Vote For Me, Marquis!
Vote For Me, Marquis!
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Category Archives: Blogging
5 Year Blog Anniversary
Dave, Home from School
Yellow Crowned Night Heron
Ceiling of the Eastman Theater
Mom as Pilot
Dan, the Graduate, Walking Last May
Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of this blog’s creation. Way back in 2008 I began with a stereotypical “Hello World” post. It coincided with Dave’s return from his sophomore year at Rochester. Some year’s anniversaries were rather uneventful, but many marked major family milestones. 2010 brought Dave’s University of Rochester graduation, in 2011 we mourned my mother’s passing and in 2012 we celebrated Dan’s graduation from CalArts. This year has been one of the uneventful ones. I’ve written more than one post per day for these past five years and have written regularly, almost always every day. After this little self-acknowledging and self-congratulatory hiatus, I plan on getting back to my regular blogging. Every day has been a challenge and every day will be an adventure. Here’s to five more years of soapbox shouting into the blogosphere!
To Infinity, and Beyond!
Yellow Pacific Grove Flower
It seemed that everyone at work must have fallen off of the fiscal cliff last night, because that would have certainly explained the dazed confusion that seemed to prevail all day in the office. It was my first day of work of the New Year and my first workday in over a week.
One co-worker strolled in after ten and promptly announced that his alarm had failed to go off and he had over slept. He also forgot his employee badge and had been issued a temporary one. Our office has more locked doors per capita than most other offices and these locks are all opened with your regular badge. Temporary badges need not apply. Showing up at work without your badge really hampers your mobility around the office and can leave you trapped outside a locked door for many long minutes.
Anne went to school and handed back her fourth grade class back to its regular teacher. Dave left town today for Purdue and made it back to school safely. Dan is flying back to LA tomorrow. It looks like at least on the home front, the holidays are drawing quickly to a close and the expanse of another new year lies ahead of us. I’d done enough looking backwards at the end of last year, what with both a best of 2012 photo compendium and a telling of my WordPress report card. Now it is time to look forward, look into the future and do some prognosticating.
While 2012 was a pretty good year in RegenAxe land, I predict that 2013 will be even better. I don’t have any empirical proof to back this assertion, but I do have optimism. Isn’t that good enough? That’s one positive prediction, now according to form I have to lay a really heavy downer on you now, the Democrats and the Republicans are going to continue to squabble into this New Year. Hey, I know that this is akin to predicting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow, but I thought that I had already gone out there on the limb with my better 2013 prediction. What if the Mayan’s weren’t as good at math as we’ve given them credit for and they forgot to carry a year?
I’ve made a resolution. Actually, I’ve made quite a few. Most of them though are the same old ones that I and everyone else seem to make this time every year. I’ll lose weight. I’ll eat healthier. I’ll drink less. I’ll exercise more. To this list of so far unobtainium, I’ll add a new albeit modest New Year’s resolution; I’ll use fewer emoticons in my blog posts this year. Before you go there, yesterday’s post was so about last year, so it really doesn’t count, thank you very much. I know that foreswearing further use of the emoticon is hardly a lofty goal, but look at it this way, when I eventually lapse and you know that I will, who is going to care, certainly not me. 😳
My 2012 Report Card
Erendira Wallenda
Angry Birds
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot by John McCrady, 1937
PhotoFunia
The Best Bike in the Whole World
Flowers for Mom
Anne was completing her fourth grader’s report cards last night. She has twenty students, so she had twenty report cards to do. With each report card’s completion she would tick off another 5%, until she made it to 100%. Her work and the end of this year inspired me contemplate a blog post that summarizes the year 2012. I started wading through the archives, but I soon realized that the scope of this endeavor was too daunting. Then providence intervened in the form of my blog’s annual report from WordPress. The WordPress report is a bit heavy on crunchy numbers, factoids and statistics. They are probably too boring to most of you, but allow me to leaven those figures with some insights.
The gallery of photographs that accompanies this post highlights the most popular of 2012. Some visitors came searching, for Erendira Wallenda, M is for the many things she gave me lyrics, PhotoFunia, swing low sweet chariot and angry birds gif. Some like PhotoFunia and M is for are perennial favorites. I am the number one search return on Google for the lyrics M is for the many things she gave me. My brother, Chris’s photo of Erendira Wallenda became the biggest hit of the year, after her husband, Nik Wallenda walked a tightrope across Niagara Falls.
Another interesting facet of the WordPress report is a world map of where my visitor’s came from. Naturally, most came from the US, followed Canada and the UK, but I also got visits from the likes of Afghanistan and Haiti. For some reason I didn’t get any visitors from China, but I did get some from Mongolia. Maybe I’m banned in China like I am in the in the MRH school district. Still, I’ve been visited by almost 150 countries.
