Centepostary

This is the 100th installment of It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time!

One year ago, I launched this little project - not really sure what I was going to do with it, in truth.  But the situation in which I then found myself lent a lot of credence to Janis Joplin's maxim that "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."  I actually said that more than once.  So I tried a few things.  Some of them didn't work, like my photo book, which never sold a single copy (except the one I bought myself).  Some of them, like this blog, did.

It's been an interesting year.  I've interacted with people I never expected to meet, like Do One Nice Thing's Debbie Tenzer and author John Scalzi and the staff of Walter Reed Hospital.  I've discovered organizations and charities I didn't know existed, like Water.org and Caps for Good.  It's been a learning process.  In largest part, it's been a lot of fun.

So what's next?  Good question.

They say "do what you love and the money will follow."  Well, this is what I love to do.  I'm not getting rich, but it brings in a little cash now and then.  I am, however, open to expanding the situation.  So I'm some degree of excited to share with you the existence of official merchandise for the blog.

If you've ever wanted the blog's name on a t-shirt, a postcard, or a host of other merchandise, now's your chance.  Or maybe you'd like something featuring the little purple flower.  Or some of my other nature photography.  Or an original design I made for the Sherlock Holmes fandom.  Whatever you think might appeal to your senses, please check out my Little Shop of Laura's. 

Yes, the name is a pun on Little Shop of Horrors.  After a whole year of this, my puns shouldn't really be all that surprising anymore.

Thanks for making the first hundred posts so much fun!  Here's to another year!

Happy Birthday, D1NT!

I don't have much time for blogging today - I have a few dozen more things to do before my goddaughter's wedding on Saturday, and no time at all in which to do them. But I'm carving out a few minutes to wish a very happy birthday to Do One Nice Thing, which turns six years old this month! Many congratulations to Debbie Tenzer, arguably the nicest person on the planet, who founded D1NT to encourage people to make the world a better place in little easy ways.

To celebrate this important milestone, Debbie's inviting you and you and you and you to participate in their do-gooder scavenger hunt. You'll follow a list of instructions in which you do some simple tasks on the internet that benefit various charities. Send your completed list of answer to Debbie, and she'll add your name to the D1NT Wall of Fame!

Happy birthday, D1NT. May you continue to make a difference for many years to come!

You're Caller Number Twenty

First of all, today is Memorial Day here in these United States. So a big, big thank you to all the servicemen and women, past and present, who sacrifice everything up to and including their lives to make it possible for us to live in freedom.

So a few posts ago, I talked about how the acquaintance of a friend was holding a giveaway to celebrate the fact that she'd reached 200 followers. I snarked that I didn't have the patience to wait that long and would possibly do something when I had twenty.

Well, guess what I have.

In addition to twenty followers, I am less than three hundred views (currently) away from reaching my 10,000th hit on this blog. Given my fondness for round numbers and my burning desire to be vaguely entertaining, it seemed like a good thing to celebrate.

I'd like it to be something fun and interactive. I'd also like it to possibly do some good for other people, because that's how this blog rolls.

How's this? I'll open it up for your submissions. If you would like to do a guest post in this blog to spread the word about your favorite charity/non-profit/other do-good type of venture, leave me a comment and tell me what it is. From the responses I receive, I will pick three winners who will each be allowed to submit guest posts on their chosen topics. Those three winners will also receive a little something special in the mail from me, maybe from my box of books that I'm no longer keeping. I'll work that out with the winners themselves.

Hopefully there will be at least three entries, because otherwise I'm gonna feel really silly offering three prizes.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

The post that would normally go here on a Thursday is going to be deferred until either later tonight or tomorrow morning.

See, it's St. Patrick's Day. And I celebrate that.

I'm not Irish. (Well, maybe a tiny bit through one of my great-grandmothers, but not enough to give it much thought.) My husband, however, is - and looks it. We're talking 100% pure natural redhead, keep out of direct sunlight kind of Irish.

Due to a series of somewhat bizarre circumstances, our originally planned wedding date of October 7, 2000 had to be canceled. (Years later, when we buried my beloved grandfather on October 7th, I remembered this and was grateful for those bizarre circumstances.) So instead we got married on St. Patrick's Day in 2001.

