Right away, our author here lets us know that “something is serious wrong with the set up of this page”, but she does claim to be “working on it”. Hopefully that work will be complete soon, because right now, it’s a hard site to maintain focus on.
The site is split into three portions. There are two columns on the left of the screen that literally contain a little bit of everything – a tagboard, a picture of George W. Bush, a description of the author’s family, and some more random information that apparently has no other place to go but on the main page. It certainly makes for an extremely busy site, and sometimes hard to focus on.
You learn a lot about Melanie’s family just by reading through her weblog. The way she tells her story each day reminds me of the same type of conversation you’d have while sitting down with someone over coffee – it’s a very conversational way of writing, and one that makes you feel comfortable from the start.
Melanie’s battling with progressive MS, which sometimes keeps her from doing the things that she’d like to do or experiencing things that her family members are experiencing without her. Despite this, Melanie manages to keep her posts upbeat. There are issues she gets hit with quite often that I think the average Joe wouldn’t really know how to react. A neighbor and close friend is murdered and then slandered in the local newspaper, her teenage daughter decides to dabble in WICCA, her son is a struggling musician who refuses to give up on his music, and her poor dog is paralyzed – not a very enjoyable last few months for our author, but one she manages to make it through with what seems like a smile in every post.
Through all that Melanie has experienced, or at least all she’s posted in her weblog, there was a recent post that had some of the best advice in it I’ve ever seen: “Don’t EVER become complacent with your life! Don’t find yourself at a point where you are just so happy and then stop doing what you just know you are supposed to be doing to feel that way”.
Overall, this is the type of weblog that you can certainly become hooked on. That’s apparent not only from the feeling I got after leaving the site, but the number of loyal visitors that seem to leave comments on each post. It’s certainly as personal as weblogs come. If that’s the type of weblog that interests you the most, then New Oreleans Live Blog is one for you.
New Orleans Live Blog