Never forget The Porch!

That month of February just seemed to flee; don't know what it was so afraid of, but if you look quickly you can see it vanishing in the distance.

Just about gone, and there's not a thing to be done about it. But everyone's tired of hearing about how fast time flies when you get older, we never seemed to notice that when we were young, blah, blah, blah.

So, what have I been doing instead of posting here more often? Home repairs? Not exactly. But we did have to call the overhead door guy three Sundays ago. The garage door opened, my wife backed the car out, then I pushed the button to bring the door back down. Instead, it failed in the open position, and it didn't take long to figure out we weren't going to get it to close. Since we couldn't secure the house, we skipped church, much to my annoyance. Within a couple of hours the repairman came out, and he made a good repair...the door runs more smoothly than before.

That, and our dryer failed on us. The appliance repairman gave us a choice, he could put in a new motor. But that would have been more than half the cost of a new dryer, and there were no guarantees how long we'd have until something else failed on the old machine, the heating element, perhaps. Sears happened to be running a special - free delivery - so we now have a new dryer. Much better than what we were using. But, it's been a bit costly this month.

What I'm more excited about though, is I've been taking a continuing education class online, on writing for internet markets. I'm most of the way through the course, and I'm very encouraged. I had no idea how many different options their are for writing and having content published online...this course has been worth every penny.

One thing I will probably do is start a new blog, and monetize it. This will be a more focused effort, as soon as I decide what I want to write about.

But never fear, Poppy's Front Porch isn't going anywhere, I'm just expanding my opportunities to write. I will post more than the once a month rate so far this year, but it may only be just two to four times per month, at least for a while. It's possible I might move some subject matter over to the new blog, but right now I think the family stories, photographs, and much of the silliness will remain right here.

Found: A quote from The Lord of the Rings

I’ve been checking out the writings of Minnesota resident and master blogger James Lileks for a few years now, every since cousin Mike brought “The Bleat” to my attention. One of Mr. Lileks’ features is “100 Mysteries”, an ongoing “review” of a DVD compilation of old, mostly black-and-white mystery movies.

James describes today’s entry, “The Man on the Eiffel Tower” as the “Worst movie in the series so far”. Mr. Lileks has a great way with words, but as sometimes happens, there will be a quote from someone in the comments section that will really grab my attention.

So, check this out, and notice the blog entry begins with a photo of Burgess Meredith, who both directed and starred in the movie. Then, the first comment: “Isn’t that guy your new US Senator?”, followed five comments later by “THAT is funny. Funny, ha - ha, not funny in that, you know, Franken is really going to be a Senator. That’s just, I dunno… disappointing? Disturbing? Sumpthin.”

Then, 13 comments down from the top, “…That’s just, I dunno… disappointing? Disturbing? Sumpthin.”

“Where now the horse and the rider? where is the horn that was blowing? The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.”

That last is what really got me thinking. It’s not only a meaningful quote from “The Lord of the Rings”, but also a poetic statement on our current state of affairs. A lament, I suppose.

Now, I’m not all gloom-and-doom, I just can’t do that. But sometimes I have to wonder.