That was the question.

I was blown completely in a direction that I had never even fathomed in fall of last year.
Like many kids my age, I have found myself all grown up, family raised, divorced and running completely wild. Kind of like turning 21 again, kinda.
I was pretty content with how life was going. My kids are grown up and I can come and go as I please.

Running around with the girls… you bet.
Acting extremely silly and pirate like… wouldn’t have had it any other way.

But, then it happened. My bestest friends introduced me to the man that would forever change my being. As fate would have it, things moved along rather rapido. And BAM - the question came…

Wanna get married? Of course, it was much sweeter than that. It was a very touching a precious moment. YEP! Let’s get married. GAME ON!
This happened last October.

The holidays went by smoothly and we were still getting to know each other pretty well.
I met his family. They seemed to like me. I passed the test.

Then it was set!! June 2nd. Invitations ordered. Cake ordered. Dress ordered. Church on hold. Preacher with a Bible. You name it, it was ordered. You get the picture.

But as days went by, I started to get scared. In typical Diva fashion, I flipped out, and decided that maybe we needed time to get our ducks in a row and everything ironed out both in our personal lives (kids and whatnot) and with our life together (roof over head, combining of households… ya know).

I put my entire wedding party in a holding pattern like a jumbo jet circling La Guardia during rush hour on Monday morning in Manhattan. I have never felt such pressure or such fear and I’ve had some pretty self-induced dramatic experiences in my life.

Everybody had some sort of input. A slight few of my closest friends were very understanding and supportive and just went happily into the holding pattern.
Others decided that it didn’t need to happen and actively gave opinions over and over.

You see, planning of the wedding ceremony was all set up and in place. But the cold feet I ended up being the proud owner of got the best of me. The wedding ceremony was the easy part. After it was all planned out and ready to go, I had time to stop and think. Which in this case, turned out to be a good thing.

I started to think about how different we are. How our views on alot of things are completely in the opposite. The way we treat and raise our kids is totally ass backward from one another.

One of the biggest fears I’ve got: becoming a wicked step-mother.
His son had always been nice to me, until the plans started to come together and it was apparent to him that this was really going to happen. Silently but surely, I knew he was sabotaging it. At least in my non-rational mind I’m sure he was.

But, I found out, when I started to keep my fella at arms length due to fear and wasn’t seeing half as much of him, just how important he is to me.

In the last week of my self-promoted hiding phase, I started to really ponder on all of the little things he does just to make me smile.
**The 100 mile-round-trips he makes in the middle of the week just to say hi and give me a kiss**
**Being serenaded in front of everyone by him and his bluegrass buddies as they sing “You are My Flower” because he wants me to know how much he loves me**
**Jumping in his big ol’ truck to ride around and do nothing but look and talk**

That man loves me. He’s not trying to tame me or make me into something I’m not. He takes my bitchy and ever-so-slightly sarcastic tone with a teaspoon of sugar and loves me anyway.

I finally got enough courage to talk to him.. To tell him I’m a freak and that I was scared of what was happening. You know, face-to-face verbal communication is way under-rated.
We both had answers to all the questions that were looming. We came to agreement on alot of subject matter.

So, I guess the answer to the above question is….

TO WED. Yes.

We have decided that a fall wedding is in order and that we are going to have a
most wonderful, beautiful ever after together.

Details to follow soon. I need to pull my wedding party in from the holding pattern and in for a landing before I go and shout from the roof-tops.

     For a few weeks now, Fracas has been pointing out the fact that plenty of people are searching for Shyamali Malakar, and crotch shots, and ending up at her blog.
     Just a few minutes ago, she did a pretty decent post about the whole Shyamali hysteria… Seriously, the girl has attained a level of geek-obsession higher than anyone I can ever remember — even after livinh through the Sam Fox, Amy Weber, Teri Hatcher, Alicia Silverstone, Kate Moss, Gillian Anderson and Callista “Ally McBony” Flockheart years (those were prior obsessions, not my picks).

     Fracas is also doing the “FuelMyBlog” thing. She’s entered the Design a Widget competition over there, and done a helluva job, too, but they haven’t updated the competition page with it just yet.

     Nice job, Fracas!

      Now let’s see if we can channel teh Internets your way a little…

     Ya know, though, Fracas, I still think doing one with Shyamali and ALT’ing it “Shyamali Malakar Nude” would get some serious traffic headed in your direction…

     (God, after writing this, I feel so dirty…)

     This post was almost cancelled due to an unexpected case of sleep.

