How Susan Dropped Off The Face of the Planet

So Leslie Crowder calls me up in the midst of a typically busy day at work, which pretty much stops me cold since I’ve talked to her exactly twice since high school… and wants to know if I’m ok, since my website has disappeared. Having been talked by The Naud into switching my web hosting to godaddy.com which is Good and Cheap, [two points of the Triangle of Construction Desireability, for those not in the know… if you are having work done on your house or building from scratch, you can only have 2 of the following 3 things: Quality, Cheapness, and Speed. If you want it Cheap & Fast, you sacrifice Quality. If you want it Good & Fast, you will Pay Through the Nose, and so on] I neglected to change the nameservers until my Earthlink hosting had completely run out. Do I understand any of this? Not really; I have to go through the whole website hosting re-education process every other year or so for various websites, and it never seems to stick.
 

So Leslie had just wondered if I was still alive or massively depressed, and I was able to reassure her that I was not Dead or Depressed. As the only person who had caught this Loss of Site, I promised her a shout-out in the form of a new entry, and I promised to say that it too would be an entry Forced at Gunpoint. [Sorry about the excessive capitalizations – I’m in an 18th century/AA Milne phase this evening and it just has such a distinctive tone, don’t you think? It’s amusingly ironic as well as helping to emphasize points without underlining or italicizing.]

 

So... I've been processing this idea for a while here: Sometimes I feel like I live in an alternate universe - that I'm in the "what if" existence of some George Bailey, and by his absence, I am living in caution, tepidness (tepidity?) and selfishness, only living half the life I might be living in another, more complete universe. I wonder if I'm a Mary Bailey, living a dowdy and lonely life as a pitiful librarian with no husband and kids because MY George was never born. Not that I feel in any way pitiful - I would say that I generally enjoy my life - but perhaps it could be so much more than it is, and far more satisfying. Anyway, that's all I have on this idea now - read the novels of Jasper Fforde for a far more entertaining articulation.

 

My office is moving on April 1st - we're scooting over to Roundabout Plaza, the new building right next to the statue "Musica" - a heroically-sized, copper-green statue of the nine muses. Classically Nude. Quite the eye opener! I sometimes just start laughing when I catch it out of the corner of my eye. Not that I have any problem with nude statuary or that I think it's in any way inappropriate; but it just feels so out of place in a city like Nashville. We're not exactly known for our historical art & architecture, beyond the Parthenon. Come to think of it, Musica would be far more appropriately placed in Centennial Park. But it's visible from our new office-to-be, and so I will have to grow accustomed to nekkid men & women every time I pass a window.

 

So, I will be dropping back off the face of the planet again for a couple of months while I deal with the massive effort this will require - so much stuff to move -- 8 years of accumulated computer detritus in my office to sort & throw out. Hopefully I'll be back on earth in late April.