Rules for the Road - uh,Reading

If you are reading this blog for the first time, welcome. I have been writing for several years now just not blogging and some of you may recognize things in the few very long posts that follow from earlier e-mails or facebook notes. My apologies for the repeats but I think these particular entries are important for anyone who doesn’t know me and wants a starting point for reading future posts. Or not. You can certainly start here and not go back to those wordy ramblings full of run-on sentences, grammatical errors and misspelled, or at least mistyped, words. I’m sure I’ll be repeating myself at times anyway.

As we start this journey anew there are some things you will want to remember so you don’t pull your hair out and stop reading out of frustration or send me flaming messages or comments:

- I am a terrible typist. I never took a typing class which until the advent of e-mail I had always praised as a good thing that kept me out of the secretarial pool and allowed me to pursue a management career. However, spell check does not catch homonyms or poor punctuation. Nor does it prevent me from hitting the up button when I mean to backspace and then typing whole sentences into the middle of previous paragraphs. None of this is helped by the fact that I use a netbook with a small keyboard that requires some of the keys be relocated to where I think others are. For example, I frequently type “;” when I mean to type “’”, without the quotation marks ,of course. Be patient peeps. Remember the e-mal that circulated a few years ago where all the words were misspelled but everyone could still read it. I promise I proofread before I post and I am sure that if I can understand what I’ve written you can probably figure it out too - well, given enough time. And if it makes you too crazy, well, I will miss you.

- I write like I talk. Now, if this were some kind of formal business document I can write correctly or at least as correctly as I was taught. I am a product of North Carolina public schools after all. My sentences run on just like my thoughts and verbal comments. I use parenthetical phrases improperly (most often for non sequiter, but not always). I write in incomplete sentences but generally in complete thoughts. I say “generally” because if my brain happens to be racing on any given day my comments may reflect that. Try to keep up

- Expect to be dazzled with my brilliance - but settle for laughing at my incompetence. Most of the time I hope that at least something I write will interest you just a little.

- If I piss you off, or you vehemently disagree with me, say so - but do it nicely, please. I love nothing better than a good debate but I prefer pointed disagreements among friends to personal attacks or angry vendettas. I am the child of Dale Wilkinson who taught me how to change positions in the middle of an argument just to keep it going - so bring it on peeps.

- I will write about things that are pretty, things that taste good, things that smell nice, people I like, places I visit, what I recommend, how I like to do things, what I am reading, where I am going, how I am getting there and always what I am cooking,
I will also write about what/who/where I don’t like and tell you why. And, I will write about those off-limits topics of politics and religion because that is what I enjoy talking about.

Although it may be hard to believe when looking at my extra-long earlier ramblings, I will try to keep it brief and to the point. But, any of you who know me know how hard that is for me so it is likely that from time to time I will go on just a wee bit too long. Like now, for instance.

So bookmark “Thoughts of Ciel” and join me as we explore together. Next up, the answer to the question the professor and I are asked most often.