Back behind the wheel...

Boy it feels good to be back. This is my first post since the hijacker frenzied around our little baby, made child's play of our template and generally was cantankerous.

While the hijacker was in control of FCN, I got to know what it's like to be one of the faithful few. I didn't know what a post would be until it came out. When it did arrive, I'd be disappointed.

Throughout the hijacker's brief but notorious tenure, I rose early for my morning FCN fix, only to discover that our hijacker kept a different schedule than I and posted much later whilst I was in class. So my mornings, all four of them, were much more dour.

Every day held a scary moment, a few terrorizing seconds as my browser connected with the blogger servers and made its request. As the information was exchanged between my local terminal and the Big Kahuna central, I found myself holding my breath, even when my lungs had already expired their last oxygen (Big Kahuna central can take a while to respond). So any reports you hear about an FCN author fainting yesterday had nothing to do with the hijacker and everything to do with forgetting to breathe.

I know this is the second reflective post on the nefarious activity of one hijacker - and believe me, that fact weighs so heavily on my conscience that I will find a way to introduce new content into this tome - but it's worth delving into the issue once again to discourage any copycats. Acts of senseless terrorism invariably engender mindless duplication. School, Olympics and mall shootings have all been tried, but idiots keep on doing them anyway, thinking their take on mass killing is unique. So taking over a FCN, a crime so similar in magnitude to senseless murder that we dare not dwell for too long on the link (we've young readers, folks), is likely to encourage further attempts.

Like our elected leaders, FCN had to change its policy to reflect the open animosity and, let's be frank, actionable hostility toward friendly humor blogging. That's right, ladies and gentleman (not a typo), from this day forward FCN will make like a Danish newspaper and negotiate with terrorists. The next time someone offers to guest blog (with an implied "or else), we will be much more inclined to say yes. When an anonymous heckler sends us a letter with a copy of a picture we would rather you all not see, we will write a check before calling the authorities.

Heck, if you get me in an armbar I'll do pretty much anything. But I'd like to see you try.

OK, so that new content I promised earlier. Touching fingers to keyboard again reminded me of my first experience driving a tractor on an April morning some years ago. I couldn't have been much older than Dakota Fanning when I slid behind the wheel of our family's powerful Kubota and listened attentively as my father taught me the basics of driving. That's right: I learned to drive a tractor before I learned to drive a car. Maybe that's why I drive at such safe speeds.

The rumble of the diesel engine erased all my father's warnings about maneuverability and safety, but didn't keep me from having a riot on my first tour of agrarian authority. At least for the first twenty minutes. See, the thrill of controlling a cumbersome and slow craft over rough terrain turns from exciting to dull faster than molten iron in a bucket of cold water. What started as a novelty soon became a chore.

The great thing about working on a small farm is that the boring work comes by rarely and passes quickly and a simple mind like mine can easily forget the monotony of driving given a few months of memory fermentation.

To tie the analogy back to FCN, in a couple weeks I forgot what it is like to be up at 5:30 AM sitting in front of a blank post, knowing that work and school will soon call and not having anything to write about. I am back behind the wheel and feeling as energetic about today's post as I am about the breakfast I am about to eat (you would be too if you saw these peanut butter coated waffles in which I am about to indulge).

Oh, yeah, and I'll be on the tractor again this month; I'm looking forward to it.