Aug Blog #1: Happy Blogiversary (Blogaversary?) to Me

Why, yes, gentle readers (all six of you), you have now been reading my blog for six years. I started my blog at the very beginning of August 2010. Back then I had a) more disposable income and b) more disposable time on my hands, so I blogged daily or every couple of days.

I just checked. I posted 18 full blog posts in August 2010 plus two little quickie things. These days I am lucky to do one post a month.

So I need to step up my blogging game.

I can't do 18 posts this month. It's already the 24th. But I will endeavour to do six blog posts between now and the end of the month to commemorate my six years of blogging about yarn p0rn, knitting highs and lows, random photographs, and sundry other miscellanea. It won't actually be hard to do six posts because I've just returned from 9 days of bliss in Victoria BC with Princess, and I think I took about 600 pictures. So I can easily string a bunch of blog posts out of that stuff. Really it's just about finding the time and the energy, both of which are in short supply.

So this is the first post. I am possibly going to do the posts thematically. I can do posts for My Birthday, Sidewalk Art, The Royal BC Museum, the Butchart Gardens, Art Work in Victoria, Souvenir Yarn and possibly some others.

I'm going to start with the Birthday Post because my last actual blog post was July 24 (a month ago - for shame).

The Birthday Post

I think I told you that this year I turned (or was about to turn) the big 5-0. I'm not normally coy about my age, because a number is a number, and really I still feel (inside my head) like I'm 16 years old. Yes, I'm still that immature. But the prospect of 50 was a little daunting because I haven't accomplished much. And at 50, statistically I have less life ahead of me than behind me. So I told people about my upcoming milestone in advance in the hopes that if I said it enough, it wouldn't be quite so scary anymore.

As luck would have it, I had to work on my birthday. I walked in and was greeted by this at my cubicle.

Yes, I work in a cubicle. I'm not a real lawyer anymore, so I don't have an office. Yes, my cubicle is a mess. Yes, I sit on a stability ball. Yes, there are a bunch of boxes piled under my desk. Yes, that apple has been on my tea cup for months now. (I finally threw it away the other day).

But the focus here is on the decorations.

My co-workers got together and went out and procured decorations and cards and gifts (AND a home made Oreo cake which was spectacular) for my birthday.

I got cards. I wondered aloud what it says about me that two of my three cards have swear words on them...

And yes, I was suitably impressed at the use of the apostrophe in "fuck's sake" as opposed to "fuck sake" or "fucks sake" or "fuck sakes" [none of which are grammatically correct].

Because I'm cheating a little on this first blog post, I am going to provide close-ups of the cubicle stuff. How amazing is this bunting? Linda procured it from the internet and printed it off at home on good card stock at home and then strung it together with kitchen twine. I was quite touched. After a week I took it down and brought it home. I think I will put it in the knitting room or in (what will be) the second knitting room [spoiler alert].

There were balloons on three sides of my cubicle. Some were even attached with bulldog clips. I loved them even though they were pastel blue (my kryptonite and least favourite colour in the world).

Felecia and Carly got me pencil crayons and a colouring book! Win win!

And there were flowers!

We had Thai food for lunch (my treat because I was feeling especially exuberant and happy) and then we had the super duper Oreo layer cake which Felecia spent the previous night baking. I didn't think to get any photos of that before it was demolished.

But it was a most excellent way to spend my birthday. I can highly recommend it for anyone who is turning 50 (and who has to work on the big day).

And I am not thinking about 60. No I am not.

50 is the new 30. Or it's the new black.

And one of my oldest friends (oldest in terms of the number of years we've been friends, not in terms of her age - she's only 51) sent me birthday wishes via Princess on Facebook.

No, I don't bother with Facebook. Ravelry and Instagram are my social media vices of choice.

I have a Facebook account [or two, technically, but since I changed email and phone numbers Facebook won't let me access the first one] but never use it and very rarely bother to look at anything unless I get an email from Facebook telling me that so-and-so has posted a picture etc. But if you're posting photos, they should be on Instagram as far as I'm concerned.

My big birthday present was from Princess. She got me airline tickets to come and visit her in Victoria for a week and a bit. She moved out there in July and wanted me to come and see her. I flew out on Thursday August 11 and returned on the red-eye bright and early the morning of August 21 (which was really an early-evening departure on August 20). I lost 4 hours on the way back. So that's why I have about 800 photos this month.

Mind you, some are duplicates and some are automatically imported to my photo stream from WhatsApp.

The Lad used to have an iPhone and he and Princess and I have had an ongoing 3-way group text for years. It's really our primary mode of communication since we're often not together in the same place at the same time.

Then the Lad damaged his phone and he bought a new one, but it was a Google phone or some such Android-based device. So we could no longer use iMessage for our group chats. Felecia (she of the delicious Oreo cake) told me about WhatsApp which is an instant messaging app which allows cross-platform messaging. So now we have a group chat on WhatsApp. In some ways it's superior to iMessage. Any photos or videos are automatically saved to my photo stream. So that's a very long-winded explanation for why I have so many photos. A bunch are from Princess and her epic drive across the country and from the condo. And most of the rest are from my visit this month.

Anyway, I am going to end this one here. Now that I'm 50, I'm old and forgetful and I can't concentrate on stuff for too long. So it's sayonara to this blog post, and I will start another one.

Sorry there is no yarn or knitting in this one. The yarn and knitting have been pretty thin on the ground over the last 5 weeks.