This may be the last time you ever hear from me.

Yes, it's true: This may be the last post I ever write. In fact, I may not live through the week. No, I haven't been diagnosed with some kind of fast-acting cancer, and no, I'm not about to engage in any risky thrill-seeking behavior like skydiving or having unprotected sex with Tommy Lee. I am going to have a face-to-face meeting with someone I have thus far only met online.

You see, one of my favorite bloggers, Common Wombat, is going to be in the Dallas area later this week, and we've made plans to get together for dinner. Now, I know we've all heard stories about internet predators who pretend to be someone they're not, convincing some innocent rube to meet them for a "harmless" get-together...at which point the naive victim then gets raped, killed, and buried in a shallow grave in a wooded area. I could very well be the next statistic. True, I'm bringing along my husband and a few of my friends to this meeting--but are they any match for a bloodthirsty axe murderer? Only time will tell. And true--we're meeting up at a restaurant, not my house or a dark alley or abandoned field--but a crafty serial killer can find a way to satisfy his hunger for human flesh even in a crowded place. Will I be diced into bite-sized pieces, the parts divided up into gift baskets and mailed anonymously to local politicians? It's entirely possible. Will I be skinned alive, de-boned, and my nose be carried around in Wombat's pocket for good luck, as a reminder of his conquest? Perhaps. But it's a chance I have to take because...have you read his blog? That's some funny shit.

But I'm nothing if not a planner, so I've gone to the trouble to make some provisions in the event of my death and subsequent dismemberment. I've made a flyer that you guys can print out and distribute when and if I go missing.

Please print out as many of these as you can, and distribute them throughout your town. Call your local police department and tell them what you know. But don't send them to Wombat's site to try to gain information that would help in their investigation--they'll probably just end up giggling a lot and emailing the link to their friends instead of getting any real work done on solving my murder.