When I first started blogging, I had no idea feed readers and RSS feeds and all of that stuff even existed. I had, on my browser, a list of “bookmarks” (often called “favorites on some computers) That I went through manually each day.

As I grew into blogging, I built a “BlogRoll” into my blogs side bar, and manually clicked that (often several times a day) to see if any one had updated. Then, Blogrolling made it so that a * or a ~ or the word “New”, (you could choose what you wanted) would show up when the author of a blog updated, which was cool, when it worked. From my side bar, I moved to my very first feed reader, Bloglines, which i used for about a year. Maybe 18 months.

From there I moved to the Google Reader, which is what I am using right now.

The point of all of this is to try and help me explain the lengths I would go to read a post. One blog, I will not link to it, nor will i name it, was a favorite of mine, she had such a  way with words, she made me laugh, She made me sad, she had the power to move me, just with text on a screen. that takes talent, people.

But lately, or so it seemed to me, she stopped writing at her blog. Oh, there were posts there, for sure, but all of them were links to go here, to go there, to click this, and read words she wrote other places. And I found myself getting more and more upset, the more I was asked to jump through hoops to read what she wrote, just so she could make a few $$.

So I emailed her. I was polite, I was nice, but I did Question her as opposed to fawning over her with praise.. I asked if this linking to other places instead of writing on her blog was just a phase, becuase I can wait out a phase, but if she has changed her site to be just a launching pad for us to run to all corners of the blogging world to read something she is being paid to write, well, there was no point in me sticking around, was there?

Little did I know that I should have taken shelter in some steel buildings before hitting send on my email.

Her reply back to me was VERY rude. she basically told me I don’t matter, that she does not care if I never read her again. That if I “didn’t like her writing” I should leave.

And so, I assume that this is no phase, that her site has be relegated to a library of links to her “paid” gigs, and I will leave.

But it makes me a little mad. I would NEVER treat one of my readers this way. I might not keep track of my blog stats, but every single person who stops and takes the time to read something I wrote, is someone I appreciate.

We get a little 20 page newspaper delivered to our mailboxes every two weeks. In it, is all the local news for our town, it has a section for the “crime report” (this week there was a hit and run, a car slid on some ice, and hit a pole, then left the scene. the case was solved twenty minutes later when the RCMP got a call from the towns garage, the man who had hit the pole was calling to notify the cops of the accident.)((lol, our town has soooo much crime))

We got a new grocery store in January. Did I tell you that? Nearly 3,000 more square feet bigger than the last one. pretty exciting, except that when the grocery store left it’s old building for the new building, I hated how it made main street look. NO main street will ever look good with empty buildings on it. I was hoping that we would either get a wholesale store, or maybe a McDonald’s (lol) in the old Grocery Store building, but the little news letter we got today said we are getting some kind of Bargain!Store. Yeah written like that, with the ! in it.

I’m not so excited about this new store. Our town already has a dollar store, and it is a good sized one too, so what do we need with a new one? The paper said the B!S (ROLF!) has opened 65 new stores around Saskatchewan in the last year. And that is great I guess, But what will happen to the little dollar store? Will the competition bee too much for it? And why does no one listen to me when I say “Hey, how nice would it be to say, let’s go to Micky Dees for dinner, and not have to drive to the city to do so!” and build me a damn McDonald’s!!