There wasn't one Monday. In fact Tuesday's wasn't posted until two in the afternoon.

This isn't quite unprecedented in the seven-plus years I've been running this site. I've posted it late several times — once, in fact, the Sun had set before I got that day's anniversary posted. And when I returned from overseas a couple of years ago, I found the mechanisms I was relying on to post my previously-prepared entries had failed once; and one of those scheduled didn't get onto the site.

In all those cases, they turned up, as usual, in the "Today in Toons Archive", at least leaving a trace of what they were supposed to have been. (There have been a couple of cases where one was posted, but for one reason or another didn't get archived. Those are gone forever now, but at least they were there when they were supposed to be.)

I've sometimes gone to great lengths to see that it got posted. Once I realized, Saturday night of a local convention, that I'd forgotten to bring the materials necessary to make Sunday morning's post. I mentioned the fact, and someone shrugged and said well, it looks like you're gonna miss one. But that's not what I'd meant at all. It was a roundabout way of telling them not to expect to see me Sunday, because I'd be getting up bright and early to go home and get the job done.

Another time, my kitchen blew up. Just like that. Boom. Sifting through the wreckage, investigators found an unused bug bomb under the sink had rusted out and the contents got spread out under the cabinets. The insurance company paid for it, but they made an attempt, at least, to collect from the manufacturer. We may have inspired a whole new warning label. Anyway, our utilities got turned off for a few days, while we stayed with the kids. And "Today in Toons" wouldn't have gone up without huge cooperation from son-in-law Dave Cohen. But it did go up.

I put in the effort, and elicited what cooperation I needed, because I decided, right at the start, that this wouldn't be a typical fan project, where people are glad of whatever effort they're able to put in and don't worry about the times they can't. This would be a professional job from the get-go, and that meant taking a professional attitude to it. When something is due, it gets done. I may have faltered now and then, but seldom seriously. Articles don't have a set schedule, so I don't feel bad about their irregular appearance. But Today in Toons is daily, and that's just the way it has to be.

But sometimes a professional attitude isn't enough. My hard drive suffered a catastrophic failure Sunday. While I strove mightily to get it done Monday, by 10 PM I just had to admit there wasn't going to be one one that day, and went to sleep.

The fact that I eventually got back up and running, with minimal data loss, is attributable to my friend, Frank Wagner, who was incredibly generous with his time and expertise. It's not the first time he's rescued data for me, but this time it looked like I might lose everything but a back-up CD I made weeks ago. Frank turned a potential disaster into a mere inconvenience. Losing a day's posting, and a day's work on other projects, is nothing compared to what I was afraid of.

Well, the crisis is over now. Permanent scarring is very limited, and something I should be able to get used to easily enough. I did weekly calibrations of the number of "Today in Toons" by making sure each Monday's was divisible by seven. Now, I'll be doing that on Tuesday. All my disasters should be so damaging.

By the way, I'm not sure what I'd have used. It may have been B.O. Plenty marrying Gravel Gertie, both beinb Dick Tracy supporing characters, which I haven't used since 2003. Or it may have been the final Pepe LePuw cartoon, which I haven't used since 2003, but that's kind of a clunker. I'm sure I'd have skipped the death of Vaughn Shoemaker, the editorial cartoonist who is credited with creating John Q. Public, again this year. That would have required an article on Mr. Public, and there's too much info about him that I haven't tracked down yet.

Maybe next year, it'll be "Today in Toons" not getting posted.

— DDM