Hi, I'm Buddy Ter.  That's a name that my friend Bob hung on my a good long time ago when we were members of the never-to-be-discovered rock band Batwipe and the Dead Fish.  This blog represents what may be a Quixotic adventure on my part:  to write a weekly column.  For many years I've wanted to "be a writer."  Over the years I've produced some fairly comical pieces for various occasions, and I have some very kind friends who wait eagerly for my annual Christmas Letter.  But I've never challenged myself to write a substantial amount of quality work on a regular basis. 

You might wonder who I am and why you'd care to read anything I care to write.  I was wondering that myself.  Mostly the latter; it's pretty rare that I forget who I am.  I'm a 51-year-old software developer, a husband, father of one son, father-in-law of the world's most beautiful daughter-in-law; a cancer survivor, a marginally-talented drummer, an organist of almost that much prowess, and an Assistant Scoutmaster.  I was the Scoutmaster of the local troop for about three years.  I found that if you can take twenty or so adolescent boys armed with knives, axes, and fire into the woods for a week and bring back them out relatively-unscathed, you can handle pretty much anything.  I'm hoping that my half-century of hanging around will have supplied my with enough experience and observational talent that I can see the funny side of things.

So here goes.  I'll write about what interests me at the moment.  It could be a story of the misadventures of the two nasty old cats that inhabit my house, or musings on the joys of making music, or maybe I'll whine about my problems.  Oh, I've got problems.  Biiiiig problems.  Terrrrrible problems!!  But I doubt I'll get into them very much; if I traded problems with you, I'd probably want mine back before long.  And who wants to hear about problems anyway?  When someone approaches me and starts to drone away with their latest heartache I start looking for a way to slip quietly behind the wallpaper, and I don't want anyone risking full-body paper cuts in an effort to escape me!

Just to get things rolling, I'll post a copy of one of the aforementioned Christmas letters.  If you enjoy it, come back next week.  And if you don't, thanks for coming by.