Hello world!

I did not plan to begin this blog today. I planned to begin this blog SOON, but not today. Then I got up this morning and noticed the date, and thought, "9/9/9! Seems like a good date for new beginnings."

Later, I logged onto the Internet, and found that people around the world have been anticipating this date -- though not necessarily positively, depending on culture and tradition. It knocks some of the wind out of my sails to realize that millions of other people noticed the date long before I did, but I suppose it is still as good a day as any to begin a blog.

I freely admit that I do not know much about blogging, and I am sure I will make mistakes, and perhaps this entire blog is a mistake.

I am writing this blog because my dog died. Actually, there were three things that happened together last winter: My dog was dying, I was made aware of a blog page dealing with the subject of whether or not dogs go to heaven, AND I found myself with some time to kill on a high-speed Internet connection. After my dog "up and died," I found myself driven to just WRITE. Random stuff, philosophical stuff. Not necessarily worth writing, or worth reading, and not necessarily related to the subject of dead dogs -- but including a response for the page about whether dogs go to heaven, which I will attempt to post there any day now.

One of the things that has kept me from blogging in the past -- or from most writing, for that matter -- is that I believe strongly that words are never clear, and always leave room for misinterpretation. Therefore, before I go any further, for my own peace of mind I will post disclaimers and prefaces about anything I write here or elsewhere. This brings up the fact that I am actually beginning TWO blogs today -- one here, and one at another site on another "host" since I do not know enough to know which host I will prefer. (Full disclosure: I have already tried some "practice blogs" to try and figure out technical aspects of the process, like the fact that the newest posts appear at the TOP of the page rather than the bottom.) For now, I plan to place many of the same posts on both sites, though the sites seem to have different organizational schemes that will keep them from ever being identical. Over time, I suspect the two sites will diverge, but it's hard to know what to expect.

It's ALWAYS hard to know what to expect. Truth is complicated.