Typhoid Mary and the Angry, Pitch-Fork-and-Torch Mob

Aw...isn't that sweet. (NO)

Someone at work is sick. All day Thursday I heard her in her office, hacking an alternately wet and dry cough, raking and frequent. I knew she didn’t feel well, but then she had the temerity to ask me for help not once, but twice as she gradually got worse and worse.

It’s probably just a chest cold, and Lord knows, I’ve been very blessed not to get sick until and unless I was on vacation. I was out a couple of days with something last week, and I really don’t feel like coming down with something like what she has next week. Or better still, over my weekend when I have to take my loving wife grocery shopping.

I know people get sick. I know they can’t help it. I know they don’t want to get sick and are so dedicated to their job, so indispensable at their employer, or simply too obtuse to realize they’re doing more harm than good by coming to work. Well, here’s a dose of reality for you.

Jolly Boots of Doom

So, hearing about someone who actually owns a pair of UGGs (which, by the way, have been copied much), I am determined to go the way of the Tom Brady endorsement and get a pair for my winter-wearing pleasure.

Actually, I have been considering a snow-boot purchase. I’ve been insanely jealous of my kids’s recent acquisition of such boots in anticipation of what “experts” were prognosticating as the “worst winter” we’d experienced in some time. (Yeah. Right. How’s that guessing profession working out for you? ‘Cause, I could use the dough and being wrong more often than not isn’t that hard, yo.) While winter ’round here ain’t exactly joy and follies, this year’s been extraordinarily easy. Nevertheless, we got them both snow boots, and when I do need them, there is no substitute.

Back…After an Unsuccessful Baseball Career

I have egg -- and other substances -- on my face.

Well, this is embarrassing.

I’ve had to admit defeat with my free hosted site, which now holds my darcknyt.com domain hostage. At the same time, the amount of effort and the limitations the free host placed on my loving spouse and I isn’t worth the stress involved with trying to keep it up and running. So, I’m going to let it go feral over there and move my domain as of March.

I’ll find someplace better ‘n this, but for now, this is what I’ve got — and what I’m willing to work with — so here’s where I’ll hang out for a bit and see what happens.

At least here I can use WLW and schedule posts for days in advance and such. Which has meant more consistent blogging (and writing!) for me. The other site? Not so much. I have to post or save as a draft and post on the day I want it to go up. No scheduled posts, which makes Johnny a dull and inconsistent blogger, because I don’t remember these things. I write when I have ideas, not when I have to publish. It’s better for me to store them and have them go up when I want them to than to have to be able to access the blog when I have something I want to publish. And it’s flat easier than trying to manage a bunch of files without forgetting them.

Anyway, the commenting over there stinks too.

When it’s time my buddy Bryce will help me get through the move (he already said so) and so will the new host, so I have about six weeks to find one.

But for now, I’ll be here. Sorry for the blog-hopping you guys. For your trouble, I’ll give anyone who’s interested a free copy of not one, but BOTH of my books to read in any format you like (other than print). Just let me know you want them in the comments, along with an email address to use, and I’ll send you a coupon for Smashwords.com (complete with links to the books) so you can download any format you’d like free of charge.

Again, thanks for your patience, and I hope to see you back here from time to time.

God bless,
-JDT-

The End is Here! The END is HERE!

Well…the end of my run with WordPress.com, at least.

For a lot of reasons – and I won’t discuss them so don’t ask – it’s time for me to move on from WordPress.com. I found WP back in 2007 and have been faithfully blogging here ever since. I’ve loved most of it. I loved that, unlike Google’s Blogger service, WordPress offered the ability to create pages for your blog so you could almost maintain a full-on web site rather than just a blog. (Blogger, later, answered this capability.) WordPress’s dashboard was phenomenally easy to use and clear. It had wonderful stats and Askimet anti-spam. It was, in short, brilliant and fun.

But they’ve recently lost some of their luster in my eyes. They claim to be about “free speech”, but I’ve seen their actions belie those words and so, with a heavy heart and a lighter pocketbook, I move over to my own domain.

I hope you’ll all update your links to my new site, and that I’ll be seeing you there instead of here from now on. (The comments on this blog will be disabled, FYI.) Starting today, my now house is:

http://www.darcknyt.com

Feel free to stop by and say hello. Things are a little different there, but it’s still me. Hopefully it will still be a place you want to see. There’s a landing page and a separate blog page, so be sure to subscribe to the blog page by clicking the RSS Feed button on the sidebar. And I’ll try to update the links as soon as I can, so my blog-buds will get their due. For a time, I’ll leave this blog up as a reference for those who want it.

Thank you for all your constant support and friendship. God bless, and have a wonderful 2012.

-JDT-

THE END IS NEAR! THE END IS NEAR!

Today’s the last Friday of my vacation, and of the year. Coincidence? I think not.

Seriously, as you may or may not have noticed, I don’t have a post for today. Matter of fact, as I sit here typing this right now, I’m tempted to jump on my SANDWICH searcher bash-rant machine just to see if I can generate some hits from those not yet drunk in anticipation of the New Year.

But no. No, today I’ll refrain from using the word sandwich simply to giggle over the hits I’ll get because of it. Today I salute my wife as the ULTIMATE sandwich queen. Never before have I loved sandwiches made at home so much as when she makes them. I can only imagine what she could do with really good ingredients like I had as a child.

Final football weekend of the 2011 season is this weekend. I’ll miss it, despite not having seen a single game. My two teams — one from my dim and distant past and one I’ve chosen for myself — both did great this year and are going on to the final single-elimination tournament. I can’t wait to see if one or both will go to the Super Bowl. And what if they faced each other? Oh, the joy!

Alas, I think the Green Bay Packers are destined to win again. I see no one capable of stopping them, really. On the other conference’s side, I would think the Baltimore Ravens or the Pittsburgh Steelers (UGH, really, again?) would be the ones to beat. Much as I hate both teams — and make no mistake, I hate the f**king pi$$ out of both of ‘em — I have to acknowledge not being surprised to see either in the ‘Bowl this year.

Oh well. I’ve been working out pretty consistently over the last week, and I think it’s already working despite how simple and short the workouts are. I can’t wait to see how things shape up over the next several months. Baby steps, for sure, but steps nonetheless. Let’s face it, you can at least move forward with baby steps. Doing nothing tends to make one stand still.

How ’bout you? Plans for the New Year’s Eve celebration? We like to stay home and watch it on TV. I mean, crowds, noise and drunkenness don’t hold so much appeal as they did once. I guess it had appeal once. When I was about 21. What are you doing?

Whatever it is, have a Happy and Safe New Year.

God bless and see ya in 2012. It’s the year the world ends according to a race of people who checked out off the face of the planet about 1200 years ago, you know, so make sure it counts for something.

-JDT-