I found out that my long-time blogging friend Anissa died this morning.

Words completely escape me. There's nothing I can say that could encapsulate just how painful this is. And yet... I'm going to give it a try, because powering through life in the face of tragedy is what she was all about.

Anissa is joy to all those who knew her. No matter what she was going through... no matter what hardship she was facing... no matter how much she was struggling... you would never know it because her grace, humor, wit, and spirit always made you feel as though she hadn't a care in the world. Life, such as it is, was her bitch.

The irony of my last interaction with her on Facebook is not lost on me...

Tacos.

And here's where we go back to the start.

Though I had known her online for years prior, the first time I met Anissa in person was at Davelanta 3 in 2009...

Kevin, Beth, Diana, Kim, Val, Mr. & Mrs. Muskrat, Heather, and Anissa... not pictured is Julie, who ditched our sorry asses so she could go to a much better party with a group of much classier people!

   
I fell in love with her that night.

Which is not at all unusual, because everybody who met Anissa fell in love with her. She's STD-level infectious like that.

I sat next to her at dinner and remember it like it was yesterday. We were at The Cheesecake Factory, and a lot of our discussion revolved around their Deep-Fried Macaroni and Cheese Balls. We had much to discuss on the topic. Mostly because she was nibbling on my balls the whole time.

And then...

Not long after that infamous first meeting, Anissa had a stroke and her whole world changed.

Not that you would know it because, despite being confined to a wheelchair, Anissa herself did not change. She was still the same brilliant, beautiful, snarky, and entirely inappropriate person she had always been. Just slowed down a bit.

We finally met up again at another blogger meet in 2011...

Mr. Muskrat, Tyler, Heather, Adam, Anissa, Anissa's Friend(?), Beth, Kevin, and Mrs. Muskrat!

   
Seeing how Anissa was struggling was not easy.

Seeing how she was overcoming adversity was truly inspiring.

And she continued to inspire everybody she encountered for almost 6 years to the day I last saw her.

My heart is broken. What's left of it goes out to her husband and three children, all of whom were Anissa's everything. That she had a heart big enough to share with the rest of the world too is everything you need to know about her.

Well, that... and the fact that she really couldn't keep her hands off my balls that night. Not that I can blame her... they were delicious. If there were a Cheesecake Factory anywhere near me, that's where I'd be. With a Long Island ice tea and big ol' plate of deep-fried macaroni and cheese balls in her honor.

Rest in peace, my dear friend. You were loved so much by so many, and your having to leave us hasn't changed that.

Sorry. Nothing to see here.

For at least a month. Probably more.

For all those who wrote me emails or sent me texts or even called me... wondering what the heck happened that I had disappeared off my blog... thanks!

The explanation is both simple and complex. But let's start with what it is not going on...

I'm not sick.
I'm not dead.
I'm not on the lam.
I have not been abducted by aliens.
I have not given up blogging.

Here is what is going on...

As mentioned previously, the security I have on Blogography has been keeping me from posting. I can't disable the security, because I keep getting hacked (apparently having 15 years of Google-indexed entries makes you a desirable target). It has something to do with switching internet when I moved house, but in order to post now I have to log in to my blog, turn off the security, log out of my blog, log back into my blog, restart blogging services, post my entry, log out of my blog, then log back in so I can turn security back on.

It's quite an ordeal, and I really don't have time for it.

So I took to posting a week's worth of entries all at once in an effort to deal with it all.

That worked for five months.

And then it didn't.

No matter how many hoops I ran through, I couldn't get to the point where I could post. Not that this stopped me from writing entries. On the contrary, I was still writing every day like I always do...

I just couldn't do anything with them because I could never find the time to fix my blog.

Until today.

I finally backed up the database, uninstalled everything, reinstalled everything, then restored everything. And it seems to be working.

Which leaves me in a quandary. Do I just flood post a month's worth of entries as if nothing ever happened? Or do I chalk up the month of June as a loss and start up fresh? Who wants to back-read a whole month of the stupid crap that I post? Is this stuff even relevant after all this time?

I dunno.

My inclination is to summarize my month tomorrow on the 3rd. Then resume posting on the 4th... exactly one month from when I stopped. Then I can swipe some old material I wrote... refresh stuff that's no longer relevant... and get back to all new musings that my legions of Blogography fans demand!

As much as I loathe the idea of there being a month-long chunk of missing entries in over a decade of daily posting, I think this is the best way to move on.

Hope you enjoyed your vacation from me.

So... a really good day to be one of my cats.

Long-time blogging friends Poppy and Dawg sent a Kitty Care Package for Jake and Jenny that came filled with all kinds of stuff they quickly became obsessed with...

Jenny is especially obsessed with the soft rainbow toy...

And, no surprise, Jake has laid claim to the Crunchy Monkey stuffed toy (he loves stuffed animals!)...

   
Thanks so much to Poppy and Dawg for making my cats' week!

Once I was hanging out at a bar with friends that featured live music. The band, which wasn't bad at all, was being badly heckled by a couple tables. For the first couple of songs, the band ignored the chants of "FREEBIRD!" and "NOW PLAY SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T SUCK!" But eventually the lead singer stopped the show and said something like "Hey, I get it. You don't like our music and that's fine. But, believe it or not, there are people who DO like our music and they've come here tonight so they can listen to us play. And you're ruining that for them. There are plenty of other bands out there and some of them probably play music you will enjoy, and you should probably go see them instead of us. But if you're going to stick around, be quiet and let us play. We'd do the same for you and your band... if you had a band. Which you obviously don't. If you did, you'd know how tough it is to get up in front of a room full of people to perform for them, and show us some fucking respect."

And it worked. One of the tables finished their drinks and left. The other stopped being assholes. And the reason it worked was because the band was able to confront the hecklers face to face. The hecklers couldn't hide from the consequences of their actions.

And then we get to the internet, where most of the people most of the time are hidden from the consequences of their actions. Why should they be quiet and respectful when their online "identity" is "BigLukeThe Exploder?" (or whatever... my apologies to BigLukeTheExploder if you actually exist).

Well, I want in on that.

Removing consequences from my actions sounds like a lot more fun than what I'm doing now.

So the next time you see an anonymous troll being a total fucking asshole on the internet... be kind.

It might be me.

Although it doesn't much look like it, I am still posting to my blog daily... I just can't get it there until I've got the whole Wordpress security thing settled with my new IP address.

The fact that it's taking so damn long to get it resolved is probably a sign to just give up, but I'll choose to ignore that.

For now.

Blogography has been a frequent target of hackers, which has left me little choice but to lock it down as tightly as I possibly can. Part of the security I have set up is that the back-end can only be accessed from a specific IP address. Problem is that my new place does not yet have its static IP set up properly, so I stack up a week's worth of posts, unlock the system, post everything very quickly, then lock everything back down again.

Hopefully by the end of the month my old IP will be set up at my new installation and everything will be good again.

Until then...