My thanks go to the faithful readers who have made inquiries about my state of continued existence, or lack thereof. I am indeed alive, at least I am at the moment. I guess it has been a while since I’ve gone a full week without blogging, having kept a moderate pace since relaunching this site. Looking at my archive list, it appears I’ve been posting about every other day on average.

We’ve had a busy week, with friends staying with us, hanging out and experiencing Memphis. New things recently encountered: The Avenue Carriage Crossing, The National Civil Rights Museum and Big Foot Lodge.

I haven’t been totally offline, though; I did add a new feature to the sidebar on the homepage — a box containing my “shared items” from Google Reader. I plan to keep that updated with links I find interesting but either don’t have time to write about or anything particularly noteworthy to add. At the bottom of the sidebar, I also added a link to the Victory Caucus website, which I wholeheartedly endorse.

I do have a backlog of topics to write about and post, though, as you can imagine. I want to tell you about some ideas I’ve been pondering, share some goals I’ve set for myself, and make some changes to this blog and the attitude or voice I bring to it.

For starters, one thing I’ve been thinking about this week and have decided to do: I want to apologize to the Ron Paul supporters I mocked in a recent post. I feel bad about it, and I want you to know that I’m sorry I offended you. I might have gotten a few chuckles out of that post, and maybe a few more visitors and links, but I’ve decided that I don’t want to go down that road anymore. I want to be more positive and more constructive in my approach and in my writing about politics, as well as other topics. I won’t take down that post or any others like it, because I consider site scrubbing unethical, and neither will I compromise my principles and ideas I think are right or abandon my humor, but I will pledge to try to be more positive from here forward.

I’ve also been working behind the scenes on some other web projects, which you might know about… if you were a member of the Butter Cowncil, this blog’s volunteer advisory board. Just this morning, I received verification from and swore in the first Cowncilor. You, too, can join the Cowncil by simply donating ANY AMOUNT to the charity of your choice (some restrictions apply) and sending me a copy of the receipt.

More later…

UPDATE: Welcome, StumbleUpon users. I’m not sure why you’re here, but thanks for stopping by!