I’ve procrastinated enough. Time for the 1000th post. I started posting, at least with photos, on August 17th 2006. That was 3 years, 6 months, and 23 days ago. 186 weeks, 1303 days, 31,000 hours, or a 100,000,000 seconds. I’ve posted 1000 times, or once every 1.3 days, or better than 75% of the time. Of the 300 odd days without posting, many are Fridays, when I usually forget to post. Other times I have been out of the town, or even out of the country, although with flickr that has become less of an impediment. I expect my rate for the next 1000 to be higher, and I expect my posts, which have diminished in quality, to be better.

What was going on in August 2006? Well, there was no silly recession, at least that I remember. I was so technologically primitive that I wasn’t even using google calendar (so I don’t really know what was going on). Broadly, I was starting graduate school; I had just ordered my ‘new’ computer (on which I’m writing this post). I had just moved into my new apartment, and Christina and I had just taken a summer trip through the Southwest.

Since then, I’ve gotten engaged, I’ve been baptized, I’ve taught courses and done research. I’ve been to China (several times), California, New Mexico, Washington DC, Washington, Iowa, Canada, and who knows where else. Christina and I moved into our first apartment. I stopped Quotables, started (then stopped) 2weeker, did a course on design, furnished two apartments, took up photography seriously, and purchased a trash can. I’ve been in at least three bicycle accidents, including one two days ago in which a careless pedestrian (who was having a conversation in the middle of the road), walked blindly into the street. I swerved to avoid her and immediately took a nose-dive into a fountain full of rocks.

What’s next? I’ve had a long series of revelations in the past 3.5 years. I think most people over the age of 30 would call this process “growing the hell up,” but I am startled by how sudden the process is. Just going back to my old posts, the “voice” of those posts just sounds like a young, college-aged version of me. For example, in March 2007 I was agonizing over a decision about a T-Mobile phone; I don’t even have T-Mobile anymore. Even interacting with my friends from college and high school, who are relatively unchanged in personality, it is evident that we have all grown up very quickly in those years. Nowhere is it more evident than my friends in California, who are bearing children at a fantastic rate.

What am I going to do to celebrate this 1000th post (as well as my birthday, tomorrow)? For one, I want to re-dedicate myself to blogging. I’ve been pretty lazy about it recently; I put a picture up, press publish, and call it a day. But I’ve forgotten how much I enjoy blabbing on to you, my very narrow audience, about random occurrences, thoughts, and stories. I’ve also forgotten how cathartic it is to get stuff onto paper (so to speak). And, I’ve also forgotten how much I rely on this electronic clutch to serve as my memory of what I was doing on a certain time.

For these few weeks, I’ll be going back in time through the posts, finding little funny bits. I’m also going to strive to post more about what I’m doing with my life, which I’ve been hesitant to do when I realized that these writings could impact people I know (from work, for example). I’ll also start off by posting a picture that recalls the very 1st post, about “my beautiful girlfriend Christina” (who will be my wife in just over a month). That and a goat named Butterscotch.