1. The Misanthtropic: Name something (about humanity) you absolutely hate.

     Gossip sucks.  Seriously.  Who cares what X did, and who cares what Y has to say about it?  And why does Z feel a need to repeat it, especially if they know Y is nothing but a damn gossip?

2. The Meretricious: Expose something or someone that’s phony, fraudulent or bogus.

     Can Offshoring with an Indian company really help your business?
     No… More on that later.

3. The Malcontent: Name something you’re unhappy with.

     I was supposed to move into a house on the 20th.  That didn’t happen, because the previous tenants are pigs.  Thanks to all that, I’ve been busting my ass to get moved at the last minute.
     Sadly, I was really counting on that place.  This put me in a position where I had to find something at the very last minute (Saturday) when I’m supposed to be out my current place today.
     Fortunately, thanks to my friends, I found a solution.

4. The Meritorious: Give someone credit for something and name it if you can.

     Very often, you never know who your true friends are until they’re tested.  Having been put in a rough spot the last few days, I’m glad to know that some of mine passed with flying colors.
     Thanks, Swanky and Jewel.

5. The Mirror: See something good about yourself and name it.

     Everything being so upside down lately has had me a little in-the-dumps.  But yesterday, after getting the worst part of the moving done, I realized something:  Sure, a lot of things haven’t worked out lately, but at the end of the day, I’m still laughing and trying to making the best of it.
     I must be doing something right.

6. The Make-Believe: Name something you wish for.

     I’ve peeled away a lot of layers and facades in my life the last couple of months … so much so that right now feels like starting over from scratch.
     There are a great many exciting things in my not-too-distant future.  I wish that every single one of them would come into fruition.

Now it’s your turn.

You can take part in The Monday Melee, even make it a regular feature at your site by visiting The Monday Melee page and following the steps. Kick-start your brain on Mondays and meet other bloggers.

     Okay, it’s almost midnight … But it looks like, with just a few more clicks, we’ll be the #1 most voted blog on FuelMyBlog!

     Ok, well, as of 11:32PM, we’re now tied for #1 on the Top 100!  One more click, and we set a speed record:  from a lowly 13 votes to the #1 Blog in only 10 days!

     Whoop!  There it is!  At 11:36PM, we’re the #1 most voted blog on FuelMyBlog.

     So here’s where it started:

• On 11-Apr-2007, I put the FuelMyBlog button in the sidebar.  Over the course of a week, a total of 13 people clicked it — and that’s it.
• On 18-Apr-2007, I posted a blog about it.
• On 19-Apr-2007, I was amazed to see we had more than 60 votes due in no small part to the post.
• By 20-Apr-2007, we had around 130 votes.
• By 22-Apr-2007, we made it to #13, so I posted about it again.
• On 23-Apr-2007, I amazed to see us ranked #3.
• On 27-Apr-2007, I made yet another post about us being at #2, and hoped to hit #1 by Saturday.
• On 28-Apr-2007 at 11:36PM EDT, we hit #1.

     So that’s it … I consider this experiment concluded.  You don’t have to hit the button anymore.  We made it in 10 days, and that’s all I really care about. 

     Ok, language, sexual situations, and generally disgusting…

     But uhh … yeah …

     This is exactly why Internet Dating sucks.

     The only nice thing about being sick and having a high fever is that I’ll laugh at just about anything … At least today, I seem to be awake, whereas the last three, I’ve been pretty asleep the whole time.

     Apparently, Will Ferrell’s also got a Landlord from Hell… There’s some language, for those at work, but it’s hilarious.  Watch the video on its original site…

     I just deleted 991 spam since last night at 9PM.  One from a spambot known only as RastaCamel, coming to us from an open proxy in Russia, ends its hundreds of nasty pr0n links with the following:

See later![b] With best wishes, RastaCamel [/b]

P.s.
[i]Please don`t delete this topic.. My kitten is very hungry and I must to work for buy to her Whiskas :(( Thanks![/i]

     Kitten-guilt to promote pr0n spam.  Wow.

     Considering the subject matter, it’s probably a good thing, then, that the last Kitten Guilt craze was debunked by The Good Reverend in 2005…

     However, this math may be flawed, considering that he didn’t account for the the fact that kittens have nine lives…

     The FuelMyBlog logo went away from the sidebar last week, but thanks to the wonders of Feeds, it appears that we’re still getting a crapload of clicks.  I figured making it to the Top 10 (of the Top 100) was good enough… but…

     You guys kept clicking!  We’re now #2 on the Top 100 and closing fast on #1.  Click it some more!  I wanna set a record:  from a lowly 13 votes to the #1 Blog in only 10 days!

