Changes....

I don't know if anybody's been here to notice or not, but some changes are in the works:

* Everything here is in temporary flux as I try to get things set up to my liking and search through a veritable haystack of bookmarks for specific blog/webpage URLs.  So if you notice links appearing and disappearing unexpectedly, or seemingly-random changes to different parts of the blog, it's just me tweaking things.  I'm painfully new to this blogging thing and have no freaking idea how to accomplish some goals without a certain amount of trial-and-error.  Needless to say, the learning process is being punctuated by most of the colorful and inappropriate-for-polite-society words I wish my kids hadn't learned from me.....

  

* There are some name changes for the dramatis personae, as well:

  My DH requested a change of pseudonym.  He's now going to be known as "Athos".

  Calling my youngest son "SquidBoy" to tease him is fine and dandy, but he's busting his ass at boot camp, and will be spending the next 5 years protecting our country.  That's an honorable calling.  He could have stayed safely at home, and gone to a technical/trade school, then become a blue collar wage slave for somebody until he got to the point where maybe he could have started his own business.  Or he could have gone to college (which is really what we'd hoped for both of our kids), but that's not where his interests lay.  He would never be happy spending his days behind a desk.  He likes nothing better getting dirty, sweaty and covered in grease . . . unless it's football, country music and girls.  (Yes, I gave birth to a red-neck country boy.  I'm not sure how that happened, but it did.)  Now he can get paid for getting dirty AND have a guaranteed pay check for the next 5 years (or longer if he chooses to re-enlist).

  Our oldest, on the other hand, is just the opposite.  He's happiest when burrowing into the guts of a malfunctioning computer, running systems maintenance, or talking machine code to a CPU.  (At least that's what it seems like he's doing; he gets engrossed in tweaking software to where it does things it wasn't designed to do, or figuring out the best way to either stop a hack or create one, and I swear to gawd he's not speaking English when he tries to describe to us what he's doing.  It's not the same language I grew up with, that's for damned sure!)  He's in a technical school at the moment, aiming to get into systems security when he graduates in a few months.  He's now thinking maybe he'd like to go on to college so he can better his job options.  I wish he'd been of a mind to go into veterinary medicine (most animals them seem to instinctively trust him, which would be to his advantage), but apparently it wasn't meant to be.  And I'd honestly rather see him be happy in his chosen field, than miserable in one someone else (even me!) might recommend.

  So rather than drop the "SquidBoy" and continue calling his brother "Technogeek", I'm changing their respective blog names to "Porthos" and "Aramis".  Blame their father if you like; he's the one who put the idea in my head.  And it is appropriate, considering their dad is an accomplished period fencer.....