Happy October!

     Happy October! Wait, it's November? What the hell happened to October? I was, um, abducted by aliens and returned to Earth on Halloween with no memory of what they did to me. Well, now that I've certainly lost my 3 regular readers (Sorry, Mom! - no, I'm just kidding. I would likely die of embarrassment if my mother read this), it's well past time to start writing again.
     So what happened to me? Well, the easy answer is that I've changed jobs and indeed careers in the past month (although I still work for the same company). Where before I had maybe a half hour's worth of real work to do a day, I've actually had to neglect reading my favorite blogs for a long time. Now I'm learning a lot and I don't have as much time to read the entire internet from start to finish each day, but I'm going to make it a priority to write something, even if it's not the 1200-word researched treatise on ... whatever.
     The harder answer is that this blog has launched a second "mini-career" for me. I've started writing a bi-weekly column for a local magazine. (Thanks to Mike Todd for the inspiration and encouragement. He was also the first random internet person to comment on my blog with encouraging words, leading me to start writing for a wider audience than just Ben and my own ego.) Anyway, as exciting as the opportunity is, writing has now ostensibly become a chore, and as my aforementioned mother and my wife can tell you, I avoid chores like the plague. It has also become like homework - when I was facing a deadline to get three columns in at once, I felt guilty about writing about anything other than the columns. No more - well, I hope no more. But I feel more confident I can pound out a 900-word essay in a few hours if I need to. I used to do it every weekday, after all. By the way, if you're really interested in reading the column, email me to ask. It's fairly personal, so you'll excuse me for not advertising it to everyone.
     Anyway, if anyone is reading this, welcome back. There's certainly no shortage of news to talk about. I had been starting to feel like all I was doing was getting in arguments with fundamentalists about why they felt so insecure about their religious beliefs. (It would usually end with them telling me I hated God or I was discriminating against religion) Now I have all kids of things to get into arguments with them about, including more news from the 19th century... I mean Kansas... and beer on Sunday and things like that. Plus the President's henchmen have recommended shifting more tax to the Middle Class and the war on intellectualism has found a new battleground at the University (sic) of Georgia. I can't wait. See you tomorrow!