Somewhere, in the Official Book Of Personal Websites, there is an admonition about never creating posts for an audience of one. "The readership," it bemoans, "think of the readership!" The OBPW (a righteous tome inwardly certain of its correctness and self-worth, very British in that regard) goes on to decry those who would veil the true nature of a public piece of writing behind anonymizing pronouns, because if writing is made available online, it should be as comprehensible as it is physically accessible.

Hogwash. I've been creaking around this domain for six years now, and while the OBPW makes a fantastic stepstool in my kitchen, it's of little other practical use to me. I keep trying to run off all but the most patient of you lot; what's one more post in that vein?

If this post is impenetrable to you, then worry not and read on; it's not for you, but you're welcome to tag along for the ride.

* * * * *

I'm not sure if I came up with this word, or if one of my friends did, but we have universally adopted it and I think we need to share it with others. I show no results for it on Google, which makes it very likely that one of us really did make it up, but I don't know who gets the credit or blame.

check-ninja


v. check-ninja'd, check-ninja·ing, check-ninja·s

[For Christmas 2008 I have temporarily moved this entry from December 2005 back to the front page of domesticat.net.]

I've known what the title of this entry would be for two months; even though I never could quite get around to putting fingers to keyboard to bring it into being. The word "laden" whispered itself to me as fingers touched blossom, whispered to me in that insistent voice that said, no matter how long it took, the chronicle of this moment was one that would not stay wholly in my mind.

It was my seventh wedding anniversary, but the story starts several days earlier, in an airport standing next to a man who, unbeknownst to me, had a plan.

* * * * *

I hugged Jake at the airport, marveling at his ability to take a cross-country flight and come out looking just as neat and calm as he must've looked upon boarding the plane. Through a screwup, I hadn't met him on his way to baggage claim as I'd originally intended; he was already at baggage claim by the time I found him.

"In the months since Dad died, I've found myself wishing that my friends, here in this sparkly new life, had some kind of honest understanding of all the years that came before I moved here. I didn't come to Huntsville to try to fit in, and I cheerfully plan to never do so. I came here with plans to make a small piece of this town my own; to find people I could relate to; to start over if I had to; to figure out what I was supposed to do with my life."

The dumbfounded question of the week: "What do you mean, there was a miscommunication and Sprint disconnected the wrong T1 line?"

End result? Radio silence for me, and most of my friends, for the past two days. Almost all of us have email accounts and websites on the same machine (omnipotent.net, all hail Gareth!). The techops, dconsecurity, dragoncontv and Huntsville locals mailing lists were all down as a result.