I am proud to say that I practice the craft of blog making.

Wowsa. I wasn’t paying attention and my one-year blogivesary already flew by. Sorry I’m three days late with this hoopla and celebration…

This whole thing started back on September 24, 2009. I launched the blog with a post about the song “Pork and Beans” by Weezer. (Such an awesome song!) That post included one of my memes right off the bat: the “t-shirt design.” I’ve come up with quite a few of them since then and fake t-shirt designs has become quite the regular theme on my blog.

Other interesting factoids:

• I’m almost exactly a year older. Coincidence? I think not.
• I’d been at my job 4-1/2 years. That has now ballooned to 5-1/2 years.
• My blog has never featured on Freshly Pressed. Not even once. Yep, WordPress seemingly has a strong bias against negativity. I knew it!
• The “eat my ass” meme was born in my 2nd post. (Yes, Charter Communications really does suck.)
• The word “poop” is my number one all-time tag but that wasn’t initially part of my mission statement. (I would eventually go one to make it one of the core values of this blog.) The word “poop” wasn’t actually used until my 4th post. (“Gold nugget economics. I’m gold, you’re poop.“) I think this is also the first post where I hinted that I’m not exactly thrilled with my job and my boss.
• The job thing would, of course, go on to be one of my strongest themes. I really do hate it. And there has been lots of extra special fun there of late. I hope to blog about it soon.
• Another huge meme on the blog is the “gerbil.” That’s my own slang for a youngster who grows up but is completely irresponsible and fails to leave the house, thus delaying the onset of Empty Nest Syndrome. This led to the creation of the Gerbil Research Institute of Parental Edification (GRIPE). The first gerbil post, however, didn’t actually take place until Jan. 21, 2010. (See: Something gerbil this way comes.)
• Along the way I played around with a few puzzles. The first of which were aerial reconnaissance and pixelization challenges. To this day one puzzle remains completely unsolved! Mwuhahahahaha!
• In Nov. 2009 I took the NaBlPoMo challenge, which was to post every day for a month. I successfully completed that challenge and earned the badge you see on the left. I don’t officially participate in the challenge any more but I haven’t missed a day of posting since Monday, October 5, 2009. That anniversary is fast-approaching, too.

This blog isn’t all about me, though. The most rewarding thing of all has been making some new friends. I didn’t expect that. These are people I would probably have never know without WordPress and blogging. In no particular order here are some of my favorite blogs:

• Catherine Sherman – This is an excellent and entertaining blog by a modern day Indiana Jones. She’s a journalist, photographer and has a background that includes paleontology. (That’s close enough to archeology, in my mind, to justify the fedora and whip.)
• Teri’s Blip in the Universe – A super cool woman who fights on behalf of those affected by the BRCA gene mutation and shares her own experiences since learning of her diagnosis. What she does is heroic and I believe she is a life saver.
• Living Dilbert – A hilarious blog about a woman working for a bunch of idiots. I can relate to that.
• Blurt – A brilliant writer and master of humor who has been featured on Freshly Pressed several times. Also an extremely nice guy!
• Funny In Shadows – The home of Counter Culture Clown, a world-class communicator, stand up comic and, well, a guy with a lot of anger. For me it was love at first site and/or sight. His postings have slowed of late, maybe because he works to much or maybe because some religious militants took him out, but either way he’s still worth a look. Blogivesary Trivia: Counter Culture Clown was my first “blog crush.”
• Punch It In – Another fantastic must-read blog and Kate is someone I consider a friend. Usually funny and insightful and always entertaining!
• Theycallmejane’s Blog – What can you say? Jane is just a wonderful person and super cool. She’s also very Freshly Pressed worthy. And, quite surprisingly, she appreciates some of the same music as me. She has depth.

I know there are tons more great friends I’ve made. Please don’t feel bad if you didn’t make this list. I consider this group of blogs the “inner circle” because I hooked up with them early and have stuck with them ever since. I’ll be featuring these wonderful peeps in a post about Inner Circle 2.0 soon, I promise. 🙂

I hope it has been fun and humorous at times. I sincerely hope those of you who have sacrificed everything to read along have survived.

Please enjoy the musical pairing that has been selected by our chef for this post: