Bonus post

* Twitter and LiveJournal are down for server maintenance at the same time.

* It only took me about 90 minutes, but I updates my link list. I nearly broke down and moved over to a blogspot.com address so I could have fancy widgets, but that would mean my archives and such would no longer be stored on my own server. Strange things we choose to have pride about.

* In the course of minor updates to my template, I added a link to my blogger profile and discovered I've been at this crazy business pretty consistently for SEVEN YEARS.

* At the tender age of 17, I racked up 450 posts (with some help from my best friend) in seven months. Just a factoid.

* On that fateful anniversary near the end of the month, I'll repost that inaugural blog update that launched what may be by now a million-word-career. It tickles my nostalgia bone as I still remember the events described.

* My 7th blog-day is one event. Another, ongoing one, will be the daily posting of poetry along with my usual sketches for (hopefully) the rest of the year. Much of it will be sourced from bouts teenage poetry (2002), but some from 2006 (at 21) and this year as well. Yes, I'm being picky. Yes, I'm cleaning them up. No, I don't plan to look for stuff from high school ('99-01).

* .... Yes, I'm looking at my high school work. Curse you archive.org! Most of it was awful (a poem in pig latin), but I think I showed potential, in an adolescent way. A couple years I had an embarassing amount of work in our school's literary magazine. I'm pretty sure this one was included:

To whom it may concern

It seems you were concerned
About my attitude,
Not knowing what I've learned,
My mental latitude.

You rate me as "depressed",
Or at best "pessimistic",
Poetry brings out "suppressed".
That's not realistic.

So I write some aches of heart
But that's not all of me
My poems can be quite tart
I'll show you else, if you'll see.

I find joy in writing, writing
Till my fingers nearly bleed
In my room with candle lighting
From an idea mustard seed.

You read little of my works
Many are full of laughter
With my true personal quirks
That are remembered days after.

My happy side is not favored
In the sight of the world
'Cause it's often silly flavored
And I am the Girl Who Twirled.

Away from paper, pen and ink
I am free to be up-beat,
To not care what others think,
Skip to class with bare feet.

My glass is not simply half-full,
It is really overflowing.
My energy has not a lull
If I try to be outgoing.

So what you read that I have writ
Isn't all of who is me.
It contains one-tenth the wit
Of the me I'd wish you'd see.

* Lastly, changing the subject again, someone from this project contacted me on flickr asking to use this photo in exchange for a copy of the book:


Interesting!