Rod has a blog!

It’s April… after Easter. We’re now well into spring, and it’s time to stop and reflect on the year so far.

I think my 2007 New Year’s Resolutions are going rather well so far, don’t you? (I mean, except for the one about losing weight.)

I’m talking specifically about my resolution to write a column for the newspaper each week. Here it is nearly a month past the vernal equinox, and I haven’t missed a week yet! By my count, this is my 12th installment.

Admittedly, they haven’t all been literary masterpieces: I’m not waiting for my mail each day to see if the Pulitzer folks need my full biographical information.

Nope, mostly just random ideas that pop into my noggin during the week, and I jot them down on a scrap of paper while I’m driving or a napkin at the Lizard’s Thicket, and which-ever napkin or scrap I find on Monday morning, that’s what I write about that particular week.

Still, I’ve been encouraged by the response. (Please keep that card or letter coming in!)

I put my email address in this column a couple weeks ago, to give readers the chance to offer feedback, and, since that time, I’ve been overwhelmed by the number of emails I have received from mortgage lenders, colleges offering online degrees, Nigerian princes who need someone to accept a money order for them, Dish TV, and a variety of sources for an unnamed prescription drug to remedy a certain dysfunction that I do not need…. yet!

I also occasionally get calls or comments in person about a recent topic, and sometimes, readers say my writing made them giggle. This brightens my day.

Last week I had two such calls. One told me that she laughed so hard that she had to take a break from work. (And that was just from looking at my picture.)

The second said I should collect all of these columns and put them into a book. She suggested that my writing was worthy of being published in an anthology if I added just a little to the existing columns.

It was very flattering. Still, I had to demur. I said, “Mom, I just don’t have time to write a book.”

But it set me to thinking: Maybe I should collect these little gems of wit, wisdom, and wise-crackery into a single place. And one word kept going through my mind…

BLOG!

A year ago, I didn’t even know what a “blog” was. I had heard the term for months, but I frankly didn’t know what it meant. I asked people my age, and they mostly didn’t know what it meant, either. So I asked a lot of younger people, and while they seemed to know what it meant, they couldn’t put it into words that I could understand.

“Dude, ya’know like, online, and surfing the web, and e-commerce/digital revolution/ myspace/ facebook/mega-ram/ kalamazoo/ yabba dabba doo, and ya’ know, like, ya gotta be down wid my homeboys in the crib…. Whatever!”

So I was clueless... until BOTH of my sons started writing Blogs of their own, and I started reading them, and gradually I figured out sort of what it was all about…. enough to know that these weekly columns could easily become MY blog.

Last weekend, I called RJ (Rod, Jr.), and told him what I was thinking, and asked how involved would it be to put my columns into a blog online. He said he would think about it.

Fifteen minutes later, I called to ask another question about it, and he said, “Too late, it’s already done.” And he emailed me this website: www.doingthefirst.blogspot.com

Just like that! I have my very own blog.

Still, I don’t actually know how to do anything with it except read it. I’ll have to figure out the rest.

All of which set me to thinking… Are there others who don’t know what a “blog” is? Are there readers who are mystified by the whole internet/email thing, just as I once was? (and occasionally still am!)

So, just to be helpful, I’ve decided I’m going to write a user’s guide to the internet and technology.

If you’re internet-savvy, I hope you will check out my blog, or maybe send me an email about whatever’s on your mind: rodshealy@aol.com

And if you’re NOT internet/email/technology savvy, stay tuned to this column next week, when I will bring you up to speed with my own version of a user’s guide to the internet...

If I can find that scrap of paper next Monday!