I'm Super, Thanks For Asking

Well, not ALL of us are taking a well-deserved Independance Day-themed sabbatical. Oh, no. I'm just a slave to the grind, I guess.

Just a quick note before the review. If you're stopping by here, and you haven't submitted your blog for review, please do so. We do this as a group because we're genuinely interested in helping our fellow bloggers out to not only have a blog they can be proud of, but also one that surfers will want to come back to should they stumble upon it. That's all. We've been accused of "being mean for mean's sake" and all sorts of other things, and yeah, we'll tell you if we think you stink and you should make wholesale changes, but that's what reviewers do. We want you to make us think, make us say holy shit, that's a great blog. We've given out some glowing reviews and some not-so-glowing reviews, and they are what they are. So submit your blog and see what happens. It doesn't hurt. Much.

Okay, enough with the pimping, on with the show, right? Right.

As I send you off to your sure-to-be-more-fun-than-mine weekends, let me show you I Know Where You Can Find It. Just so you know, as a reviewer, the first thing I do is take in your template, and this one, while not awesome by any stretch of the imagination, doesn't make me want to vomit, either. She gets a pass for that. The sort-of muted yellow isn't my cup of tea, per se, but the overall color oeuvre that the blog is putting out there is sort of sunsetty-goodness, so okay, fine, I'll give it a pass. However, and this is quite jarring to someone as anal-retentive as me regarding template look, there's a beige rectangle in the upper-right hand corner of the blog that just drives me insane. It's like a huge speck of dirt on an otherwise-clean floor. Get rid of it immediately, because it draws my eyes in right away and it's nothing and it makes me want to punch something. Seriously, get rid of it posthaste.

Phew.

The sidebar is short, and despite the fact that I loathe when people link to Ebay auctions or run ads, whatever, there's some lingerie in there and I'm a freak, so yeah, pass again. She's a librarian, a Mom, a Grandmom and a wife all rolled up into one hot-shoe lovin' woman. Okay, see, a quick point to all perspective submitters out there. She TELLS you everything you need to know about her in her "About Me". This is good. It also ties in with the name of the blog, because as a librarian she needs to know where a book might be if you come asking for it. It's a THEME and it works. What I would like to see on the sidebar is a changing of the font color on her links. That muted grey doesn't work with your other font coloration, Madame. Fix it. She's also got quotes in one of the sidebar headers where an apostrophe is due. I notice these things and they drive me batty.

Regarding the content. It's well-written, the structure is good and the stories aren't knee-slappers, but they do amuse to a point. The page itself is a little long for my taste, I prefer a week's worth of posts on the front page, but it's not a dealbreaker, this length of yours. Overall, I'm not sure I would come back to it for the content, but again, I'm sure it has it's appeal and it doesn't make me want to gouge out my own eyes.

Constructive criticism, I am your humble servant. Here it is. I believe a new template would help this blog, but it's not as bad as some others I've seen. The box in the corner and the links font color make me feel icky, so I'd fix that in lieu of a brand new template. Content-wise, it's not bad, but if you're going with "slice of life" for your overall theme for posting, you might need to spice it up a bit to attract readers, if that's what you're after. I'm not calling it boring, but I'm not calling it earth-shattering either. It's just...there.



I'm off to Starbucks. I need an espresso.

Drinks on me, later. Tequila, even.