As anyone in my family knows, I’m a particularly terrible communicator. People will often go weeks without hearing a word from me. Also, when I develop a new interest, I tend to obsess about it for a short time only to drop it just as quickly when the next shiny object catches my eye.

For example, a couple years ago I was obsessed with making my own mustard. There are fancy shops that sell little gift packages of “gourmet” mustard, and I figured I could do just as well! It’s a process that involves grinding up mustard seeds and mixing them with vinegar and other interesting ingredients. I think. I really can’t remember, but I still have a mostly-unused box of Ball canning jars and boxes of mustard seeds in my cupboard.

Understanding this about myself, it is with low expectations that I jump on the blog bandwagon. I’ve decommissioned the placeholder I’ve had at frankpape.com for years (never got around to finishing that “personal site” redesign), and replaced it with this. Now, perhaps for the next several days or even weeks, I’ll come here to post about what’s going on or something that I find interesting.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll prove myself wrong and I can laugh about it here a year from now. Or maybe you’re looking at this in October of 2005 with one or two entries above it. If that’s the case, I probably haven’t died or disappeared. I just saw something shiny.