I’m Kim. It was the 4th most popular name in the year I was born so I’m one of MANY. I’m in my early mid LATE 30s (ugh ugh ugh) oh heck, I’m late 40s now. And live in Southern New Jersey with my boyfriend fiance husband and dogs.
I’ve been online in various forms since 1994. I started calling myself LadyGypsy in a Prodigy chat room back in 1994 or so in homage to Gypsy, the robot on MST3K. It stuck. But times change and the word “Gypsy” has become a slur and that’s now how I roll. I’m slowly changing my username across the various websites I use. So if you see a ladygypsy and it doesn’t sound like me, it’s probably not me. It took me a long time to finally get this site changed to kimberussell.com .
These accounts *are* me.
I think the only ladygypsy holdouts now are my gmail address, which I’m keeping because everything ties into it, Disqus and WordPress comment accounts, and Pinterest.
This blog was started on December 30, 2002. It’s mostly petty and shallow and I have few “expert” opinions on anything. Sometimes I’m here 3 times a week, sometimes I ignore it for a month. I write about anything that strikes my fancy. The commenters are friendly.
I work at a non-profit in Philadelphia, which I call TNP, short for the New Place. I started there in 2012, so it’s not new anymore. Before that, I worked at the Courier-Post newspaper for twelve years, which was about five years too long.
As of February 2017, my template is a modified version of Hemlock from ThemeForest/Envato. The header font I’ve been using forever is Bounce from Letterhead Fonts. I bought it YEARS ago will never stop using it because I want to get my $35 worth.
I built my first web site in 1994, when it was common for a website address to be http://www.your-host.com/users/~username/index.html. I switched to Blogger in early 2003 and then went fully to a self-hosted WordPress site in February, 2005.
In February, 2017, I transferred the content to a new host and a new domain name, and here I am. Still.
Advertising/Monetization:
I currently have no ads on this site. I’m not opposed to them, but I don’t have a huge following anymore (I’m losing page views year to year and I have been for a few.) Someday I might put ads back on. I promise that if that happens, I’ll tell you when, and let you know they’re really ads.
I don’t use affiliate links, although I should. I have an Amazon affiliate account but I’m too lazy to deal with it. Someday I might use affiliate links. I promise that I’ll tell you when, and I’ll always yet you know in the post.
I am not paid to review anything. It irritates me to no end when a blogger starts writing about their weekend and then suddenly it turns into an ad for Capri-Sun complete with clicktracking tags and the blogger never mentions that this is a sponsored post. If you see a link in my post to a product, I bought it myself. Someday I might get paid to review or promote an item that fits how I live. If that happens, I promise to disclose it in the post itself.
Lately, I’ve been re-posting my reviews from Goodreads onto this blog as a way to get more content for this blog and to not have my writing strictly on a third party site. As of yet, I’ve not been given any free books to read and review. If I do, I’ll be sure to let you know.
Content:
I write posts in advance so I don’t have a huge dump of posts in one week and nothing for the next two. If you look at the timestamp on a blog post and think “Isn’t she at work right now?” then you can safely assume the post is written in advance. I schedule them for in the middle of the EST, USA office workday because that’s when people are bored and read my blog.
I’m using the “more” tag to have you click through from my home page to the post. It’s to increase my bounce rate – I have an 81% bounce rate because all of my content is on the front page. I was involved with online advertising on the Courier-Post site long enough to get a gutpunch when I see such a high bounce rate. I shouldn’t care but I do.
This blog had a presence on Facebook until September 2020 when my posts stopped posting automatically and I was tired of dealing with it. I started weekly link summary email in October that sends you all of the blog post links on Friday. You can subscribe to it here!
I don’t liveblog vacations anymore because I am old and paranoid. However, I will schedule posts to happen while I’m away and “pretend” I’m home. Because I’m old and paranoid. I’m also not doing Cookie-cam anymore. It was fun while it lasted.
I’m a touchy feely bleeding heart Hate Has No Home Here Nasty Woman Still She Persisted Liberal and am growing more so as the years go by. I write about it from time to time.
Thank you for taking the time out of your life to visit my little corner of the web. I appreciate all of you, from my 1 fan (hi, Mom!) to my lurkers.
Updated 3.4.21 to update theme name, change age, and remove Twitter link because I’m mean there.
