There isn't a real newsletter this week for a couple of reasons. One, basketball. I'm a huge college basketball fan, and currently my TarHeels are sitting pretty at #1. When they're on the tube, I'm rooted in front of the TV, spilling Pepsi and screaming at the referees like any other knuckleheaded fan. When they're not on, well, someone's playing, and I have to keep tabs on the competition. So a large percentage of my evenings and weekends are spent helping my guys keep their top ranking. (It could be worse, I could be like the guy in the commercial who thinks that the faster he shoves the kielbasa in his mouth, the better his team performs.)

More importantly, and much more pertinently, this site is finally being moved. I am in the process right now of updating my pages on the AOL site -- this will be the last time the AOL pages are updated. I will leave them just as they are for the time being, only adding notes to direct surfers to the new pages. (Note: I've fixed a lot of broken links and such. Those kinds of "maintenance posts" will continue.) In addition, the older pages at toejumper.ibd.net/, www.toejumper.ibd.net/, and all other variants of that address (all including IBD somewhere in their addresses) are going to be permanently disabled. It was never more than a mirror site, generously offered to me by Dave of IBD, and no longer serves a purpose. Dave has been kind enough to host the site on a full-time basis, and I do appreciate his hospitality. Also, on the rare occasions that the site goes down, I can call him direct and he can give me a good reason for the outage, as opposed to the song and dance you currently get from whatever hapless soul is manning the AOL phone banks at the time. (Note: All IBD pages are now permanently down, though they still pop up in search engine results.)

For now, the main address remains the familiar members.aol.com/toejumper/page1.htm, but very, very soon -- perhaps by the end of this weekend -- the new site will be up and running under the shiny new URL of www.toejumper.net/. (What the hell is all this "Toejumper" stuff about? The name comes from a cat I used to own, or rather, a cat who used to own me.) If you visit the URL now, you'll see a "holding" page that's there to let you know that Something is Coming. It is coming indeed, and the sooner the better. Keep your eyes peeled, and don't forget to update your bookmarks. Note: The page is updated and the URL has changed. The members.aol.com/ site is NO LONGER FUNCTIONAL..

Thanks for your patience, and thanks for sticking out the numerous changes and updates. By the way, the newsletter membership currently sits at 99, an auspicious number by any measure. The 100th person to sign up won't win anything, except my continued gratitude, but I can't tell you how pleased I am that so many people give enough of a hoot about this site to be willing to let me visit their mailboxes twice a month. Stay tuned...our regularly scheduled programming returns in just a couple of weeks.