I am sorry, I'm trying to fix it!

Ok, so this weekend we went camping and I didn't check my email (or web site) until yesterday. Then I discovered that my web site was down, due to expiration of my domain name registration. I spent half of yesterday trying to fix it, but had problems because Network Solutions had an old email address of mine on file. All kinds of measures are taken to ensure that domain names are not stolen or hijacked by undeserving hackers, so this was more complicated than it sounds like it should be.

In the meantime, I set up an email address with Gmail with the intention of making it my primary address. Having owned and used penguinart.com for 9 years now, I am on a multitude of spammers' favorites lists and receive 100 or so a day at my penguinart.com email addresses. Using Gmail seemed like a good resolution to the problem. Then, by the afternoon my domain name had been renewed and I began receiving my beloved spam again. I set up a "rule" in my Mail preferences that would send an email back to anyone of my contacts who tried to send a new email to kate(at)penguinart(dot)com, asking them to use my new Gmail address. Seemed harmless enough.

But I apparently did something wrong, something very wrong. Because this morning Andrew called me to let me know that half of Winter Park Resort was receiving bounced emails from me, he received over a hundred and others 30+. It seems that my rule was not specific enough, and that every email sitting in my inbox received an auto-response overnight, and continues to receive more, in multiples. I immediately removed the offending rule, and made all my email accounts inactive. I'm hoping this will solve the problem, but I don't know for sure.

So to all of you who have emailed me in the past few weeks, whose emails are sitting in my inbox, and who are receiving a plethora of bounced email messages--

I am sorry!

I am sorry!

I am sorry!

I am sorry!

I am sorry!

Ok maybe that's not funny to you right now. But I am sorry! Please don't block me from your life! It should stop, soon...