This blog had about 50,000 views in 2012, up from 35,000 in 2011. There were 590 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 2,024 posts. There were 847 pictures uploaded. That’s about two pictures per day. The busiest day of the year was June 15th with 947 views. The most popular post that day was the one with the Wallenda photos. Ababsurdo is my number one referrer, still beating out both Facebook and Google.
Howling at the Wind
Why do I howl at the wind each night? I didn’t use to do this. I like the occasional notoriety, but as I write these words,I find, it is the writing that I enjoy the most. Is it clarity of thought that the task of writing imparts? Does writing allow me to see my soul writ large? I don’t know. I began this blog on a dare. The blogger lady that kayaks called me out. I hope she does not regret her call, nor feel like the good Doctor Frankenstein, about the monster she has wrought. Back in the day, back before we had Facebook, Twitter and my blog, I spammed. I spammed my friends, because they were the only ones whose email addresses that I had. That was bad. I was bad, but I was committing just an internet misdemeanor.
Why do I howl? I hope that it is that I don’t get it. I know that it is that I can’t sell it. I guess that it is that I like it. OK, enough with this over articulated dialog. Blogging has replaced surfing, transmit over receive. More than that, blogging has caused both Anne and I to grow. I find myself searching every Friday morning’s “Get Out” section of the paper for weekend blogging activities. I think that my blogging has allowed us to grow as a couple. This blog has been a chore. It is a daily vigil. It is one that I welcome on most days and have become experienced enough about it, so that when I need to shun it, I can now deftly do it. This just happens to be one of those evenings.
Writing on the Bathroom Wall
I’m sitting here, before the keyboard, ready to dispense another self-absorbing cotton ball of a post, and then flick it out, into the blog-o-sphere. Drawn from the plastic, not paper, bag of my life, it is all light, white and fluffy. Dipped in alcohol, it becomes antiseptic and sodden, neither of which, is entertaining.
I crave readers and obsess over the daily hit-count parade. On a good day, the moon and the stars align, and the hits, they just keep-a-coming. Other days, I wonder, if I’d get more readers, by writing on the bathroom wall.
Navel gazing takes many forms. All such gazers are by nature self-absorbed. As a blogger, I sometimes fall prey to this inward turned vision, but is that really a bad thing? I mean, this blog is really all about me, right? I try to make each post entertaining/informative for the reader, but sometimes I don’t have much news, like today. So, informative is out, let’s try being entertaining then.
Navel gazing has as long a history in entertainment as show business itself. Shakespeare farmed the play within the play, most famously in Hamlet. Theater and movies are studded with similar examples. What better theme than a once lost, company of actors banding together to put on the show. So, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, let’s on with the show!
The movie, Julie and Julia, written by Nora Ephron (screenplay) and Julie Powell (book), best captures the blog, as the show within a show. Not so much the Julia Child half, with Meryl Streep, that part is like the musical numbers that are performed throughout the show, as rehearsal numbers, but with command performance perfection. I’m speaking of the Amy Adams’ half, the Julie half, the blogging half of the show. This is where my drama lies.
It starts with Julie Powell’s moment of inspiration, “I could write a blog. I have thoughts.” Then there is the frenetic process of setting up the blog. With most modern blog host, like mine, WordPress, it is just as much fun as shopping. What theme should I choose to decorate with today? I think that I’ll choose this widget and that one over there. Eventually though, you have to start writing. There is no way around it. I went through the inspiration and shopping/setting-up phases and ran straight into the brick wall of writing.
In hindsight, I should have waited before I started this blog. Either that, or taken up a few more dangerous hobbies. Writing this blog, I am mining my life’s experiences at an unsustainable rate. If I was older, or had a few more life shortening pursuits, then maybe before my well ran dry, my obit, of course, published on this blog, might read, he died in his sleep, with a smile on his face, shot in his bed, by a jealous lover. 😉
The joy and anguish of blogging was captured in one moment, in Julie and Julia. I’m speaking of the scene where Julie gets her first comment. She is checking her blog at work; I would never do that. Overjoyed, she tells her co-worker, but then reading the comment, realizes that it is from her mother, who is not supportive and tells Julie so. My family has been supportive, critical at times, but justly so. I have another picture from my brother to show off with this post. I always have my muse at my back, even though I’d be glad to see her take her turn at the keyboard too.
Julie Powell’s blog was scripted from the start, 365 days, and 524 recipes. Her script gave her focus. My blog is about my life, where there is no script, at least none that I have read, just one day at a time. Both halves of Julie and Julia reinforce a core message of persistence. After ten years, Julia finishes her book. Julie spends a year in her kitchen and makes all 524 recipes. Isn’t that what blogging is all about, being there, day after day? I think so. See ya tomorrow!
This post features another photograph from Chris’s camera. This photo reprises two of Chris’s previous pictures of Cannery Row, The Fish Hopper restaurant and a mural, depicting two fishermen coming in with their catch, are combined into one shot. He photographed this as part of Trey Ratcliff’s photo-walk.