Rising from the Ashes

Like Phoenix, rising from the ashes, this site can’t seem to help bobbing to the surface every few years. Usually it involves many external stimuli which makes me want to share thoughts with the world; and the current time in life has led me to resurrect what had been long gone. My original blog started on Blogger circa August, 2005.

Wanting my own domain and more control, I moved my blog to WordPress pretty quickly, and would post at first fairly prolifically and later more sporadically until November of 2012. At that point in time, working from home full-time and with two daughters in school, my schedule, to say the least, was hectic. Still is. In November 2012, however, something happened with the MySQL and PHP on my hosting service (I think I neglected to update as I was supposed to have done) and for all intents and purposes, LBF dropped off the web.

A few weeks ago, having a weekend at home recovering from the flu it was time to try to bring the site back from the dead, and it was thrilling to me to get WordPress working again. Only one problem. My posts had all disappeared, and they couldn’t be found on my host server. Worse still, my backup was on an external drive that bit the dust. (As a side note, if you have one of those 500 GB WD USB harddrives and it starts “clicking” when you connect it to your computer, if you can save anything at that point, do – they’re not long for the world!)

A bit disappointing, to say the least. But an epiphany happened this week – thanks to the wonders of my old favorite the Wayback Machine, *everything* I’d ever posted has been recovered! This makes me inordinately happy.

It’s fascinating, actually reading back over things written 12 years ago. Much has changed – even more has not. Generally, I’ve brought back and archived most of my posts, leaving out only those which really have disappeared from all memory or those which no longer resonate with my feelings and understandings to date. Of those, in one case there is a politician with whom I mostly agree, but unfortunately she let family shenanigans destroy what credibility she had, and in the other, a formerly respected man imploded massively and in a very public way – and I feel sorry that my crystal ball gave me no indication of his mental aberration.

So when the mood strikes, perhaps you’ll get to know me again as sharing my ruminations here is probably a better venue than on Facebook!

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