Thoughts on blogging, over lunch.

One of my very favorite things to do over the holidays is have lunch out. Yesterday was my first opportunity this year; Sara and I met up at Murphy's. Funny thing, now that she has her own apartment, she...lives there; this is the first Christmas that the end of the semester doesn't mean she's here. At least she's only 45 minutes away (and she enjoys lunch out as much as I do!)

The food was delicious as always. Sara ordered the mussels

and I ordered the Chef's Fall Vegetable Special.

And we talked. First we re-hashed the 11:30 pm conversation we'd had Sunday night about the season finale of Homeland.  Sara had (of course) watched it again and she had a few new insights and thoughts about season 3. We planned the menus for this weekend. We're hosting my family's get together on Sunday, then it's just the three of us for Christmas Eve dinner and Katie & Rob are joining us for Christmas Day.  Holiday food for small parties is hard! But at least the grocery shopping is easy and I'm not worried about fitting everything into my refrigerator.

Then we got into all the social media and how much we're online and for what purpose. I recently deleted my Facebook account - no regrets! And while I'm "on Twitter", I rarely tweet. Sara, on the other hand, tweets a lot - and I enjoy following along. Instagram comes in spurts; I'll go days without posting anything (and sometimes days without checking in there at all) and then I'll have multiple photos to add in just a few hours. (I wonder what impact Instagram's privacy changes will have?) I've paid a lot less attention to Ravelry lately, in part because I've had less time, but also I've been knitting less. I miss it.

Sometime in there, we ordered pumpkin creme brulee dessert.

And in the end, we got around to blogging and this blog in particular. Mere-et-Filles will be six years old in February. Sara wondered if it was time to start afresh. I told her I'd been thinking about that, too. It feels more like a chore, and not as spontaneous and fun as it used to be. I'm going to be giving it more thought over the next few weeks, but know I intend to make some changes. One change I'm considering is the platform. I'm sure Blogger can do a lot more than I know...and I'm sure it's easier than I make it. But with what I know, it's not easy. I know a lot of you use Typepad or Wordpress; I'd love to know what you like and don't like about your blogging platform.

In the meantime, one of things I love most about blogging is the community it creates. Friendships, stories, support...all shared across the internet. It's cool and it's fun and it's allowed me to grow in ways I never imagined. Thank you all for being part of that.

And no, all that talk didn't mean we forgot our photo!