Last night Daren said something he has never said before: be safe and be careful and don't be wandering around Chicago - that's not a place you want to get lost in.

I explained to him that we have the free valet parking and the car would not be going anywhere all weekend because everything Sam and I are attending is either at the hotel or close to it. That we will travel in flocks of blinged out birds if we do go out and that there really isn't anything to worry about. I won't be taking a field trip to Cabrini Green for any reason. I'm only a text message away and we have OnStar and 1397 friends attending and please just relax baby it will be fine I won't do anything stupid I promise.

We paused, staring at each other in the dark.

He never expresses worry, I thought to myself.

So that kind of freaked me out. I looked in his eyes and asked him why he suddenly said that and added, "Don't be going all Allison DuBois on my ass."

He laughed. We left the conversation there and began to drift into slumber, wrapped in each other's arms.

I was in that zen place right before one falls asleep when I heard him say, "But how am I going to fall asleep without you?"

"Same way I will fall asleep without you all weekend," I mumbled, "Lots of beer and surrounded by women."

We giggled, snuggled closer and fell asleep.

Thursday night I have speaker training (OMG I'M SPEAKING, LIKE IN FRONT OF PEOPLE), then I'm to meet up with fellow Carpoolers.  After that Sam and I are attending the SVMoms Party, then People's Party, then the Room 704 party!

I cannot wait to see my friends!

Friday morning I will be up at the buttcrack of dawn to run in a 5K I haven't been training for.  The anxiety I'm feeling over that is HUGE.  I've been off the treadmill for a month.  Eep!

Then I speak in front of PEOPLE.  Day One of the conference will be a sea of familiar faces, and hopefully I get to see everyone I want to see.  Small details like having mascara and a razor packed are swimming through my head and I'm stressed about crossing the border because the last time Sam and I embarked on a roadtrip the border guard was super-mean.

Friday and Saturday nights are packed with parties and all I can think of is not peeing in my Spanx.  It's an Olympic event to get into those suckers.

Between remembering what to pack, where to be and how to get there, there's one thing that has me absolutely relaxed and happy: Chevy and BlogHer have teamed together to loan Sam and I a brand new 2010 Chevy Equinox.

Sam may be thrilled to be singing incorrect lyrics to songs of days gone by,but I'm just happy to know we're in a safe reliable vehicle with OnStar and each other.

As a worrywart Mom, it's truly Paradise by the Dashboard Light for me.  And we're leaving so dang early in the morning, we will need those dashboard lights!

Here are the steps to do just that.

In my next post I will outline the steps in making the switch to the New Blogger, which will include the transformation of your current sidebar into the New Bloggers Widget system. Once you make the switch, you will be able to move things around much more easily. While the New Blogger has it's pitfalls in design, the end-user ease-of-use factor is manageable.

So here we go:

Sign into your Blogger account.

Choose your blog from the Dashboard.

Click on "Template."

Select your entire template by right-clicking and choosing "Select all":

(all images are at the original post at How2Blog - click them only if you need the screenshots)

Right click and choose "copy":

Open Notepad. To open Notepad, go to "Start," "All Programs," "Accessories," then "Notepad."Right click in the middle of Notepad and choose "Paste."

Save the file to your desktop. You'll need it when I discuss the other half of this column later this week.

Contributing Editor Karen Rani also blogs at:

Troll Baby | How2Blog

Motherless | Paris Hilton Watch

and works at Swank Web Style

So how do you do the read more option in Blogger?

You can see what Judy is talking about at Crib Ceiling. Having the "read more" option is a built-in feature with Wordpress (as long as you are using the rich-text editor or know how to code it), but with Blogger, it's a bit of a work-around that needs to be added to your template.

If you are still are on the old Blogger, here's the scoop (new Blogger is after that):

There's no reason to re-invent the wheel, since I got all the information I need from here.

There are a few steps to this one and you need to be familiar with how a template works to figure out where things go. If some of you need the parts of the template explained, drop me a line and I'll go through it next week.

If you're on the new Blogger, here are some instructions that will allow you to have that "read more" option. The only thing is, you ought to read the instructions I posted for the old Blogger so you know how to write your posts. It's a little cumbersome, but then, so is Blogger.

Please check here before sending your questions here. Thanks!

Contributing Editor Karen Rani also blogs at:
Troll Baby | How2Blog
Motherless | Paris Hilton Watch
and works at Swank Web Style

First off, thank you to everyone that wrote in to How2Blog with their questions. An even bigger thank you to Mir at Want Not (and of Woulda Coulda Shoulda Fame) for spreading the word. Many of the questions came in from that helpful site. Thanks, pretty lady!

There are many questions to get to, but some of you wanted to know the simplest of things, and what did Julie Andrews sing in The Sound of Music?

Let's start at the very beginning
A very good place to start
When you read you begin with A, B, C
When you sing, you begin with Do-Re-Mi

And then she broke into song. Again.

Many of you wrote asking about how to add links, how to add images, and how to add links that are clickable images to your sidebars.

Laurie from Not Just About Cancer wrote:

When I switched to blogger beta, I lost all the buttons on my blog, including sitemeter, which I really miss. Is there a way to get them back or do I have to start all over again?

Laurie, allow me to let you in on a little secret: never, ever sign up for anything Beta. I can't tell you the number of times I've signed up for Beta and lost everything, including my mind trying to make it work.

Needless to say, Blogger Beta is now The New Blogger, so what's done is done. So the sad fact is, yes, you need to re-install the codes for all of your sidebar fun.

Go to Site Meter and sign in, get your html code and plug it in where you want it. (The code at Site Meter is found under the Manager tab, and although there is an option for adding the code to your Blogger blog, among others, we're going to do this the old fashioned way.)

So here's a sample code from Site Meter: