I now believe in love at first sight. Upon hearing the name ‘cow-dog’, I half expected a deadbeat 16 year old stoner’s site to come up, complete with ramblings about how much Bush sucks and poorly scanned drawings of pot leaves. What I found, instead, was a very pleasant surprise. Picture of Wonder Woman + the nickname ‘Cow Dog, Princess of Power” + 27 year old school teacher = one very interesting personality. The site had all sorts of neat little features to it, including a few pictures, an Amazon Wish List, and some various links to friends’ weblogs and other sites of interest.
The extra features, however, can’t even come close to matching the clever, often hilarious weblog entries. Having grown up in a household with two school teachers, I thought I’d heard every story possible. But this weblog is packed full of hilarious musings and anecdotes from the classroom as well as clever insight into other aspects of her personal life. The weblog is peppered with the occasional pictures (not the “I’m trying to be an artist pictures” but real, topical pictures), personality surveys, and ‘Which kind of ______ are you?’ quizzes. I have to say that I normally pass on the latter two but they seem to mesh well with the overall light-hearted theme of this site. The writing is intelligent and interesting and I can honestly say I laughed out loud SEVERAL times while reading this. If you’re wondering how you can possibly make a truly ‘personal’ weblog that deals with only your life experiences fun and interesting for anyone to read, this is a prime example. She doesn’t hesitate to reveal anything and everything that’s going on in her life and she tells it like it is. Usually with just a slight self-depreciating undertone that helps the reader identify and relate to her current predicament.
The layout is extremely simple. It’s powered by (surprise, surprise) Movable Type with a very basic structure focusing solely on the weblog and not cluttered with a lot of other pointless features. I had no trouble finding and accessing the archives, and navigating back and forth in time was a cinch. My only complaint about the actual mechanics of the site were some errors in the info boxes that popped up when you mouse over the links. Sometimes I couldn’t get the info boxes to disappear. Instead, they followed my cursor around the screen and wouldn’t leave until I clicked out of the browser. This, however, may have been due to the fact that I use a (brace yourselves) Mac. Overall, the simple design with visually appealing fonts and graphics won me over. There is nothing intimidating about this site’s design – instead it begs you to read more.
Overall, I had a great time reading this weblog. In a sea of sometimes pointless and boring babble, this is one user who truly deserves to be sharing her thoughts online. Not because she has any sort of Earth-shattering revelations to share with the masses or because her personal situation is remarkably unique. Simply because she has a way of looking at life that will hopefully rub off on us all when we read this. A real person facing real problems looking at it in a REALLY funny way. This site is going on my RSS client and in my bookmark list. I only hope one of her troublesome students doesn’t accidentally stumble upon it someday!cowdog~!