Happy Birthday to Blog

Well, the grand day has finally arrived. One year has passed since my first-ever blog post.

Hooray!

According to voting readers, the best post ever on this blog is "Best Goldbergish Post Ever?," which just goes to show that elections aren't worth much.

The more exclusive "jury prize"--selected by a panel of secretive experts--for best Goldbergish post goes to "I Apologize" (although it's neither on this blog or written by me), and to "Piano Lessons" (also not on this blog and not by me), which just goes to show how bad secretive experts are at following directions, even if they have good taste.

In other news, this blog has gotten 4,400 visits to date, at an average visit duration of three and a half minutes. Assuming that the average reader's time is worth $10/hr, that means just over $2,500 worth of your collective time has been spent here. That's awfully low tuition for the wonderful education you've been getting in such valuable subjects as. . . um. . . oh, look, it's an eagle!


Word to the wise: never hold a blog birthday costume party.
I'm just sayin'.

Best Goldbergish Post Ever?

It has come to our attention that next Wednesday is the first birthday of this blog. Hooray!

At the birthday celebrations, we'd like to give a special award for the best post. In order to determine what that post is, however, we'll need your input. What's been your favorite post on this blog to date?


Mr. Pizza man wants to know what you like
so badly, he's bleeding out of his eyes.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

This morning Nicole was feeling particularly gross. Because I have no way or knowing whether you are close enough to knock on wood after reading this, I will not suggest that this may be an indication that the relatively golden weeks of the second trimester are drawing to a close. I will stick to telling you, instead, that around 10 am Nicole announced that this day was not meeting her expectations, and she would like to start over.



A generically good husband, I'm sure, would have thought of something comforting or optimistic to say. But I am not a generically good husband, I'm Nicole's husband, and standard optimism will not always do. So I told her the scariest story I could think of instead.

"Speaking of starting the day over, can you imagine going through a Groundhog Day experience while pregnant?" I said.

Nicole groaned, and then laughed her dark, death-defying sort of laugh.

I love our marriage.

Peace in the Middle East

I think that many of us can agree that peace has been so difficult to achieve in the Middle East because the people there are uniquely obstinate in not being able to recognize governments they don't agree with ideologically. If those Middle Eastern people (let's call them Middle Easties) would just travel, trade, and negotiate with each other like normal people instead of trying to kill each other, there wouldn't be a problem.

I mean, it's been over fifty years, and they still can't treat each other civilly. Where else on earth does stuff like that still happen?

My Dream

Some people work for years to discover their dreams, but today mine fell SPLAT onto my head, sort of like an egg that had been broken in the sky after being laid by a drunken bird in mid-air.

Forget writing. My dream is to start a bakery.

It will a vegetarian bakery, specializing in cakes without meat. We will also have cupcakes without meat, brownies without meat, even milk without meat to go with them!

If things go well, I may add a meat-free ice cream bar on the side. We'll also offer meat-free lollipops for vegetarian children.

I've already done a sketch for our general advertising:

And some special advertising sketches for more niche markets:

The March of the Theses

I would like to write a documentary for Morgan Freeman to narrate. It will be about intrepid Master's Theses which trek past several authorities and through several forms to the center of Antartica--where, tragically, most will never even get a date.

One of the scenes in my documentary will be this very moment, in which a graduate student (played by me) writes this blog post to inform readers that a month after his thesis defense, his thesis has been submitted as a .pdf document for approval by people with sharp eyes and red pens.

In one of the film's most moving moments, Morgan Freeman will explain that the student, who appears to be sitting and typing like always, is actually providing a link through which people can preview and even download the pdf of his thesis, even before it is approved! How exciting!

Unfortunately, by this point most of the audience will already be asleep.

Oh, well.