For those who might be interested, the genesis of this story is… well, a story unto itself, I suppose.

I’m not a packrat by any stretch of the imagination, but sometimes, when taking a cruise through flea markets or the local Goodwill, I’ll find myself looking at something and wondering how it got there. Sometimes strange and wondrous things, like a genuine 70s era Kitchen Magician; sometimes more poignant things, like a partially burned stuffed animal. What happened to that toy, I ask myself, an object someone once loved and then to see it in this state. So sometimes I rescue these things — kitchen implement, children’s book, stray kitty — and give it a second chance at a good home. More often than I sometimes think possible, these objects — and kitties — respond to the attention suddenly given them. The 70s era Kitchen Magician is now a staple in my dinner preparation. The children’s books find their way to libraries. The stray kitty comes home and lives with me. And it takes so little to make these things happy.

I wont go into a rant on rampant consumerism. We all know that drill pretty well. This actually goes a bit further than that. In some respects, this little storyline is also an apology: to the many friends I dropped in haste or simply lost somewhere along the way. I have been blessed, through social media such as Facebook and Tumblr and others, to renew and rebind some of those friendships, and for that I am forever grateful.

All right, enough of this. A few odds and ends over the next few days, at a slightly better pace than this one has played out. Then… who knows?

Thank you again for being such great readers and such great friends.