     A friend of mine sent me this cartoon earlier, and I find it perfect considering the media’s anti-gun standpoint in the wake of the mass shooting last week.

[ Copyright © Leo Garza / San Antonio Express-News ]

     Having been around guns since I was … well, born, actually … I learned to have a healthy respect for them.  As a child, I never touched them unless they were handed to me.  I didn’t tell my friends about them.  I didn’t ever show them to my friends.  I didn’t carry them around with me.  I certainly never took one to show-and-tell.

     Why?

     Because I listened to what my father told me.

     Flash forward a lot of years, and any time a child doesn’t listen to their parents and does any of those things with a gun, the media goes insane about it.  
     The problem isn’t guns — it’s in raising a child who has no idea about cause-and-effect relationships, no responsibility or consequences for their own actions.

     Guns should be kept away from children.  I agree with that.  Some people should not own guns.  I agree with that.  But making widespread sweeping changes and Federal bans on guns? 
     Congress doesn’t know enough about firearms to make any such distinctions.  There are any number of stumbling blocks here.  You can’t go out today and come home with a handgun.  You can’t go out today and purchase a fully automatic, military-style weapon — nor can you in two weeks.  Or a month.  Or six.

     We have enjoyed gun ownership since this country was founded.  There are plenty of them around.  Employing strict gun control laws only affects guns that the Government knows about.  Since we’ve been signing up for them, with background checks, for nearly thirty years, then what are we supposed to do?
     In essence, the Government would be saying, “Oh, by the way, that gun you signed for twenty years ago?  Give it here.  No, you haven’t done anything wrong.  But … Give it!  No, I don’t care how much you paid for it, and I don’t care what it’s worth.  I’ll give you to the count of three, or I’ll have to shoot you… 1 … 2 … I thought so.”

     “But you don’t need a Glock 17 that can hold 19 rounds!” some scream.
     I would argue that they don’t need an SUV with a 24-gallon gas tank that has to be refilled every 200 miles.
     Sure, my gun might, one day, give one person a really bad day if they come into my home with the intent of causing me harm.  But their SUV is nothing more than a carbon monoxide factory that is destroying the ozone layer and screwing it up for all of us.

     Which one’s really more important?

     On 19-Apr-2007, vehement gun control activists, The Brady Campaign, released a press statement, titled, “Cho Seung-Hui Was A Prohibited Purchaser Under Existing Federal Law.”

Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence President Paul Helmke issued the following statement:

“We believe that based on existing Federal law, Cho Seung-Hui should not have passed his Brady background checks and should not have been allowed to purchase firearms.”

     So, basically, they’re saying that even though there were laws in place to prevent Cho from ever owning a gun, he got them anyway, because someone broke the law.  Was it Cho?  The seller?  Those responsible for the background check?
     Whatever the answer, it doesn’t change the fact that no amount of legislation would have kept it from happening.

     Heed My Words: Gun control isn’t going to affect the massive number of illegal, untraceable guns that are out there, and it will leave a populace completely undefended against those who possess them.

     Something Kevin said the other day —

Noticed in my stats today that one of the search phrases to get to the church was “I hate Mark Steel.” Look, you’re getting famous!

     — stuck with me, although as a humorous sidenote.  I loved it!

     I’ve also seen a sudden surge in Google searches for “i hate mark steel.”  I love that sort of thing.  I also saw several of the blogs from our blogroll in the top 30.  But, why all the hate?
     Alternatively, I decided to check out “i love mark steel,” to find that I’m actually ranked #26.  I hate that.  I didn’t see much familiar around there, either.  C’mon, where is the love, people?

     I mean, I’m not saying I’m the world’s smartest man or the greatest living American or anything like that… But I do have a reasonable amount of knowlege about how this stuff works. 

     This is all a joke to me, and this post is just a silly experiment.  I’ll post the outcome in a couple of days, as I think it might teach someone a little something about SEO…

     Besides, I’ve already labeled John Kerry as the World’s Smartest Man… albeit, sarcastically.  And the antidisestablishmentarian in me still believes Bill Gates is the greatest living American…

[ UPDATE - 26-Apr-2007 @ 9:26PM EDT]

     THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about!  I moved up from #26 to #1 in less than 10 hours!  Now I’m #1 for “i love mark steel” and “i hate mark steel.”
     Now I feel balance!
     That’s SEO.  Thpft!