Dropping in on My Own Blog to Say Hello ...

Hello, whoever might show up to read this, and Happy New Year!

Yes, I realize we're darn near 1/12 into the new year, but I've been busy. I wish I could say I've been having fun, but no, it's not that.

Just busy.

For now, I'll just post what's on my mind this morning, and maybe I'll be back again in a week or so:

For most of my life, one of those questions that people have liked to discuss is Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated? Added to that unhappy question a few years ago was Where were you when the Twin Towers were hit? I think that now, at least among liberals but maybe even non-believers, we'll be adding: Where were you when Obama was inaugurated? It's a much happier question...in so many, many ways.

I was in my classroom; one class ends at 12:05 and another begins at 12:15 and fortunately for me I don't change rooms between these two. I tried to bring up the ceremony on the computer, but every site I tried to access was frozen (it might well have had to do with the outdated computer, too). Finally, I turned to NPR and listened to the swearing-in and the speech. Then it was back to business.

But not business as usual. May it never again be that kind of business as usual.

(A personal aside to John Roberts: I've had that oath memorized since grade school, but as any English teacher would tell you, even if you have your speech well-practiced, bring some index cards as prompts. You never know what the stresses of the moment might do to your well-rehearsed plan.)

Blogging Has Just Cost Me $600

And counting.

Last night I bought a low-end laptop, even though I already have a perfectly good desktop.

I actually have a number of reasons for wanting one, several of them work-related, but no, I didn't really need a laptop. Except for one thing.

I'm about to go away for two weeks. I don't like to go a'blogging on others' computers, leaving behind my pinko liberal traitor browsing history (related post below).

Faced with two weeks away from reading blog posts, not to mention writing them, the stress pushed me over the edge and off I went to Best Buy with a store ad in hand.

I didn't buy the store ad on-sale laptop, but I didn't pay too much more for the one I got, and the helpful young man who answered my questions, including some I didn't know to ask, wasn't even working on commission, so there was nothing in it for him.

I'm not a big fan of the built-in computer mouse, but I got an optical wireless mouse. Yet I haven't even bothered to break it out.

Once I got home, I decided I really needed to set up wireless in my house. It was too late to go back to BB, so I went to WalMart. To shorten the story, I bought a router that I know I connected correctly, but that won't complete the set up. (Yes, I have an adapter for the desktop and a built-in in the laptop.) I went to the router's online support (connecting the conventional way), and found a chat area about my router, where I learned that many, many people have experienced exactly the problem I am having. With no resolution.

So I'm boxing the thing up and returning it today.

If anyone has any advice on an easy-to-use, reliable router, I'm hungry to hear it. I won't deal with this any more until I return from my trip, but other than going to Best Buy for advice, I really don't know what else to do.

We're All Samuel Pepys Now

We’re all Samuel Pepys now.

I’ve had that thought dozens of times, but I never wrote it down until today, in response to Brave Sir Robin's prodding that we go read a post on his friend’s site, about knitting. And other important things. Then my comments on his blog blossomed into this post.

This story of knitting and crisis and love is just one example of why I love blogging. We're all Samuel Pepys now, all working to make sense of our individual corners of the world, documenting those thoughts, and enriching each others' lives in the process.

The art of letter writing may be dying as people e-mail one another instead, and then delete rather than put the precious words in a shoebox or a file cabinet drawer. We’re losing the intimacy of our correspondents’ handwriting, the fragrance of the scented stationery, the little oil stains from the lunch carelessly eaten above the note – perhaps by both writer and reader.

But what we lose when we lose that old way of doing things, we gain tenfold through blogging. Not only can we continue to connect with our friends, we form new friendships with people we’d never meet otherwise, even though we may never “meet” them face-to-face (in some cases we may never even know their “real” names or faces). These are friendships just the same, and I cherish mine. We know they love cats, or their favorite foods, or why it’s bliss for them to get out of town on the weekend. We worry about their health crises. We revel in their zany, lovable way with words. We live abroad with them vicariously. Or in the big city. We watch them manage their money with panache. We hear their powerful voices and see through their eyes the beauty in the smallest things (really, you should sample this blog!). Other times we just peek in once or twice on people who remain strangers, but who still allow us and anyone else who cares to drop by a casual intimacy that we simply couldn’t get in the face-to-face world where in a crowd we’re mostly a little stand-offish, fiercely maintaining our personal space.

Pepys didn’t aspire to be a writer of importance for centuries. He was simply observing, just as we bloggers are. I sometimes wonder where our blogs will be in 10, 20, 100 years. Somewhere still archived, I hope. Here lie riches for the sociologists, folklorists, anthropologists, and historians of the future, those scholars who will want to know how people lived their lives in the early 21st century.

Because we’re all Samuel Pepys now.

Oh, the places I won't go!

A good many things I'd like to blog, I don't. I have a fear that someday a family member will find the thing and then I'll have some 'splainin' to do.

Right now, for instance, there are a truckload of things I'd like to say about a certain person who needs to stop being so self-centered and controlling before it comes back to bite him or her, whichever the case may be, in the tush, as well as harm us all.

But for the sake of familial harmony, I'm keeping my mouth shut online and in person.

The best blog post I never wrote was about an event that I won't specifically allude to here and my enormous restraint throughout the event. Since this blog generally is not a place where I spill words to praise my own wonderfulness, I hope you will take my word for it when I say I was a saint in this situation.

Friend Alanna knows what I'm talking about and will vouch for me.

I'm dealing with a similar situation right now.

Sorry for being so frustratingly vague. Grrr!

Otherwise, I can't go there.

The kind of momentous event for which blogs were invented....

I've completely used up the ink in a ballpoint pen.

That never happens; I always lose them first.

Mark this day.