Yeah! Back online!
This situation is probably not unique to me as I saw many forums where others have also experienced similar issues. So you can imagine some hair-pulling moments when I really tried all means and ways of fiddling with settings on my PC and not getting any traction.
The solution?
I had accidentally disabled my McAfee firewall and my access to blogspot came back on!
Now, if I can only figure out what's the alternative safe and non-intrusive firewall that's good for installation!
PS. To think that I was also planning a blog migration to Wordpress and was spending a couple of hours on that during the past week too!
See you soon! I've got to get some photos ready for uploading this week! Sharing is sexy