EVVIVA!!!

(Hurray!!!)

Can you imagine this? For more than four years I wrote about my travels on an earlier blog, travels that included five separate visits to Italy and one to Japan. Then suddenly, one day last summer, the blog disappeared, due to some snafu with the server that was hosting my website. And along with the blog, I also lost access to the backup of all my posts! The person who had created my website was no longer working as a web designer, and I was unsuccessful in figuring out how to revive the blog portion of it.

By now, I've visited nearly 80 cities and villages in Italy, and most of those stories were contained on the lost blog. For a writer, that's like losing part of one's soul. Last summer I started this new blog, but have been grieving all these months over losing the record of my travels from 2006 through 2009. It's my own fault: since I had a backup on the blog site, I didn't worry about creating another backup on my computer.

The good news: recently, I was finally able to gain access to the backup of that blog, and now have it stored safely on my computer AND a flash drive. However, it's in a coded form, so it will take me weeks, maybe months to decipher all my posts. I'm not sure if I'll try to create another blog with those stories, or save them for other writing projects I want to do.

Fortunately, I've been able to capture the adventure of living in Italy during the past year on this blog, and make sure to back up every single post! There are many more adventures to come as I find ways to spend more time in Italy.