#Bloggiesta – El Fin

One thing I’ve learned that I already knew but just hadn’t realized and applied to Bloggiesta is… I’m a sprinter.  I got an incredible amount of stuff done on Friday, not so much on Saturday, and then today has felt like a huge brain-ooze.  But, here I am at the finish line, even if I’ve drug butt the last 6 miles… OKAY, 16 miles.

Today has reminded me of the scene at the end of Run, Fatboy, Run! Where he’s at the wall and is ready to quit.  I have to say that it’s definitely the help and encouragement of fellow bloggers that kept me going.  And I still have a few more things I want to get done, but I think I’m out of gas for this weekend.  But I’ve been writing them down on post-its for later.

First off, I want to give a rousing THANKS! to Natasha at MawBooks for organizing Bloggiesta in the first place.  AND to thank the publishers and sponsors who have provided the prizes.  I also have to give a special thanks to everyone who thought of and hosted the mini-challenges.  There are a LOT of things I just would have NEVER thought to do that I found out about on their blogs.  I still want to go through a few more, but again, too pooped out to do it tonight.  Blogging with children is a LOT of stress!

So Natasha asked for the following in the wrap up post:

Let me know how many hours you spent on the challenge, the mini-challenges you participated in, how many comments you left other bloggers, what you accomplished, what you liked best and any constructive criticism you might have.  I also need some ideas for mini-challenges for the next Bloggiesta so let me know!

So here we go:

I spent 12 hours working on Bloggiesta on Friday, 4 hours on Saturday, and 5 hours on it today.  That’s a total of 21 hours of Bloggiesta bonanza!

I participated in the following mini-challenges:

1. Emily’s Reading Room – set up Google Alerts
2. Books, movies, and Chinese Food – created an elevator pitch
3. Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge: Set Goals for 2010 – firmed up and fleshed out my main goals for 2010
4. Bloggiesta Mini Challenge:  Footers – Got a copyright doodad widget in the sidebar.
5. Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge: Clean Up Your Feedreader!
6. BethFishRead’s Mini-Challenge – Got a fun rainy-day rant wrote up for later.
7. Go forth and comment – I’ve commented on more than 10 new-to-me blogs now.
8. Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge – Dead Links – last minute mini-challenge completed
9. Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge Sign-In – made tons of comments on several blogs, both old and new
10. Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge: Blogging Buddies!! – Hi Care! 😀

As to how many comments I have left, I could NOT even BEGIN to say, because I’ve done my best to keep up with my Google Reader, and to leave comments on the posts as they’ve came up.  Plus the ones that are tweeted.  AND the ones that are posted through Networked Blogs on faceboook.  I’ve gone cross-eyed this weekend from all the montior-reading! 🙂  I should’ve grabbed one of those people-counter-clicky things and ticked off each comment.  It’d have to be between 60 and 70 comments.

Things that I accomplished this Bloggiesta that I’m most happy about, besides mini-challenge stuff, is that I’ve updated all sidebars, widgets and pages.  I’ve decided that, for now, I’m going to take a break from Viral Video Wednesday.  It was something for my own pleasure, anyway, and I ended up doing a LOT more video searching and watching than I did reading.  I may still have a random video post, but not a regular meme for a while.  I edited my Mt. TBR inventory page to be just my ARCs and then put a link to my LT Catalogue if people want to see what ALL books I have, which is over 1000 books.

What I’m super-excited about, though, is that I’ve got a separate blog set up for The Welsh Reading Challenge.  Rhinoa, host of the Manga Challenge, and BethFish, who hosts Sookie Stackhouse Challenge and What’s in a Name?3 Challenge, both had talked about making a separate blog for their challenges so that they can keep things better organized.  Now that I have the Welsh Reading Challenge blog, I can do so much more, like have featured authors, places for the reviews, and list suggested reading.  I’m looking forward to really getting it finished so I can announce it’s grand opening 🙂  Maybe I’ll be able to get a few sponsors and prizes then 😉

Minor adjustments were made to better organize and navigate the blogs pages and widgets were also made.  One thing that may change later is the pages and categories.  I think I’d like to make a page to list the review links for all the books I’ve reviewed.  I haven’t decided whether to list them by author or by title, but I suppose I could do both.  As for categories, I’m thinking “Blog Reviews” may be to broad a category.  I may break it down by genres, that way it’d be easier for someone looking for a specific book or topic to find.  I know that when I was visiting new blogs for the comment challenge, I looked through their categories like Reading with Tequila’s 5 Shots books (now I have Mockingbird coming in the mail) and English Major’s Junk Food’s Jane Austen label.

As for ideas for the next Bloggiefest in June… can’t wait, counting down already!  I don’t know, really.  I’m content with leaving such things to the more experience and learned blogging folks.  By June, I’ll have been blogging for 2 years, which is still a bit young.  THEN, remember all the sidetracks and diversions and breaks I’ve taken, and it probably averages out to me being an 8-month-old blogger, if that much.  I’m just hoping that I won’t get distracted between now and June!  I’ll try to have a better answer by then 😉

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