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440b Another Move

Thursday, October 9, 2008

AOL has shut down Journals support, so I moved all these older posts from AOL to here. See below for the address of the "new, current" blog. Maybe one of these days I'll figure out how to integrate everything. Sigh.

#440a Bump

Just a bump, in case anyone is still getting alerts - I'm now at http://TheSilkenTouch.blogspot.com.

~~Silk

440 New Journal

Well, I am moving to http://TheSilkenTouch.blogspot.com. Maybe temporarily, maybe permanently. We'll see.

I'm NOT moving because of the ads AOL has decided to burden us with. I don't like them, but I could stand them. I'm experimenting with moving because in the 250+ emails I got yesterday and today about the AOL community's furor over the ads, a lot of people said interesting things about other blog hosts, so I looked at a few, and I liked what I saw.

Blogspot doesn't have some of the stuff AOL Journals has, like alerts for readers, but it's got other stuff like much easier editing, and you can preview and accept or reject comments from other people BEFORE they are posted in your blog.

The user interface is awkward at first - like I didn't know I had to log into www.blogger.com to update the blog at blogspot, and I went around in a lot of circles before I found out how to edit certain sections - but if you play with it for a while, it all starts to hang together and make sense.

And it's free.

So until I say otherwise, that's where I am now.

Come on over to http://TheSilkenTouch.blogspot.com, and check out my new format.

~~Silk

#439 This Journal Will Be Moving

Since AOL has added advertising to our journals, I am considering joining throngs of other AOLers in moving to another host. I have begun a new journal at http://TheSilkenTouch.blogspot.com. There's nothing much there yet, and I plan to explore a few more options, but I thought I'd let you know, I'm packing up.

Dinner last night with a friend. Mixed reviews. He had lemon chicken, and it was so lemony it literally took his breath away, in the not-good sense. Both of us had partially cooked pasta, too chewy. On the other hand, my chicken S-something-or-other (a chicken Cordon-Bleu in a wonderful mushroom cream sauce) was delicious.

He's one of the few men I've known who will actually complain when a restaurant meal isn't up to par. He was obviously annoyed and would have sent the pasta back except that it took 45 minutes to arrive, which is exactly what he said to the waitress.

I'm not sure what I think of that. On the one hand I admire his assertiveness. On the other hand, it frightens me a little. So far I've been able to get away with annoying him occasionally (I hope it's occasional), but how much can I get away with before he tells me my pasta is tough?

I think that his frightening me a little is part of the attraction. Passing my fingers through the flame, maybe.

~~Silk

#438 Old Letters

While I am cleaning out the paper in the den, I am finding a lot of old correspondence.  It's amazing to revisit my mind from years back.  I'm afraid that's something that today's youth will miss.  With all their correspondence being of the ephemeral variety (online, phone), they will have less opportunity to revisit their younger mind.

Anyway, it has slowed down the house clearing project considerably.

I am finding many letters and (paper) journal entries I had written to and about Jay back in the beginning, when we first realized how things were between us, but we didn't know what to do about it.  I am amazed that many of the same things I felt then, I am feeling again now.  But I'm much calmer about it now.  I guess because there's no "baby lust" now.  No "tick, tick" of the hormonal clock.

I found very upbeat and positive letters from my youngest sister, written two years before she drank herself to death.

I am also finding letters I had written to friends and Jay's sisters when we were fighting his cancer.  Now, I can't believe what we went through.  Really rough.  One of the letters was the infamous "Christmas letter" of 2000.  Jay's entire extended family is really big on the "our year" letters, where you brag about the wonderful year your family has had.  I dislike the whole concept.  If you can't keep in touch during the year, what makes you think people want all that information at the end of the year.  But, as a member of the family, I had to meet expectations.  (Although I flatly refused to send those silly photo postcards.)

I had missed writing the 1999 letter because the tumor had reoccurred, right before Jay was supposed to get the bone marrow transplant, and the whole treatment plan was changed, there was another craniotomy, daily radiation, and so on, and everything was just too frantic.  I didn't even get cards out in 1999, let alone a letter.  So the 2000 letter covered two years of brain cancer battle.  I mean, how could it not?  That's ALL we'd done for two years. 

I will never forget (or forgive) a subsequent telephone call from one of his sisters.  Her comment on the letter was "Merry Christmas" in a very bitter tone, "way to throw a wet towel on everybody's holiday."  Gee.  Sorry about that.

So I'm reading and keeping instead of simply  sorting and pitching.  A temporary hitch in the git-along.

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BTW - Piper called early this afternoon, and I answered the phone in the kitchen.  I needed to get some information from the den for him, so I set the kitchen phone down, and picked up in the den.  We talked for long enough that I forgot that the kitchen phone was off the hook.  So if anyone tried to call me today, that's why you couldn't get me.  Sorry.

~~Silk