That’s a question I’ve been pondering lately, and I’ll address it shortly, but first, allow me speculate a bit on why we blog.

We started sharing all these stories, photos and randomness from our lives mostly for the benefit of our family and friends. I think it’s fair to say that maintaining this blog helps us, and reportedly our readers, feel a bit more connected. My father lives in Portland, OR and my mother in Washington, DC. We talk on the phone with a healthy degree of regularity but being able to share all these photos and thoughtful stories seems to really deepen that dialogue. So, while it’s a whole lot of fun for both Shana and myself to work on this blog, I think the real reason we continue doing it, everyday, is because we receive such positive feedback from all of you.

Now, let’s talk about “gas money” (just bear with me here). I don’t know about you, but we could use some extra “gas money” now and again. I use the term “gas money” loosely because we don’t actually have … a car … per se … but it still seems like the right metaphor because we do have bicycles and I sure have felt a bit low on fuel lately. This is where that whole advertising idea I mentioned early comes into play. The basic idea being that if we could drive enough traffic to our site and gain a wide enough readership we might be able to slightly augment our income. It wouldn’t be much, but we wouldn’t be looking for much — just a little gas money.

Finally, to get to my point in all of this, I really like the idea of this blog getting more exposure, but I don’t want to change the way we write posts, or to feel like we need to censor the photos we share, or otherwise suck the life out of what we’re trying to do here in an attempt to accommodate a more generic readership. This blog is for you — not some generic “everyone.”

It’s with that balance in mind that I created our first ad (you might need to refresh the page to watch the animation!):

We are probably going start advertising the site and trying to bring in more readers, but we are not going to betray our original and intended readership–our friends, our family and, perhaps most importantly, our cats.

P.S. The banner ad above was made using a brand new SaaS (Software as a Service) application called BannerSnack. It takes all of the work out of creating cool flash web banners by providing a easy to use point and click design interface as well as generating all the code needed to share your new creations with the world. And with that now said, I’m totally counting this as my Tech Tuesday post.

In part, this is an attempt to justify my recent purchase of some high-end screencasting software, but more so it’s my way of giving back a bit of what I’ve learned about web design, development and the internet. Anyway, I thought it’d be fun to have them cross-posted so that you all can see a bit more of what I’m up to.

Don’t let this little notice distract you though! Check out today’s Chicago Thursday post now!!!

1. It’s called Our Chicago Blog but it’s thus far mostly been Shana’s Chicago blog.
2. We claim that this blog is about our lives here in Chicago but a disproportionate percentage of posts are about our cats or biking. Lately, it’s leaned heavily toward the former. In all fairness, the non-work aspect of our life here is in fact occupied mostly by these things. In fact, there’s a cat on my lap right now. And as I’m typing, my attention is intermittently being pulled this toward the open door of my office as our other cat walks by every 60 seconds or so. He stops just long enough with each passing to ensure that I take note of the jealous look on his face. Case in point, I could have not mentioned these happenings, but this is a big part of our “social lives.”

In an effort to bring some semblance of order to the chaos we’ve come up with a topic-centric weekly posting schedule.

• Monday Product Endorsement
• Tech Tuesday
• Wednesday Bites
• Chicago Thursday
• Friday’s Smooth Move of the Week

I’m going to leave it at that and refrain from explaining these categories. I feel like if we start imposing rigid definitions right off the bat, we could potentially make it much harder to justify fitting our cats in. At this point, for all you know, Wednesday Bites you very well be about cats…

So, stayed tune. It’s Monday and today Shana will present you with our first official Product Endorsement.

Now, the good news: We’re back up and running, but this time using good, old, reliable WordPress. Keep on the look out for new posts including Chicago facts, winter biking tips, fashion advice, product endorsements, new recipes, snazzy photos and more!