so i've been fighting with this whole "catching up" thing... admittedly, i felt pretty inarticulate yesterday and just didn't see myself trying to put words to the last 6 months, and i figured "who freakin' cares what i've been doing the last 6 months, anyway?" i wondered just how curious the 3 people who read this blog actually were about my absence...
then i started exploring the new typepad dashboard. they've upgraded and added a bunch of new cranks, knobs and levers to the dash to make it easier to navigate - and i have to say they accomplished what they set out to do, and beautifully so. it's not only a lot more aesthetically pleasing, now it's actually... easier.
one of the new features (well, new to me - it might have been there all along and i just never found it... the old typepad dashboard sometimes felt something like a hedge maze) is the nifty "overview" - it's a hit counter and a spiffy chart that shows how many unique views your blog has had, when it was hit, where the referral came from, etc... cool, right? not that i would really care, what with the THREE people that read this blog - and that was when i was keeping it up on a regular basis.
somehow, i had 282 hits since midnight last night. huh? are you kidding? what the... huh? i pored over the data for several minutes early this morning trying to make sense of what i was seeing (pre-coffee and then post-coffee, just for good measure) and unless the good people at typepad are jerkin' my chain, it just might have... actually happened. honestly not sure how, but still...
so...
somebody gives a crap, i guess. friends? maybe. family? possibly. stalker? could be. whoever it is reading my dorky little blog, thanks... and here are those bullet points i sort of said i wasn't going to be bothering with for a while... this is my last 6 months in a nutshell and crap that i probably would have written about:
- let me just start by saying that looking back on the last 6 months, it feels like it might have been sort of rough, but i made it through. and it did have a few high spots.
- i was in my tent on a camping trip when a tornado came through our campsite and collapsed my tent. my best friend mary saved my life by pulling me out of my tent - even after the tornado literally ripped all of her clothes off of her.
- i went to los angeles to visit my friend amos and to see my aunt & uncle in hollywood
- i drank a lot while i was there. a lot. it was a pretty darn good time.
- i had kidney stones. i don't recommend them.
- i found out that my very first real crush, brian palazetti, was killed in a motorcycle accident just after highschool
- i spent a great weekend in austin with my best friends on a pretty snazzy girls' weekend
- i got to sing at the bugle boy in la grange
- i had cocktails with my first "we've never actually met but we know each other on facebook" friend
- i actually journaled so much that i filled a journal from beginning to end with actual... words
- i took down a few walls that i'd spent years constructing and fortifying... and then i built a couple more...
- i wasted valuable time - that i'll never get back - on the craziest person i've ever met. seriously - he was nuts... like, "needs-locking-up-crazy-out-of-his-damn-mind-gorilla-shit" nuts. he's a very talented photographer, but that's where the not-crazy ends. he was also something of an asshole.
- i learned to actually like my job, most of the time
- i bought a new car
- i developed a huge crush on seth rogen
- i painted my dining room orange, my foyer & kitchen a lovely buttery yellow, and handpainted wallwords in my bedroom
- i turned 38
- i discovered exactly what i'm not looking for in a man
- i learned that a few of my friends are a LOT crazier than i am
- i lost a couple of friends that turned out to be complete assholes... so no real loss, actually.
- i tried to cure my best friend shannon's hiccups by screaming and gave her a righteous, honest-to-god anxiety attack and made her wet her pants. really... still seriously sorry, shannon...
- i reconnected with my oldest running-buddy girlfriends from the 4th grade
- i had a photo published to schmap from my trip to los angeles
- i created a pretty stunning set of sterling silver wedding bands for some friends in NYC
- i didn't get ANY new tattoos (well, within the last 6 months anyway)
- i ate and enjoyed pecans for the first time in my entire life - and yes, i'm a texan...
- i discovered it's never a good idea to pluck your eyebrows in the dark
- i learned that some people, no matter how old they get, still have the same maturity level that they had when you knew them in highschool
- i found out that the asshole that cheated on me and broke my heart 6 years ago actually married the woman he cheated on me with... and she's really, really unattractive.
- i learned that it's not a good decision to set your phone on top of a full cup of coffee, even for a minute
- i found out that wounds heal slowly, but they do heal...
i have a feeling i'll add more to this list at some point in the near future, but for now, that's a pretty decent rundown of the last 6 months... it wasn't all pretty, but i learned quite a bit and i suppose that's what's really important... right? that's what they say, anyway.
on a completely different note, it rained here in temple yesterday for the first time in almost 3 months... 3 long months of temperatures in the triple digits - as high as 107 degrees. anybody that knows me knows what a perpetually crappy mood i'm in during summers in texas, especially during a drought. yesterday saw me in the best mood i've been in since sometime in april. here's to hoping it starts raining sometime around 6pm this evening and doesn't stop until around 6am on monday morning.



























