The Interview

1. What name do you go by on the Web? Texas Peach

2. What is your gender? Last time I checked I was a female....yup, still am!!

3. How old are you? 44 as of January 7th!!

4. Where are you physically located? Sitting in front of my computer, in a brand new chair, in my den, in Austin, TX.

5. Who is your site’s host and why? I have my journal on Diary-x. I chose that site when I was searching out diary sites last year because it seemed to be the easiest one to use. I have had no problems with it and I really like the way that it is run.

6. What is your site’s URL and why did you choose that username? http://texaspeach.diary-x.com When I lived in NJ, my screen name was Peachygal2. I love anything peach..lotions, bath beads, peach cobbler :-) When I moved to Texas my screen name became TXPeach512..so I decided to just lengthen that for my Diary-x username to Texas Peach.

7. What is your site’s title and why? When I was thinking of a name for my Journal..I thought that since my journal is a place I go to put down my thoughts..an escape if you will, so I decided, There's my journal name "Peach's Escape"!!

8. When and why did you begin your site? I started it at the beginning of June in 2002. I had been toying with the idea of an online journal for a while. I have almost always kept some sort of written one but kind of slacked off on that in the past several years. Moving here to Austin has been a big thing for me since the rest of my family is still up in NJ. I miss them so much and I hate making my hubby feel guilty when I get to feeling down. So I can come here, jot down my feelings and let them go. When I write, I feel better.

9. Do you enjoy writing for and working on your site? I love it! I have done so many things to my template to make it my own. At first, I had several rotating templates that I would use at different times depending on my moods. They were all alike layout-wise, but they had different colors and graphics. The Template I have now is basically the same layout, but through a journal buddy, I found a great graphics site and redid all my graphics. I have added different pages, my tagboard, guestmap, counter, guestbook...a ton of things I think are fun...and those I added all on my own!! I am a HTML novice, but this has taught me a few basics and I am proud of what I have accomplished with it. And I love the writing. I have been trying to write almost every day and I have pretty much succeeded. Whenever I miss days, it is because we are out of town, or I am busy with my 4 year old. I have put down some entries that have made me think about things in my life, and even some that have gotten my readers to think!!!

10. What makes your site unique? I am unique..so therefore my site is unique too! I have tried to make it my own little corner of the internet and I think I have done that.

11. Would you kindly list at least two of your favorite entries?
01/05/03 Good Intentions
10/08/02 Is There Any Place That is Safe Today?
09/15/02 Oh Sister!
10/17/02 Oh Brother-Pt2
12/28/02 Wood Houses and PlayDoh People
12/05/02 PMSing

12. What is your weirdest entry? I can't think of anything weird that I have done..I did a fun one..but that is about it!!
10/24/02 Just a Little Fun

13. Do you give the URL of your site to your online friends and why or why not? I just had an entry about this. (12/27/02 Sharing) I had never given my site URL out to anyone until I gave it to my best friend right after Christmas. I wasn't worried about her reading the content, it was just that I felt my writing was not all that great. I never worry about someone I know finding my site and reading my entries..I never really say anything bad about anyone. I just would not be comfortable with my kids reading some of the entries about my past. But if they found it and read it, so be it. I would never GIVE it to them though. As for my hubby..the link to my journal is saved on the computer and he knows I keep one, but I don't think he has ever read any of it.

14. Do you tell offline friends and family members about your site and why or why not? Except for the above....no. I have mentioned working on my journal to my 16 year old daughter when we were chatting online, but she has never asked me about it. My 19 year old son couldn't care less so I have never really even mentioned it to him. My 22 year old daughter has no internet access so I have never really mentioned it to her either.

15. Is there anything you would like to tell your readers or anything else you would like to say? I just want to thank all those who read my journal and have become a part of my daily life. The comments I get are wonderful and I am glad that you want to read my writings and also share your thoughts with me about them. The support I get from you all is so wonderful, and really does help! Thanks!!

The Review

Entries Reviewed: 12-12-2002 Out of the Loop – 1-12-2003 What to Do??

