The Smyczek Family Blog

Greetings everyone,

I want to invite you all to the Smyczek Family Blog, or "Fat Kid Soup." Given the fact that we have Smyczeks in Wisconsin, Minnesota (beginning this summer), Illinois, Washington D.C. (for the time being), and Alabama, I thought it might be a good idea to create a family blog that will better facilitate family contact in one centralized location (as opposed to email and facebook which is very decentralized) for announcements, articles on politics, culture, family, religion, and just anything else that folks would like to share with everyone.

I am sure most of you are familiar with what a blog is, but for the benefit of mainly Mom & Dad, a blog is essentially a website that allows users to share or "post" articles and opinions, and discuss various topics in the form of an online journal, while readers may comment on those posts. Entries typically appear in reverse chronological order, and each entry is called a "post" or an "entry" (duh). It's kind of like one of those cork bulletin boards you see in places like on a college campus, but it's online.

I decided to limit the people who can post on the blog to Mom & Dad, their kids, and the kids' spouses, which by my count is 14. Anyone else in the world can post comments to the blog entries, which appear at the bottom of a blog post, and are accessible through a link labeled "comments." But only the 14 of us can post blog entries on the main page. Any more than 14 and it just becomes too unwieldy and hard to manage.

Just a few quick notes. Because blogs are publicly available on the internet, they are technically open to the whole world (not that I expect anyone outside of our family and close circle of friends to want to go to our blog), so that means do not post any information that is private or personal in nature. In addition because this is on the internets, I know I don't need to say this to the vast majority of you, but please refrain from posting things that reflect poorly on the Smyczek family.

And one final note, for those of you who did not grow up on Hi Mount, Fat Kid Soup was the nickname given (by Bob or Dan I think) to that unique combination of cardboard noodles and crappy artificial chicken broth, also known as "Ramen Noodles", that was a staple of every lunch on Saturday afternoons. Most everyone can remember that bloated feeling of ecstasy that only high doses of sodium and MSG can give you. I hope this blog can become a soup of humorous, serious, interesting, and relevant discussions for the family.

I hope everyone enjoys the blog.