Mr. Blogroll remains under construction.  As you can see, It has become two blogrolls and the entries are now alphabetized.  At the old site, I added links as I found them, but, frankly, I was beginning to forget where on the ever-growing list everything was.

If you were on the previous edition of Mr. Blogroll and do not see your site listed here, not to worry.  We’re working on it. 

A couple nights ago, I read this post on Rob’s Site about “barking” alligators, and it literally gave me the chills.  It’s no secret that I am scared shitless of alligators, which, of course, means that my fellow bloggers don’t miss an opportunity to send me pictures of big gators, pictures of groups of gators, pictures of gators on people’s front porches and in their back yards.  Hell, someone even sent me a picture of a mondo alligator swimming around with a big-assed deer in its mouth!

When they’re not sending me pictures to gross me out or scare the dogshit out of me, they’re sending me stories that typically deal with some poor bastard being dragged into a goddamned river by an alligator and presumably eaten.

However, none of the disgusting pictures of these vile creatures or the Some-Poor-Bastard-Got-Eaten stories had the effect on me that the story of the barking alligators did.  I cannot shake the thought of being alone, in total darkness, in some damned woods or the Everglades and hearing alligators but not knowing where they are.  I’ll bet I could write a great story about just that.  The problem is, by conjuring up and dwelling on the mental picture sufficiently to write the story, I would scare the shit out of myself.

If anyone decides to write it, please don’t send it to me.

Barking alligators … in the dark …  Damn!

BRRRRRRRRRR

It was on this very day, more than a couple handfuls of years ago, that daughter TJ came into my life.

Back then, it was about three o’clock in the morning when Mrs. Parkway awakened me to tell me that she thought it might be “getting to be about that time”.

I took the news very calmly.  I got my two stopwatches out of the drawer (one for timing the pains and the other for timing the inter-pain intervals – I was seriously calm) and timed a couple of the inter-pain intervals.  As I recall, the pains were about 12 to 15 minutes apart.  Being really calm, I said, “I’M CALLING THE DOCTOR!”

The sleepy doctor listened to my babble and asked that I call him when the pains got to be about five minutes apart.  After timing a couple inter-pain intervals, I decided I only needed one stopwatch.  Besides, I was screwing things up trying to keep track of two watches.

The pains went something like this:  Twelve minutes apart … twelve minutes apart … ten minutes apart …  nine minutes apart … eight minutes apart … TWO MINUTES APART!!  TWO MINUTES APART?  WHAT HAPPENED TO SEVEN MINUTES APART AND SIX MINUTES APART?  TWO MINUTES APART?  HOLY SHIT!!”

I called the doctor back, and calmly said, ”THE PAINS ARE TWO MINUTES APART!!  THEY WENT FROM EIGHT MINUTES APART TO TWO MINUTES APART!!”  He said that I should bring Mrs. Parkway to the hospital, which was about a ten to twelve minute drive from home.

I calmly said to Mrs. Parkway, ”THE DOCTOR SAID WE HAVE TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL NOW!!!  LET’S GO!!  NOW!!”

As I was running around the house gathering up the stuff necessary to go to the hospital, including the pre-packed bag, I looked up the stairs and saw Mrs. Parkway slowwwwly brushing her hair in the bathroom, and I calmly said, “FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, LET’S GO!  NOW!!”

As she continued to brush her hair, she said, “I knew it.  I knew I’d look like hell when it was time to go to the hospital.”  She was the one having the baby, and I was the one damned near having a stroke.

I got her into the car and hit the road, calmly at about eighty miles per hour, all the while hoping that I would not have to deliver the baby myself on the shoulder of the Garden State Parkway.

We pulled into hospital parking lot, and (I swear this is the truth) I ran like a madman into the hospital, screaming like a lunatic, “We’re here to have a baby!”

The woman behind the counter said, “You’re here to have a baby?”

“Yes, yes.  We’re having a baby.  Where should we go?”

The woman looked at me and asked, “Where’s your wife, sir?”

ACK!!!

I turned around only to see her just managing to exit the car and begin the waddle towards the hospital entrance.  It was a scene right out of I Love Lucy.

“Don’t worry sir.  We’ll get her,” and an aide went outside and collected her in a wheelchair.

We were spirited up to the maternity ward and were placed in a small “labor” room.  I won’t describe what the next couple hours were like other than to say.  “Holy farookin’ shit”.

When nature finally got around to dictating the time of imminent birth, Mrs. Parkway was taken into the delivery room – without me.  Remember, this was quite a few years ago, and it was in my pre-lawyer days when I worked in a pharmacology laboratory – a job that required that I read lots of medical stuff.  As such, I knew just enough about biology, medicine and childbirth to be a menace in the delivery room.  Instead of witnessing the wonder of the birth of my child, I would be watching the IV drip, the monitors and the doc’s every move.  Consequently, I sweated out the next hour or so, calmly, in the waiting room.

It seems strange as hell now, but back then, you could smoke in the waiting room, and I breathed through cigarettes (calmly, of course) for the next hour or so.

Finally the doctor appeared and said, “You have a daughter.”

“Wow!  A daughter!”  I started to run in the direction of the pay phone (these were pre-cell phone days) to call relatives when the doctor said, “Don’t call anyone just yet.”

I damned near died.  “Don’t call anyone just yet?  What’s wrong?”

The doc laughed and said, “Nothing’s wrong, but wait until we weigh her, because the first question everyone will ask you is ‘How much does she weigh?’”  Obviously, the doctor sensed how calm I was about all this.

