Symptoms that you have a blogging problem:

1. You notice that your toddler goes number two every time that you are in a particular place and think, “Gee, I really need to write about this.”
   
2. You consider a story about James Lileks’ daughter consistently crapping her pants in the same department store to be a heartbreaking work of staggering literary genius.
   
3. You brag about your website to a co-worker or a college instructor or classmate, but are ashamed to tell them the URL because it is fatnathan.blogspot.com.
   
4. You feel it is an important personal responsibility to read every word of every single post in NRO’s The Corner.
   
5. You think that people who post to Slashdot are hoplessly uncool, but people who post to Metafilter are hip!
   
6. You consider the invention of Blogger to be Mankind’s crowning achievement, but would never spend the money to upgrade to Blogger Pro.
   
7. You feel you have the right to throw a huge fit when your free site hosting service or free comment hosting service is down, but would never consider paying to upgrade to something more stable.
   
8. You think that anything you find on the internet is public domain and take pride in stealing photos and code from other websites; because that shows that you have the html savvy to find the code and steal it.
   
9. You consider an online “If I were a ____ I would be:” quiz to carry informed psychological authority.
   
10. Tony Pierce links your blog in a prominent place on the busblog and you think to yourself, “Now I can die happy.”
    
11. Tony Pierce takes the link to your blog down after a month and your daily visitors go from 100 to 20 again. This makes you suicidal.
    
12. You consider yourself a personal failure if you don’t put something new and original on your blog every single day, regardless of the personal circumstances that keep you from posting.
    
13. You refresh your site every fifteen minutes to see if anyone has commented.
    
14. You do not understand why all of your family and all of your friends don't read your blog every day, and you can't figure out why they don't each have a blog of their own.
    
15. For a class project, you write Bloginstructions and instead of printing a hard copy for your instructor, you email her a link.
    
16. You are a Libertarian

Please add your own experiences in the comments.

If I were a founding father, I would be:

Which Founding Father Are You?

Sometimes the forces of good prevail. I made my appointment with the dean for next Thursday. I sent my advisor an email and he cleared me to register without even seeing me. I called the HR person at my company’s head office and discovered that I have enough leave time to cover what I missed this week and I will accrue enough vacation time to take off the two days after Christmas. Wylie just got back from the Dr. and he is OK. Just a little virus of some sort. He is still going to Grandpats for the weekend. And finally, I have not caught a mouse in over three days. I think they are finally all gone.

The grand totals for Micedeath 2002:

25 dead rodents in ten days.

But that is a story for another time and place.

Monday night Wylie was sick and up most of the night and I have been kind of hacking with a sort of chest cold so I stayed home on Tuesday and we chilled. I forgot how wonderful it can be to take a large dose of Nyquil at 10:00 in the morning after not sleeping much at night and then take a four hour nap. I slept like someone was sitting on top of me. Wait, someone was sitting on top of me. It was the boy. Jumping actually. He seemed to be feeling much better.

I got my jazz paper back on Monday night. I made an A, even though I never did figure out if I should capitalize bebop or not. Also it was edited kind of shoddily. I’m sure that you noticed that. My instructor had mercy on me.

Work continued to stink. It stunk last week and it stinks this week. One of the joys of working for government is that when stuff is broken, no one gets in a hurry about fixing it. In a private company heads would have rolled and people would have been brought in to work in shifts 24 hours a day to make sure that everything was back on line as soon as possible. The state had a couple of dudes halfassing it for eight a day with plenty of smoke breaks and an hour and a half lunch trip. They even managed to come over to my desk to investigate the system wide problem and screw up my pc for me. Now I have to place a trouble ticket for myself (something I do forty a week for other people) and get my stuff rebuilt, because they think that is the only way to fix a PC problem.

The boy goes to Mother’s Day Out on Thursdays. They called me this morning and said that he was flipping out. They called me because Ms. J left her Cell phone in Fred’s in the village yesterday and has not been back for it. I had to shag ass over there and pick him up. He was glad to see me. He said, “Dadoe I don’t feel too dood. Need to go home and take a nap.” Maybe this is an extension of what was going on Monday night? So home we went, but the car seat was in Ms. J’s car so he got to ride in the front seat of Dadoe’s truck with a big boy seat belt. He was so out of it that he did not even notice, I don’t think. Finally located Ms. J. She is going to take him to the Dr. this afternoon.

Don’t know how I am going to pay for all of this time off. I am fresh out of sick leave. I have to meet with the dean to figure out where I stand towards graduation and meet with my advisor and then get registered for school and all by close of business tomorrow. Oh yeah, also I have class tonight.

I have a sister-in-law who is a senior in high school. She is the embodiment of every image that conjures up. I love listening to her talk about high school gossip and like who is popular and like who was with who at the football game and like what they were like wearing and stuff. A few months back she started sending out an email news letter to her friends that was pure genious. She named it "umm..." Here is a sample from the September 1, 2002 edition:

In the last eddition of "umm.." (which was a special eddition, The Judea and Ashley Show) I mentioned how the AHS band had to work like horses in order to get ready for the marching season. Well one of my friends from Illinois, Jordan Pless (yep she is related to our very own Liz Pless) wrote me back telling me how her band had to work from 1:30-9 for three stright weeks, plus one week of 7 AM-9 PM, and another week of 9AM-9PM practice! Now that would be a battle of the bands i would want to check out.
Speeking of bands, check out Thrios in downtown Arkadelphia. They have the BEST cookies, not to mention a great atmosphere and yes even occasional LIVE BANDS! They are "umm..."'s hot spot of the month.

Ok so now we have a great hang out spot, what more could we add? Oh yeah! college students! Thats right, they are back with their hot cars, late nights, and big parties (like i know!).

As you can see from this sample, I had to talk her into starting a blog and sharing this sort of information with the world at large. Well, she finally did. There is nothing much there yet, but in time I expect it to be very entertaining. It is sure to become the definitive source for the latest in Arkadelphia High School Rumor and Hearsay! Keep an eye on JuJu Beans!

Janna is a real writer and I anxiously await every one of her posts. She only updates her site every couple of weeks, but it is always worth the wait. I have been bugging her to write something about the DC sniper for weeks, and she finally came through. Go read it. Bring a tissue.