot Off The Press - SBI Special Gift

I just received the local newsletter from SBI (SBI members receive newsletters to keep us up to date on what is going on). Lots of great stuff happening!

I just found out that SBI (Site Build It / SiteSell) is having a case of Spring Fever. Have you thought about building your own site with SBI but you were holding off? Well, now is a great time to buy because they are having a "May Madness $100 Special Gift".

If you are interested, then you can read more about it on the SBI's May Madness page.

Webmasters may prefer to read the special Webmaster SBI Info.

Either way, it sounds like a great deal.

Happy Earth Day!

What are you doing for Earth Day? Are you walking to work? Are you planting a tree? Or are you doing nothing different then you would normally do? When I was younger we used to plant a tree on my parents' property in the West end of Ottawa every Earth Day. We don't do that anymore but I wish we did. I wonder what the rest of Ottawa is doing?

While trying to figure out if Ottawa had any interesting & environmentally friendly activities planned for Earth Day, I came a cross a really cool site. It is a great site for kids, schools, families & individuals too. Check out the website for Earth Day Ottawa. I didn't realize that there was a site out there specifically for Ottawa!

Happy International Earth Day Ottawa (& the rest of the world)!

Woof, Wag & Walk!

Our dogwalker just emailed us about a great fundraiser here in Ottawa. I should clarify that there are A LOT of great fundraisers here in Ottawa, this is another one that you may not know about (we didn't until a day or so ago).

B.A.R.K. (Bytown Association for Rescued Kanines) is having their 4th annual walkathon on May 1st.

Here is information that I found on the B.A.R.K. website:

B.A.R.K.'s Fourth Annual "Woofs and Wags" Walkathon (3 km)

When: Sunday May 1, 2005
Where: Arboretum (Central Experimental Farm: detailed map on pledge form at bottom of page)
Time: Registration 8:00am (free coffee and donuts will be available)
Walk starts at 9:00am

Anyone not collecting pledges can pay a $20 registration fee and participate in all activities.

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It sounds like a lot of fun. We'll be there with our little pooch. Hope you can make it out too!

Ottawa's Best Blog Contest

I read a really interesting article in Saturday's Ottawa Citizen (yes, I only read it today - I was busy all weekend)! Anyway, in the City section there is an article by Alex Munter about Blogs in Ottawa! How cool. The article goes on to describe what blogs are (for those that don't know what blogs are...ahem...that was me 2 months ago)! He uses a few examples - a political blog, a local resident talking about her neighbourhood and one that rates the various pizza places in Ottawa.

On to the contest - Alex Munter will be collecting nominations for Ottawa's best local blog. The winner will be announced on April 30th. That winner will have a link to their blog on the Ottawa Citizen website. For those of you who are trying to increase your traffic then this is one way to do it! If you want some more details then check out the website for the Ottawa Citizen.

In no way am I intending to submit my blog (nor am I asking for anyone else to submit it) because it is no where near as creative as some of the others I have seen (remember, I wrote about this a week or so ago). However, I do think it is a great contest because there are some very interesting blogs out there. I think I may submit a few local blogs that I have enjoyed reading.

Edited this on April 25 to say that TODAY is the deadline to submit your blogs!!!

BBQ season is here in Ottawa!

There are definitely the die hard BBQ'ers who BBQ all winter long! Kudos to them for braving the cold. But if you are like the majority of us, you wait until the weather gets warmer when you don't have to shovel 5 feet of snow off the BBQ before you turn it on!

So, BBQ season is upon us here in Ottawa. Just put your nose in the air and you can smell the food cooking. I think about every 2nd house was having a BBQ yesterday in our neighbourhood (us included). It is so relaxing sitting out, getting fresh air, having a nice cold beverage and letting your lunch or dinner be prepared on the BBQ!

Although, not all of them were in their backyards. Some of them were in their driveways. I don't know if I will ever understand the amount of people that have beautiful back yards & gardens but they still insist on BBQing and lounging around in their driveway. We see it all the time. I am not judging anyone who does this, I just don't understand it. If you know why, please explain!

Well, it is supposed to be in the 20's today so I imagine we will be having another BBQ outside (in our backyard on our new patio set) tonight! Obviously that means that it will be more time spent away from working on our website (oops)!

Happy BBQ'ing!

Tickled Pink!

I am tickled pink (what a strange saying that is)! Seriously though, I am very flattered with something that I read this morning.

For those of you who have been reading my blog (is there anyone out there), you will know that I have been using Site Build It. Well, for those of us who own SBI sites, we get a newsletter regularly to keep us up to date on what is new and what is coming up (lots of new stuff coming soon - woohoo) with SBI.

