if you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner,
you have learned how to live.
–Lin Yutang
One of my closest friends from college has been at me for years to cobble together a blog or journal, or, at the very least, a “real” web page (”what does it say about you that you, a ‘web professional’ [of sorts], aren’t maintaining your own corner of the web?!?”). Thing is, I have done some of my own pages - they’re just not accessible outside our company’s firewall. 
So. After 2+ years of “maintaining” a dormant public site, I’ve finally caved and am attempting to create something out of nothing there[here]. I can’t think of a better day to do this than Friday the 13th (well, I probably could, but let’s just pretend, shall we?).
Another close friend of mine questioned the decision for a web journal. Why not just keep a regular journal, if you want to write stuff like that? Why online? Damned if I know, truth be told. I was never very good at keeping a paper journal when I was younger, and I have every reason to suspect that I’ll not be particularly diligent about posting here. I don’t really expect many (any?) people to read what I write, even within my family (though this is a reasonably good, albeit impersonal, way for us lazy folks to let people know what we’re up to and how we’re doing w/out sending dozens of emails or (*shudder*) making dozens of phone calls). However, there are days that something will come up in a conversation, I’ll hear something on the local NPR station, or I’ll read something that triggers a number of thoughts I’d kinda like to capture and mull over. As some online journalists may point out - the potential for having an audience is sometimes enough impetus to write something down and explore the ideas. *shrug* ‘course, I may be just makin’ all this up.
Another good reason for me to be doing this now is I was recently in a wedding. This, in and of itself, may not seem to be that compelling. However, the fact that it was my own wedding changes things a bit. 
Many friends and family have asked for copies of our ceremony (cobbled together from a couple books we found), and we’ll be getting tons of pictures that we’ll want to share online. Best to have the framework in place for this now, is my thinking (plus the fact that i’ve been wanting to play with Movable Type and this gives me an excuse to be geeky).
As for the title, amphigouri(varnished nonsense) … thank you, thesaurus.com. After browsing many entries related to the word muddle, I found this one: amphigouri: with apparent meaning, which on further attention proves to be meaningless. (def’n via dictionary.com) Hmmm. I like.
Along with this was listed a quote attributed to Winston Churchill: to varnish nonsense with the charms of sound. No sound here, but I do like the idea of “varnished nonsense.” It’s all suitably self-deprecating, which is exactly what I wanted - I’m under no illusions as to the nature of this journal, and I want to make it perfectly clear to potential readers what can be expected. Plus, the words just sound cool together.
At any rate… here we are. A place for my ramblings and a place for our pictures. Expect entries to be infrequent, and perhaps even the content of those entries questionable. And to L:
THERE!
