Spring

Earlier this week I mowed the lawn for the first time this season. The mower was a little cranky after being made to sit quietly all winter in a cold storage shed but it was finally convinced to start. At this early juncture, my lawn is mostly comprised of tufts of grass in a sea of dead brown material and an assortment of weeds. But all of it needs a weekly trim regardless of affiliation.

The reward in these early days of spring is the sweet fragrance of hyacinths that permeates my backyard and entertains my nose if I as much as glance in their direction. They don't stay around nearly long enough but their scent is a clear message that the growing season has begun.

Ping-o-Matic Won't Ping

I have tried using a free service called Ping-o-Matic to send out pings to a raft of directories anytime I update one of my blogs. I know the key word here is that it's free and I shouldn't complain, but here it comes anyway. The service is extremely unreliable. In my experience, about 95% of the time, Ping-o-Matic takes a few minutes to spin its wheels, jams up, then blames the mess on me by delivering an error message that says "Slow Down Cowboy" and tells me that my last ping was only a few minutes ago. Really? Who pinged you guys over at Ping-o-Matic? I didn't, neither did any automatic system on my blogs. So don't you really mean to send me an error message that says, "Oops, our site is down ... again."

To get your pings out quickly and reliably, try Oddpath's service. It's also free. But unlike Ping-o-Matic, Oddpath really does work.

Toughest Month

Blame it on the economy, blame it on a business decision that did not work out quite as planned. Blame it on me. My lease was up at the end of February and I decided there was no point in renewing. It feels like the first step in a dismantling of my business. The end of a long era in my life.

No rescue for me, I'm sure. I'll not expect anyone to ride up and hand me some bailout money. It's a small business, after all, one of many.

But I really don't want that anyway. Just want my office back. Sure, I can work quite comfortably from my home office, a study I built a long time ago and there is the elimination of a long commute to Springfield and back.

But I miss the place. More for what it represented than for what it really was. The office was a stage where ideas were bantered and discussed, many pitched out with the trash but a few really good ones that stuck. And it was a place to have a cup of coffee, share thoughts, fret, converse, laugh, worry, the range of human emotions.

It was only a place, but it was my place. My place in the world.