I am baaaaack!

Greetings, everyone, and Happy New Year!

First, an apology. I apologize to all my readers and visitors, and to the members of The Wood Whisperer Network, for “disappearing” for several days. I must explain: In late December I decided to update the look-and-feel of this blog, to provide better functionality. As a result, I changed my publishing platform. As a total newbie to the new system, I made a huge mistake in the installation, which resulted in several days downtime. I will not bore you with the gory details. The bottom line: I am glad that I am back.

Thanks, Marc, and the rest of the network members, for putting up with my huge Duh!!!

But I am back, for better or for worse.

Now, for the better.

Of course, I totally missed the launch of The Wood Whisperer Network! I am very proud to have been selected to participate, and will do my best to live up to it. I hope to see my readers come back, as I have enjoyed reading your mail and your comments. It is YOU that keep me going, and the blog effort going!

Over the next few days and weeks I will be finalizing some exciting plans I have had in the back burner for some time. Once I have those fully defined, I will share with you the details. All I request is that you let me know what you think, as some of this involves specific projects, and videos.

And the worse:

A few things have kept me distracted and concerned, to a larger or lesser extent. As you have already read here, the ice storm, extended power outage, the clean-up following the storm, all kept my mind away from important things in the shop. We had a terrific bunch of guys that handled the massive clean-up effort very well.

But the most recent happening is my wife’s total knee replacement surgery on January 3, 2008, her second such operation since May of 2007. In May last year she had the right knee replaced; this time, her left knee. She is doing well, although the pain is unbearable at times. She should be coming home on Sunday, January 6. Hopefully, as before, I will be able to help her get through this once more. It will mean (less?) time away from here, but I will not compromise on helping her out in whatever way I can help her.

Thanks for coming back to read about my doings. I look forward to many nice things in 2008, and hope that everyone will have a terrific year!

Edit to add: In the move to this new blog I lost some of the comments, in particular comments in the most recent posts. I will attempt to restore these from ar archive of the old blog. Thanks!