I can breathe! Well, I'm still coughing, but I no longer feel like I have an anvil on my chest. Unfortunately CJ seems to have caught it and is still asleep.

I like Erin, Workslinger.

sara - my thoughts are with you and MK.

I, too, love wordsmith, but wordwrangler leads me to a place of total full-on cowgirl awesomeness. With lassos and shit. If you're willing to commit to it, get wranglin'

Which actually gets me to my more serious point -- erinlastname.com as your domain name, erin@erinlastname.com as your email address, and keep them forever. Even if you end up with an editorial sweatshop and employees and the whole nine later on, you will STILL be getting actual relevant emails to the first address you used, so you won't want to let that domain drop.

If it's your actual name, you can always repurpose the domain into a personal site two iterations down the road. If it's something that was fun but now makes you cringe... yeah. If you turn your adventures into a fabulous best-selling whosamawhatsis, people will look for your actual name site to fangirl you, and you don't want to pay someone *else* good money for your own damn name later on.

It's your name. Just do it.

Point the second, keep your domain short and memorable. You will meet people and talk them up and give them a business card and they will SOMEHOW FORGET ALL THE INFO even while actually looking at the actual business card right in front of them. It's amazing. It will be much easier for them to hunt you down as erinlastname than as erintheamazingredheadedgrammardomfromkc. Your goal is to have the domain fit on your business card in big logo-ish type, not just in the teeny-tiny contact details print.

So, another vote for your name as the actual domain.

After that, blacksmith and/or cowgirl it up! Work the whole theme thing shamelessly! Promote your bad self! But you can do all that with unified logo, design, print materials, copywriting, and all the rest.

You know, I would love to have people who think that do an experiment: swap out their public devotional symbols and practices for those of another faith for a week and see if they still think the same thing at the end of the week.

Doing so would clearly send them to hell immediately, Debet.

Huh. I totally misremembered wordslinger as wordwrangler while writing that, and it still fits the old-west cheese theme. It's meant to be.

Good points, amych.

Anyone know where I go to find out if erin-----.com is taken as a domain name? or .org or whatever? I'm Googling, but I know there has to be something more comprehensive and specific out there.

Bowlegs y/n/depends-on-who's-wearing them?

I'm appalled by how little The Wire shows Clarke Peter's legs. They seem to go right up to the edge and then head in the opposite direction, taunting me and not delivering. I wonder if Treme will be the same.

Drain person! Come! My clever extra rest plan is not working out at all.

Anyone know where I go to find out if erin-----.com is taken as a domain name?

Any of the sites where you register a domain will have a widget that you can type names into before you actually sign up; it'll also tell you which of the .org, .net, .everythingelse variations are available. I like NameCheap because I have GoDaddy issues, but the process is pretty much the same.

(erin-----.com is available, btw, assuming that you're using the same ----- I'm thinking of. You're not starting a new name as well as a new business, are you?)

Erin, go to a whois site--like whois.net and look your name up.

Erin, any domain registrar will do that search for you.

[link]

OK, it looks like my name is available, and I can go.com, org or .biz.

Which one would be best? Opinions?

Also, I know there are several other "me"'s out there -- since the domain name isn't taken, there should be no infringement issues -- I don't see any of them with a professional business associated with their firstnamelastname?

(What would I DO without you all?!)