So I haven’t really been offline

for the last several months. Far from it. For one thing, I have developed an enduring ebay addiction. Perhaps more productively, I have spent a lot of time on Wikipedia. Need to spend more, in fact, as I have got myself on a conference panel which is to discuss Wikipedia and teaching the 18thc. More recently, I was invited onto Facebook by an old friend in another province whom I rarely see, so even though that sort of social software had never appealed before, I signed up. Shortly thereafter various other people I knew popped up as Facebook friends. I haven’t really explored it all that much, and following some links of Sharon Brogan’s, I was again put off. Not enough to remove the page; there is, after all, that little-seen friend, and now my cousin, and his girlfriend, and two blogging friends, and a soon-to-be-moving-to-Chile friend. So we will see. Further web-tentacles: the Jinker Boy has recently become interested in Webkinz®. He needs me to read most messages, however, and if I didn’t bank him points from the Arcade his Webkinz® pal would still be living in an empty room. Which reminds me: an eleven years-old friend of ours prematurely introduced JB to Neopets® last summer and somewhere out there in cyberspace is a starving, shivering, orphaned ghost of a Neopet®.

Sometimes I think of it.

But to the point: all this time I have been away from blogging, I have still been composing abortive openings to posts in my mind, or thinking, “I should blog such-and-such.” But the old blog has for some time seemed top-heavy. Too much icing and not enough cake. But the thought of starting from scratch — to continue the baking metaphor — was exhausting. So here we are at WordPress.com.

So what’s wrong with cake mix?

Addendum (7/8/07): More on Facebook at Early Modern Notes. Consensus? Okay, I guess. Profgrrrrl ponders Facebook etiquette.