The BlogDotCom Murders

It is hard to begin a story at a time like this, especially if it is somewhat autobiographical. It is difficult to tell the truth and not glorify certain events as one is prone to do when talking about oneself, but there is the underlying unbelievable fact: How can a gentle kind soul who would never hurt no one – that would be me – become a fugitive from justice?

It all started with a series of silly and innocuous events that cascaded….well, let me start at the beginning.

The Crime

One weekend day, I guess a couple of weeks ago, I decided to change things. My intent was to make a minor improvement.  It was a cool and cloudy day, a boring day and my mood was adventuresome. A perfect day for tinkering. I sat at my desk, booted up my computer, and clicked on my ‘Gently Said’ icon to bring forth my blog. I thought it would be interesting to change things. I was especially interested in changing the font of the list of blogs that I enjoy reading. The list was bold and a little too glaring for me, so I simply wanted to make the list ‘not bold’ and reduce the size of the font a notch. That’s all.

America's Most Wanted?

The advantage would be that I could then increase the width of my narrative area. I had been successful at changing the presentation of my blog before, so I felt relatively confident. There is an area in my little blog universe to make these sort of changes, so I confidently started work.

I couldn’t do it. No matter what I tried, that list of blogs that I routinely read remained bold and glaring.

I thought about it. I knew there had to be some way, because I had seen it on other blogs. Obviously I had to approach the whole problem from a different angle. Why do I need that list of blogs that I read anyway? Well obviously so I could get to them. But I knew that there was some place on the Dashboard that identified other blogs. Just to be sure, I checked. Yep, the first blog that I saw was one of my favorites. So now I had a new approach.

I deleted the offending list and expanded my narrative area and was pleased with the results.

I saved everything and shut my blog down.

An hour or so later I reentered my blog to spend some enjoyable moments reading other blogs. I confidently tapped my way into my dashboard and started clicking through blogs and it started dawning on me. Some of my favorite blogs were there, but there were many that weren’t. And on top of that, I didn’t even recognize some of those dashboard displayed blogs.

Panic began to sit in. I went back into my blog and tried to undo everything in the vain hope that my friends list would somehow reappear.  No luck.

My friends had disappeared. Through my ineptness, I killed them.

Becoming a Fugitive

I have never been a murderer before. The only thing I could think to do was run away.

So in desperation, I turned my attention to a far off land. I thought of Canada, which is even farther away than Oklahoma. So far that even the Texas Rangers couldn’t find me. So I hopped on a plane and fled. I knew I had to lose myself and needed to stay away from populated areas because that is where private detectives hung out.

I thought to hide at Vermillion Lake -- but it was too open. I know about drones, you know.

Then I thought to hide in the forest.

But then I got smart. I figured the best thing to do was to hide myself in the crowds at the International Ice Sculpturing Festival at Lake Louise.

But I figured the mountains would be safer. But which mountain?

Then my wife called and told me I had to stop playing like I was a criminal and come home.

The Punishment

While hiding in the crowds at the Ice Festival, I slipped on that pesky ice and fell forward catching myself with my two hands. Unbeknownst to me until the next day, I suffered a whiplash in that fall. Today I sit at my desk in five minute stretches with an agonizing pain in the back of my neck. The natural order of things. I am now being punished for....

....trying to reduce a font on my blog which resulted in the killing of my friends.

Maybe, just maybe, if you will leave your mark in my comments, I can find you and resurrect you from the dead.