Karaoke Blessings

This has certainly been an interesting month. Global warming coupled with El ''Nino has made this one of the strangest Winters I can remember. George Bush is preparing to send more targets to Baghdad for the insurgency to shoot at. Candidates are coming out of the woodwork like flies to vie for the office of President when the present idiot's constitutionally mandated final term is finally up, and we've got a whole slew of good, or bad choices, depending on your political leanings, as well as the tendency of politicians to say or do something stupid before the primaries. Sometimes I think having to choose between Satan himself and Ghenghis Khan would be an improvement over what we've had to put up with over the last eight years. And on top of all that, bad judgment bit me in the ass and killed my cat.

It hasn't been all bad. I managed to work some holidays and overtime and brought home some righteous bacon. I bought us one of those $15, pay as you go cell phones so that we'd have a way to call for help in case of emergencies. I had to give up the Cingular phones a while back, they were just to expensive considering we hardly used them and the signal wouldn't reach out to the house anyway. Then, I somehow took a rather odd idea and turned it into reality. I created a virtual community, populated by people from all over the globe, and even attracted a "Big Name Celebrity" without spending a cent! Thanks, Ms C! Yea, I know, creating a "team" blog is nothing new; the net probably is crawling with them, but it's MY baby, and we all know that the ugliest babies are beautiful in the eyes of their parents. I am amazed, however, at how eagerly my friends joined in to make Freedom's Place such an instant success. I can't thank them enough. If this new blog is here a year from now, I can smell an award......can't you?

With just a tad bit of extra cash at hand, I'm taking THE Wife to St Augustine Monday, the only place within reasonable driving distance we go anymore when we want to pretend we are going on vacation to someplace exotic. There are cute little shops there that we love to frequent, including those that cater to us pagan types. Since the weather is so insanely mild, it should make for a very pleasant day. Such are the finer, simpler pleasures in life.

The best thing that has happened to me, however, is this realization that I am not cut off entirely from the world I once thought I had been exiled from, hunkered down as I am here on this little acre of sand in Florida, a place that fate deemed right to plant me on. I and THE Wife do not have an extensive circle of friends. We have acquaintances at work and we have some family. But, for the most part, it's her and I and the pets keeping each other company. THE Wife is happy with the status quo, and has no real interest in reaching out beyond this small circle. I, however, have found great pleasure in the relationships, however tenuous and limited, I have established with all of you whom I have come to know and care about over these past several years thanks to Blogger. I truly wish I could meet, in person, each and every one of you, if only to take the liberty of hugging you and thanking you for coming into my life and enriching it in each odd and wonderful, spectacularly individual way that you all have. I am a lower-middle class individual hanging by the razor's edge of outright poverty, yet I could not feel richer for what you all have given me. If this wonderful iMac of mine blows it's motherboard, the damage would far surpass the utility it provides me in areas such as bill paying, information gathering, record keeping, and entertainment. It would cut me off from YOU, and THEN, yes, THEN I would surely be lost. I cannot afford the 1200-odd dollars it would cost to replace it, so for the sake of my sanity I pray to Bob that she holds up until such time that fortune smiles upon me and grants me the wherewithal to acquire a new one and remain connected to this wonderful family that has welcomed me into their lives.

So I'll shut up now and finish this post by thanking each and every one of you for being in my world and making it so much richer than it otherwise could have been. I'll be seeing you at the pub in Freedom's place, hogging the karaoke mic. They used to claim I could sing. If they were lying, could you see it in your heart to keep to tradition? Just order a few more rounds of drinks.........I get better with each and every beer you down...........