Have sock monkey, will travel

It appears as though Haloscan is closing up shop tomorrow. This blog uses Haloscan comments, so there might be a teeny pinch of impact at NAY. But hey, it ought not to be a huge issue to just turn Blogger comments back on, right? A little clickie here, a little clickie there, and all should be right with the world, opening the door once more to the throngs, nay fully TENS of people who come here for a brief respite from their rush-rush go-go lives and feel the need to leave a witticism or insight in the comments.

Oh yes, I do feel it’s important to maintain a free and open dialog with the spit-shined denizens of the internet. I’m all ABOUT the public discourse.

Well, it would appear that my optimistic naivete has, once again, led me astray in the ‘how bad could it possibly be?’ department. You see, the blog template is written in something very much like Sanskrit and thus is almost impossible to alter unless you know EXACTLY what to do. There have been times that I’ve spent hours searching through line after line of code looking for just that one snippet that needs changing, often doing many things that appear to have no effect (curious, that one). To find the bits that say ‘use Haloscan’ and ‘don’t use Blogger comment function’ is about as easy as locating a liberal in Provo, which is to say it’s not easy at all.

(Yes, I looked it up. Provo is the United States’ most conservative city. If you’re interested, the article says that Detroit is the most liberal. Interesting? I thought so too.)

The long and short of this tale of woe is that as of tomorrow it looks like there will either be 1) no comments here for a while, at least until I have the time to mess with the template and revert back to Blogger, or 2) I’ll move this whole mess on over to Wordpress and start playing in THEIR sandbox.I know a bunch of folks have dome something similar, and all I hear at home is ‘aw come on, just make the switch already! Look! I made you a blog there, it’s all ready for you! What are you afraid of, fraidy-cat?’ and suchlike, so I GET IT, I really do, but….leave Blogger? Break up a 4.5 year relationship just because the template I’m using is written in a mix of hieroglyphics and Navajo and it won’t listen to me when I tell it do stuff? I just don’t know. It’s a big step.

But Wordpress = shiny. With tabs. It’s tempting.

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Short-track speed skating is kind of exciting. Also half-pipe snowboarding.

Just sayin’.

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Biff is gone again. Y'all, I can’t seem to keep that man down on the farm for very long these days. Hrmph. One week Guatemala, the next week he’s wending his way to the frozen north. This most-recent trip is not a happy errand, which makes things worse, because there’s nothing like having to take time off to do unpleasant things like sift through a house full of someone else’s belonging and talk business with lawyers, creditors, and potential property managers to really sour the whole 'time off' experience. His sisters, who live way up there, have been dealing with the aftermath of their Dad’s death for the past month, and it was time for Biff to go up and literally lend a hand. There’s repair work to do to the house before they can do ANYTHING with it, there are dump runs to make and cleaning out to do. There are yet more papers to sift, I’m sure, and yet more bills to sort. It all takes time, energy, and patience. Oh, and from time to time, it takes being there.

This business of having to miss the spousal unit on such a regular basis is already getting old. Anyone know where I can get a good pair of stout handcuffs to keep him from wandering off again too soon?