Touch You Last

This was a hell of a lot more work than I imagined it to be, but now that I'm done, it was totally worth it. In reviewing your year of blogs, I returned to posts that I loved and discovered others I'd somehow missed the first time around. There was no set-in-stone system used in the selection process. Some were chosen for the writing, some were chosen for subject matter, some were chosen for the humour, and some were a combination of the three. Agree? Disagree? I’d love to hear about it. If you want to suggest an alternate entry of your own choosing, let me know and I’ll add it to my list. Thanks for making 2007 an interesting year. ----- 50 Books He's No Book Expert, but He Knows What He Hates Almontage 10 Great Things About Turning 60 Barking Space Reality Check Black Thunder Motorsports Baby Chronicles Curious Kiera I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Wino Miss Matched Kill The Goat What the FUCK Was I Thinking? Larocque and Roll Fun with government documents! Monty on Movies The ...

Just over 1001 days ago , I posted this list, boldly memeing where all kinds of people had memed before. It was a moderate success. Mostly, the goals I fell short on were lame to begin with, and a few others were just never gonna happened. To review my successes, you can click through here . In this post, I’ll just be apologizing for my failures. 4. Run a 22 minute 5K – I closed in on this one last year, but only got down to about 24:55. This was doable (I think), but I strayed from the gym and backslid, and then just forgot about it entirely. 5. Run another half-marathon – I’m still flip-flopping over whether I’ll ever do one of these again. 8. Learn enough HTML to redesign this site – Sorry, but that shit’s just a mystery to me. I figured out enough to change a few colours and mess with margins, but I’d have to look it up all over again if I wanted to make more changes. 10. Bench press my own weight five times (in a row, folks) – Forty pounds shy on this one. And that was ...

We hadn’t really been away that long, but getting back home last night I had that ahhhhhhhhh feeling—the one I get from having a lot of a good thing but then being strangely glad that that good thing is finally over. Stayed with Sarah’s parents for a day: watching lots of football, playing lots of Oh Shit!, and eating my weight in shrimp and baked goods. Saw the whole Jorge family, complete with Mrs. J., Baby J. and the man himself. (Baby J. is so insanely cute. She has this awesome lean-forward, chest-out, chin-up stance that says check out how awesome I am . Jorge has the same stance, but it’s somewhat less cute.) The bulk of our time away was spent with my parents and 82% of my immediate family. This of course included the McLean Christmas Shooter Party, which was a partial success. Shooters were shot, poker was played, and in the end someone barfed—but that turned out to be my four year-old niece, and it wasn’t an alcohol-induced barfing (so I’m told ). After that, we pop...

I didn't pull this off too well last time I tried it , but we'll try it again. I'm currently: watching "All Quiet on the Western Front" doing Work work listening to Sarah read celebrity dirt out of "The Academy Awards: The Complete Unofficial History" blogging (clearly) All Quiet is an amazing movie. Dark, terribly sad, still relevant. . . problem being, the version I'm watching is on VHS and unrestored , and while the picture isn't bad the sound is muddy as hell. I should be giving this movie more attention than I am, but too bad so sad. I'm not generally an elitist, but today I'm making an exception. In entirely unrelated news, I'm a little obsessed with the whole genre of Tower Defence games. right now. (If you don't know what that is, just follow the link. Wikipedia will explain it better than I can. My gateway drug was Desktop TD , which I sucked at. Then I moved on to Vector TD (mastered in short order). Lately ...

Shave the hair off your body and strip down naked. Then pour hot water over yourself so that your skin steams when you walk out into the cold. Run up to the first person you see and demand, “What day is today?” When they answer with the day of the week, shout, “What year?!?” After they respond, bellow, “God, NO! I’m too late! ” Suddenly, look up into the sky in terror, then shield your face and scream, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Hilarious!

Here’s a confession: I often go back and reread my old posts. And I find I’m entertained by myself. What does this say about me? Does this make me an asshole? (Not a belligerent, kick-sand-in-your-face kind of asshole, but more of the boorish, self-satisfied type). Or maybe we all do it. If you’re keeping an open blog rather than a private journal, then in some small or large part, you are proud of yourself. Which isn’t wrong in and of itself; I suppose the trick is not to be overly proud. I also go back and reread those two lonely issues of Armada once in a while. We did a good thing there, and I don’t know that we’ll ever get back to doing it. I read them and I’m amazed at the level of writing, especially the work that came from absolute strangers. And the work from our friends—I knew that to be great long before we published it, but seeing it the context of a journal makes me appreciate it so much more. And my story: I’m proud of that. It’s not very often that I think abo...