Number of Entries This Month: 23

My Thoughts:

• Content: You’ve got plenty of extras; there’s enough here to keep anyone busy for an hour or three! You really miss your family; that’s understandable, as far away as Texas is from New Jersey. Having all of your stuff in storage in NJ also seems to make you sad; I hope you’ve got it all at your house by next Christmas! I think it’s perfectly wonderful that you decided to “relax” for the holidays by cutting corners in the cooking department; your family was probably glad that you were able to focus more on them than on the cooking, too! Your youngest must really enjoy having a mom who knows the characters and theme songs of his favorite shows; that’s the joy of being the youngest, I guess, your parents have already had to learn all of this stuff. Your new digital camera seems to be worth it; at least it is for your readers – seeing all those great pics of your family adds some pizzaz. I think it’s wonderful that you signed up for the Journal Across America project! It was certainly extra nice of you to go to all of the trouble to look up Texan links for the week that you did so! Anyone following the project will certainly have enjoyed their virtual visit to Texas!
• Template: The color scheme provides for a restful country atmosphere. There are plenty of peaches in evidence; I guess you didn’t chose your username just for kicks! Very important links (back, home, next, email, and sign guestbook) are graphics and other links are text with peach-buttons; this adds ease to navigation. You have plenty of extras, but they’re either on separate pages or in pull-down menus which prevents them from getting in the way. This template looks almost exactly the same in Netscape 7.0 and Internet Explorer 6.0 – not an easy trick to manage! Only a few problems: in Netscape your first pull-down menu’s background color is white while the others are peachy-brown (however, they're all peachy-brown in IE); you’ve got “back” and “next” links on your archive and various special pages where they won’t work (a quick fix for dx-ers would be to create a special template to use with their special entries); the default options in your pull-down menus try to link and fail, taking me to a 404 page; and as a dash of spice, add three broken links: Bitchy-Opinions (in your "Daily Reads" menu), Dxperfectionist, and the “next” link at the bottom of your entry (it leads to your archives instead of your next entry). One last thing, it’s very disconcerting to have all of the links in your “Just for Fun” pull-down menu lead to the top of the same page; perhaps creating anchor links or having them lead directly to the item would work better?

My Favorite Entries:
Snow is Glistenin' Aside from getting Christmas songs stuck in my head, this entry is a nice exploration of the need to peek at Christmas presents older children feel.
Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree Christmas cookie memories ... oooh, nostalgia!
Sharing A battle many online diarists go through – to share the URL or not?
Wood Houses and PlayDoh People Perhaps your best entry – and an excellent title, to boot!
Three Years! Wedding memories; such a nice story.

Entries of Note:
What a Weekend! Your life is not boring!

Frequency of Entries: You update almost daily; hooray!

Info Pages: A bio and a cast page; just enough info without being too much.

Grammar/Punctuation/Spelling: Everything here looks good and it’s on a consistent level! Sometimes you use grammar slightly differently than I would, but what would the world be without differences to make things interesting?

Adult Content: It’s extremely rare, but occasional mild swear words slip in where they can make the most impact.

Overall Rating: On a scale of one to ten, your site rates a seven point five! That's pretty good!

The Response

Thanks for the great review Liz. It was funny because I was working on my template all week while I was using the Journal Across America project template and some of the changes that you mentioned, I was working on!! Some were things I had just changed and was wondering if I had made a mistake in doing so...guess I was right!!! I made most of the changes you suggested...thanks!! The dead links...I don't know...they worked just last week but the Perfectionist one didn't even work out of my Fave folder so I don't know what happened there...and the others you mentioned..I can get to work from faves but not in the template link...so I took them off for now. I hate dead links!!

Anyway..thank you so much for taking the time to review me and I am happy you enjoyed reading my journal!! Thanks Again!!!!!!!!!!

The Last Word

Well, it’s nice to hear that my comments helped you! I really did have a great time reviewing your diary, and I’m glad that you enjoyed my review!