Thanks, Bob

Last night, one of my favorite bloggers had a little link with his post that took me to a game site - for Addictive Games and the game in particular was one with DUBYA falling and bouncing against all kinds of balloons and/or bubbles. As he landed you could let the figure go on in free fall or if he was wedged between some of these balloon/boulders, you could tug at the figure and help him squeeze through. A cute little toy, to be sure, for one with the sentiments I have pertaining to our fearless leader.

I immediately sent the link to several friends and acquaintances. Share and share alike being my motto, you know.

Today, I received an e-mail and the return address on it was from one of my favorite bloggers who I had shared that game with last night so naturally, I figured he was writing to tell me either he'd seen this before or that hey, it was a cool and cute little gimmick and thank me for sending it to him.

However, when I opened the note, the words there put me into a very shocked frame of mind. It was a note written by the sister of the gentleman to whom I had sent the game. And her message saddened me very, very much.

She wrote to tell me her brother had died suddenly yesterday.

So tonight, for those of you of my fellow bloggers who are familiar with the writings of Bob Johnson, it is with great sadness that I tell you he had a massive heart attack yesterday -November 14, 2007 - and died. I don't know how many of you, my readers had ever read any of Bob's work -other than Debo Blue -possibly some others here also were acquainted with Bob's work, but he was a very, very funny man!

I don't know exactly when I found Bob's initial blog - "Letters I Wish I'd Sent" - which by the way is no longer operational the way it was when I first stumbled on it last year sometime, unfortunately, but he wrote these essays in the form of letters to people he felt were not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed and many of them were downright hysterical.

Since I found Bob's blog way back whenever it was, I became a devoted follower of his writings and frequent commenter as well. He and I communicated back and forth fairly frequently over the months and I really felt like I knew him more like a good friend and neighbor than just a fellow blogger in the cyberspace world. After all, we often wrote back and forth about our families, little things like that, as well as sharing information from time to time, especially about writing.

He was you see, a very talented writer and had been writing for over 30 years. He also often shared information with me about questions I had from time to time about blogging, giving me little tips here and there too.

Not too terribly long ago, Bob had written to tell me he had signed on with Associated Content and was placing many of the pieces he'd published either on his blogs or other pieces he'd written, on their site. So if anyone would like to read any of Bob's articles, go to associatedcontent.com - you'll have to register in order to sign in - and then, do a search for content producer - Bob Johnson - which will bring up the pages he had submitted with that organization. Check out the site - it's free -and read some -or all - the work he had listed on that site.

He was just a really nice guy, lots of fun to communicate with, had such wit and great logic about so many things and I for one am really going to miss his presence in the blogosphere.

Goodnight, Bob and thanks again for all the good words, and many, many chuckles as well as knee-slappers and belly laughs you gave me over the past year.