David St. Lawrence’s gathering of area bloggers appears a success as a number showed up and exchanged lots of thoughts and ideas.

David (standing in photo), who is an evangelist when it comes to the joys of blogging, led some of the novices in the group through the byzantine world of blogging with detailed explanations of trackbacks, pings, permalinks and the like.

Others talked technical details and still others discussed reasons for blogging or not blogging or just talked about why they moved to the area.

According to Technorati, there are now more than 30 million blogs out there and the list grows by thousands upon thousands daily. A lot of people, it seems, have a lot to say. Which begs the question: With so many saying, is there anyone left to listen?

Well, not sharks actually but bloggers. Lots of bloggers. David St. Lawrence, the project-manager-to-the-world, organized a meeting of area bloggers at Cafe del Sol today and I’m sitting here in the midst of all these cyber opinion makers, listening to discussions of trackbacks, cascading stylesheets and whatnot.

Loki’s end is near now. We know it and yet we don’t want to face it.

Our little brain-damaged kitten is blind and his instability increases with each passing day. He spends more time on his side flailing at the air than on his feet. We have to keep him separated from our other cats.

We’ve increased the medications that control his seizures but he still convulses uncontrollably as I hold him in my arms and try to calm him. His breathing is shallow and difficult.

Yet, in calm times, he purrs and loves like any normal kitten.

Spring may finally have arrived with temperatures scheduled to hit 70 this weekend.

Spring also means outdoor sports at Floyd County High School and I got a chance to shoot the boys’ JV baseball and girls’ varsity softball games Monday afternoon.

As seems to be the norm at FCHS, the girls’ team is fast, agressive and high-scoring. The girls teams are the stars of athletics in Floyd this days and they are both fun and challenging to photograph. Time to cinch up the knee braces and get ready for baseball, softball, track and soccer. Gonna be a fun Spring.

Inevitably, when I hook up with someone from any of my previous lives, they ask about life here in Floyd County. Even though I’m, for the most part, retired and money is not the issue it once was in our lives, the questions usually center around: “How do you make a living out there in the sticks?”

My flippant, but true, answer is: “Well, here you have to work twice as long to earn half as much. Fortunately, it only costs about a third as much to live here.”