Of course I can neither confirm nor deny this. I just saw it on the web, and wanted to make sure you heard the rumor.

Did you think I was kidding when I said I’d give friends a free blog? Jeremy Keillor didn’t, and look what happened to him.

(I should mention once more that I prefer it if you’re not a friend-of-a-friend, but that you actually knew me before today, as Jeremy did. Otherwise I could end up running and maintaining my own blogging business and making no money at it whatsoever, and that’s not my idea of a good time. 🙂

I have a couple friends who just put blogs up that I hadn’t mentioned yet for some reason. They both contacted me and were curious as to how this whole blogging thing works, and I said I would set a blog up for them on my server. So I did. And now I will link you to them.

Neal (a very frequent commenter in the Peanut Gallery) has been blogging for about three weeks now, so if you haven’t seen his writing, go check it out. He has many insights that escape the minds of mere mortals. And he reviews a different movie every Thursday!

Eddie, another close buddy of mine who goes back with me all the way to 1993, has just begun blogging as well. He’s relatively new to the blogosphere, so let’s all encourage him to spread his wings and blog. If we’re lucky he’ll share some of his sonnets and other poems with us. He has a way with the verse.

I should take this opportunity to mention that I’m open to hosting more blogs than just these two. If you’re keen on blogging and haven’t taken the plunge, I see no reason you shouldn’t email me and express just such a thought. You’ll have a blog within hours, totally free of charge. For yay! (That offer assumes you actually know me. If you’re a total stranger, I’d have to think twice about it. No offense.)

I was watching The Simpsons tonight (surprise!) and I was totally shocked by an ad that came on between the show and the rest of the commercials. It was one of those "sponsored by" ads that isn’t really an actual advertisement, but simply mentions that somebody paid for something. This one spoke of the SAP (or Secondary Audio Program), and the fact that The Simpsons was being simultaneously broadcast in Spanish. I’ve seen this done before, but it’s pretty nifty technology nonetheless. But the kicker was when the announcer said, "SAP broadcast in Spanish, brought to you by Bad Boys Bail Bonds!" I just about fell out of my chair. So the Bail Bonds people want to get a good reputation with the native Spanish speakers, huh? Man, what kind of signal does that send? You’d think Bad Boys would just do a regular commercial or something (their commercials suck, but that’s beyond the point), and let somebody like Downy Wrinkle Releaser do the SAP, but apparently they’re being a little more aggressive. Interesting.

Non sequitur. Pardon me.

I feel really uncreative today. It sucks. I’ve really had to force myself to get up and do stuff lately. I just want to sit on the couch and do nothing. Stuff that has become a regular part of my daily routine has become boring to me in the last week or so. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t post on this blog for the last week. I just couldn’t force myself to do it. Just posting on here is actually making me feel a little bit better, but it’s still disturbing when I think "Hey, it’s only 11 o’ clock. I’ve got plenty of time to do some more web design tonight, or play a game," and my brain (or something) immediately responds, "Nah. Just go to bed." That’s really not like me.

So this is what it feels like to come up for air! I admit, it’s been too long since I’ve blogged. Some nights have been busy. Some nights have been crazy. Some nights have been completely forgotten, since I can’t seem to account for the week that just passed. I do have a few short things to show you, though.

Steph and I have been getting involved with the Junior High youth group from our church, and we’re really enjoying it. On Saturday the 4th (Stephanie’s 25th birthday, by the way), Steph and I went along with the youth group to Great America, standing in as "responsible adults." I can’t believe they fell for it! We went on several rides, and took some pictures. Enjoy! Oh, Steph’s hair is her normal color once again. Sorry to disappoint anyone.

Secondly, today I whipped together a website template for the youth group since their current website says… well… nothing. The text is all in Latin (standard practice for filler text), so don’t expect to really get a ton out of reading it. Still, the current template gives a feel for what the site will be like when it’s done, while requiring you to use your imagination just a little bit. I’m probably going to do more work on the youth group’s site this week, but I’m hoping to also get work done on this site. We’ll see how successful I am, but I can tell you that the style employed in that template is very indicative of where I’m going stylistically, although the template is fairly sparse to expose an entire style.

I’ve had a head cold for about five days now. I think I gave it to Steph, too. Or possibly some smaller version of it. She’s not been feeling in tip-top shape lately either. So I’ve been sitting inside a lot lately, and sleeping (in bed and on the couch), and eating little chewable Vitamin C tablets. They’re tasty! These little babies have approximately 833% of my daily allowance of Vitamin C. It’s hard not to eat them like candy. I think yesterday I had over 2400% of my daily allowance of Vitamin C. Does that mean I’m going to turn orange or something? Only time will tell. *eats another tablet* Mmmmm… ‘C’…

All this downtime has given me the ability to think a bit about my website. If you’ve looked at the front page of this site lately or over time, you’ll gather that the promise of "coming soon" has been up there for just as long as this blog has been active. (Which, as you may know, is over 10.7 million seconds now.) I’ve got grander plans for this site, but I hadn’t put them into action at all until yesterday. Yesterday I really began creating content. I won’t tell you exactly what I did just yet, but that picture on the left may get you a tiny bit of the way there. The changes are probably going to take me another couple weeks to complete, but I think it’ll at least be a worthwhile experiment, and if I hear good things about it once it’s done, I’ll probably keep it. Wish me luck!