In a few minutes, they brought her out for me to see.  I gazed in wonderment at my beautiful daughter, and as I was counting fingers and toes, I was dumbstruck by what I saw.

I hollered, “Nurse!  Nurse!”

“Yes sir?  What is it?”

“It’s her feet!  Look at her feet!  THE BOTTOM OF HER FEET ARE BLACK!  WHY ARE THE BOTTOM OF HER FEET BLACK?”

“That’s the ink we used to take her foot footprints, sir.  We haven’t cleaned it off her yet.”

The nurse also must have been able to sense how calm I was.

It wasn’t long before the three of us were together, and I got to hold my beautiful baby girl for the first time.  My heart completely melted, and it has stayed completely melted for all these years.

Happy birthday, TJ.

It ain’t easy bein’ gone.

Yes, PRS was offline for almost a week.  To be a bit more specific, the site down, as in, The White-Screens-No-One-Reads Down.  That stinks, but at least everyone knows there is something wrong.  (I’d like to thank the Legion of Peeps three of four folks who write to ask me what’s up.)  Shortly after the site went down, I put on my Sorry-Ass – Techno-doofus-begging hat and wrote to Craig asking if he had any idea what was going on.

Given that nothing was awry with his site, he initially figured that it was probably just another day over at the madcap Laughing Academy hosting company.  After the problem persisted for a bit longer, Craig sent me a short e-mail suggesting that I go over to the Domain Guys and change the names of the servers from one mix of letters, dots and numbers to another mix of letters, dots and numbers.

Wanting to feel my techno oats, armed with my new mix of letters, dots and numbers, I dug out my customer number and password to the Domain Guys site.  When I arrived there, I spent a late-night hour searching around for someplace where I could insert my new mixes of letters, dots and numbers.  No dice.

I had hit techno-rock-bottom.  Yo, Jimbo.  The guy took the time to tell you where to go and what to do, and you still can’t get it done.  Hell, Jimbo, when it comes to cyber-stuff, you’d make a steaming pile of horseshit seem brilliant.”

The next day, I returned to the Domain Guys and, with unbridled fury, I searched around until I found the place that was ripe for the insertion of my magic mix of letters, dots and numbers.

I plugged them in and hit “save”.  Bravo!!  Fat City!!  Hell, I even got an one of those e-mails from the magic person who sends those things telling me that I had successfully inserted the new mix of letters, dots and numbers.

The site appeared!  ”Jimbo, you’re a regular Bill Farookin’ Gates.”  Sure, the comments didn’t work yet, but the Magic Domain Guy’s e-mail said that it could take 48 hours for things to take hold.  One of my favorite bloggers openly rejoiced at the reappearance of the site.  My rejoicing ceased when I realized that I couldn’t get to the magic place where I write the stuff that even more magically appears here.  This was even more frustrating than seeing the The White-Screen-No-One-Reads, because the site in its pitiful non-updated state was there for everyone to see, leaving the few stalwarts who stopped by to wonder whether I had packed it in, caught a case of the epizoodic, or, worse yet, thrown the sixes.

About then I was reminded of an old episode from one of those black and white TV shows such as The Twilight Zone or One Step Beyond.  Specifically, I recalled the episode in which the main character, played by Joseph Cotton, was in a car wreck, and when he was pulled from the wreck he had no apparent vital signs, and everyone assumed he was dead.

Of course, he was very much alive, but he couldn’t move – not even an eye blink. And, he couldn’t speak.  (Remember, this was fiction.)  The TV viewer could hear the people speaking around Cotton, and could hear Cotton’s thoughts becoming ever more panicky as those around him were talking about him as if he were a corpse.  The viewer could hear his thoughts, ”No, no, no!  I’m alive!  Can’t you see that I’m alive!  I just can’t speak, dammit.” Finally, when they were about to prepare his ass for burial, someone noticed a tear forming in his eye, which resulted in him being descended upon by doctors and his being saved from being buried alive.

I never got around to weeping over my online paralysis and my cyber-inflicted silence, but I still felt a little like that guy.

So, last night I heard from Craig.  It seems he had the unmitigated Moxie to be out of town for ten days making a living, when he damned well should have been sitting by his computer to take care of my pissy problems.

As you now know, he had to convert the site to WordPress.  Wanna know why?

It was because my site was literally spammed to death.  The truckloads of spam I was receiving triggered all the Movable Type spam zapping shields (a technical term), which showed up on the radar of the Merry Men at the Hosting Company.  Accordingly, in a display of their boundless customer friendliness, they flipped the switch on the site.  I figure if the hosting business craters, these guys have a future in used car sales.

So, in order to bail my sorry, spam-busted ass out of a jam, Craig broke his ass (and is still breaking his ass) to switch PRS to WordPress.  Now, all I have to do is figure WordPress out.  For all you geeks out there, going from Movable Type to WordPress would be like changing shoes, but for me this is like being dropped into the middle of Moscow and trying to find the shithouse.

It ought to be quite an adventure.  Stay tuned.

I can’t thank Craig enough for his infinite patience and friendship.  By now, I owe him a truckload of beer.

I’m going to be presumptuous and hijack Jim’s blog for a moment.

Of necessity, I’ve converted PRS from Movable Type to WordPress, and it seems to be about 95% back to normal. Of course, we’ll be finding glitches as we go. Please let us know if something doesn’t look/act/feel right.

If you are reading via RSS, you’ll have to readjust the URL for the feed.
The finishing touches need to be put on the sidebar, including the resurrection of Mr. Blogroll, as well as a few other items. Everything else seems to be hunky-dory.

I’ll let Jim fill you in on the gory details. It’ll be far funnier if he tells it, trust me.