Anyway, this newsletter is written by the President of SBI, Dr. Ken Evoy. And here comes the exciting part.......our site was mentioned in the latest newsletter! Really, this is a HUGE compliment and we are very flattered that our site was worth mentioning considering there are hundreds of SBI sites. There was a discussion in the SBI forums that I participated in and Ken Evoy thought that my idea was a good one and mentioned it in his newsletter!

This may mean absolutely nothing to most of you but it means a lot to me! I will come down from my cloud shortly!

Taught myself a new trick!

I taught myself something new today! I taught myself how to add "Links" to the sidebar (see over there to the right side of this page).

With Blogger you get to choose between various templates. Not all of them have the same features though. I just so happened to like this template but it didn't have a section for "links" in the sidebar.

So, off I went in search of the proper code (HTML) and then I added it. It was SO much easier than I thought it would be. I laugh though because 2 months ago I wouldn't have even known where to find the code and I definitely wouldn't have even attempted copying it into my template!

Well, there you have it...over to the right. So far I have added a link to our website, a link to our About Us page & a couple links to the Site Build It (SBI) Resource Centre. More will definitely be added in the near future.

When all else fails...

When all else fails...check your stats! I hit a bit of a dry spell (a.k.a. "an everything-but-creating-a-new-page spell"). For various reasons I hadn't created a new page or article for our site for over a week. Instead I found myself emailing friends, finding & reading interesting blogs, reading the SBI forums, spending time in the great outdoors now that spring is here and ANYTHING else but creating new content for our site.

Then, today I kicked myself in the butt and said that I had to create another page before I did anything else. So, what to write about? Well, I have dozens of pages in mind but the creative juices were not flowing.

Then the light came on and I realized, when all else fails check out my SBI stats. So I did. With SBI you can see what keywords people typed into the Search Engines to find you. Something that came up recently was "Italian Week Ottawa" and "Preston Street Ottawa". So, I decided to write about Preston Street in Ottawa which holds Italian week every year in June.

I must admit that it isn't the best page that I have created but it is information about Ottawa which is what our site is about!

So, I am off to write some more content!

Witty Writers (in Ottawa)

I received a newsletter the other day from a website called "Ottawa Start" and one of their stories was about Blogs. They listed approximately 25 Ottawa blogs and ours was one of them! It was really cool to see our name there with some of the other blogs that come from this great city.

I must admit though that ours is nowhere near as witty as some of the others that I checked out. We sure do have some comical people in this city (with too much time on their hands)! Seriously though, some of the blogs were very entertaining and would have been added to my favourites if I thought I would have the time to read them on occasion. But I don't because I should be working on my site)!

So, back to my site!

Forever Movin' On Up!

Forever movin' on up...To the sky...to a deluxe apartment in the sky...Okay, I got a little side tracked but I am sure you all remember that theme song from the Jeffersons (or have I gone mad)!?

Anyway, our website is "movin' on up" in the Search Engines. The majority of our pages from our site have now been listed in the major search engines like Google & MSN. We even have a bunch of them that are #1. Yay! I am doing a happy dance.

So, how do I know how our pages are doing? Well, another great feature about Site Build It (SBI) is that they give us a bunch of statistics about our site, including the ranking of each page! This is supposed to happen weekly but mine seems to update more often than that!

Thanks for letting me share my joy (again)!

Schools out for summer (almost)

Okay, so it isn't out YET! But soon, very soon!

For post-secondary school students it is a time to celebrate because school is almost over. Unfortunately, it is bitter sweet because before you can call it quits and start enjoying the summer you have to endure the lovely task of EXAMS!! Eeeek - I remember those all too well. Why is it that I always seemed to have none for a week and then I had 3-4 in 2 days? I could never figure that one out.

For secondary school students at the end of their high school years they are busy figuring out where to go next year (in the fall). Do you go to University or to College or take a year off? Do you go to school here in Ottawa or do you go elsewhere (and get away from the folks for a bit)?

If you are planning on going to school in Ottawa, there is a pretty good selection of Ottawa Colleges & Universities.

Good luck to those of you who are about to write your exams and good luck to those who are choosing new schools & new courses!

"Tip Toe Through the Tulips"

Spring is in the air! The snow is melting, the birds are chirping and the sun is shining! People all around Ottawa seem happier and they seem to be smiling more!

With spring of course comes the flowers. Flowers will start blooming soon. One of the sure signs of spring in Ottawa are the tulips. There are thousands of them! With the tulips comes one of the largest tulip festivals in the world, the Ottawa Tulip Festival. There is so much to do at the festival - there is something for the entire family. The big news is that the concert lineup has just been finalized and there is an amazing selection of bands to suit every musical interest!

We will definitely be making a couple of trips downtown this year to participate in the activities. How about you?