As of about an hour ago, we have been married for exactly ten years. That's kind of a long time, these days. As my friend Kate said in her congratulatory email, "Ten years and you still like each other! That's quite an accomplishment!" And we do, that's the thing.

In a little while we'll be going out for our traditional St. Patrick's Day anniversary dinner -- at the Japanese steakhouse. This always gets people's eyebrows raised, but it's actually kind of logical. A few years ago, we attempted to go out to dinner for our anniversary, and pretty nearly every local restaurant was crammed with St. Patrick's Day partiers. On a whim, we tried the Japanese place, and lo, it was very nearly empty. Because after all, who eats Japanese food on the Irish holiday? So now we go every year.

I put it this way in my Facebook status: Ten years ago, I changed my name. I've done a lot of things that I regret, but that's one I've always known I got right.

So while I fully intend to do a normal blog post later on, right now I'm just relaxing in the company of my favorite person, reflecting on the fact that we've made it this far and, if we have anything to say about it, will keep on going. Check back with me tomorrow for a regular update about saving the world in weird ways; just for today, my world is going to be very small.

Three Monthaversary

Today it's exactly three months since this blog officially opened. It's an absolutely frigid day here, following a surprisingly unproductive blizzard that gave me a harrowing drive home from work but left us with little snow to show for it. Fortunately, it's also my day off, so I'm at liberty to wear fleece all day and think about things like what this blog has accomplished in just three months' time.

Truth is, at three months old, the blog is already farther along than I would have expected. Things have happened. Good things, at that. So let's take a look at some of those things.

Regarding Origins

If you've read my page of questions that may or may not be asked frequently, you know that the blog's name comes from my desire to head off the obvious question. The truth is that the name comes from the answer to that question, which I was asked back when I was pondering starting the thing. A well-meaning friend was playing devil's advocate, asking me why I wanted to do this, and I could come up with no better reason than "It seemed like a good idea at the time." It did, and it still does.

It amuses me that some time after the blog began, I learned that it shares its name with a specific trope at the TV Tropes website. (That site is addictive; enter at your own risk.)

Following Up on Some Stories

For a while, of course, the blog focused solely on humorous experiences from my own bizarre little life. That all changed on November 8th, when I decided to break tradition in order to post I Like Them Apples, a commentary on the situation involving a publication stealing copyrighted work from the internet. And suddenly the blog exploded. My hit count went a bit haywire, which I later discovered was almost entirely thanks to one Mr. John Scalzi. He had been involved with the story and had linked to my post from his own blog, resulting in my being read by a lot more people than I expected. To this day, that post has the second-highest hit count of anything on the blog.

Of course, the Cooks Source incident hardly stopped with my blog post. For those who have not heard, the magazine which was responsible for the unification of the entire internet has been forced to close its doors; it lost its advertisers, its reputation, and its credibility. The magazine's website, with its full badly-written farewell message, has been taken down; but salient points remain forever readable thanks to this article at Gawker.com. We internet people are mean indeed.

I don't have too much of an update regarding my next subject, the TSA pat-down incidents, since that whole situation is still ongoing. I can say, however, that my friend Naomi flew in to spend Thanksgiving with me, had a layover in Chicago's O'Hare airport, and was disappointed not to see a single kilted protestor.

The 'Apples' post remained my top hit until December 2nd, when I posted twice. Shortly before I went to bed that night, I saw where a relative had posted on Facebook about sending holiday cards to recovering soldiers at Walter Reed. You can't do that, and I realized that a lot of people still thought you could. Looking up the Twitter hashtag #walterreed was enough to prove it. So I wrote about Walter Reed and the Holiday Mail Snafu, passed on the link to several of the people on Twitter who had circulated the bad information, and shared it with a few message boards I periodically haunt. The estimable Chris "RolloT" Larios of Channel Awesome was kind enough to share it with his many Twitter followers.

Apparently, what efforts I did make to spread the news was enough to send the darn thing viral, because seven hundred hits later, it's the most-read thing on the site. Hopefully, this means that a lot more recovering soldiers got holiday greetings this year than they might otherwise have done. Hands down the coolest thing to happen as a result was the message I received from the staff of Walter Reed Hospital itself, thanking me for writing the post. (You can read their comment on the original post, and yes, it really is from them.) I sort of felt like I'd done a small service for my country. My Twitter followers also increased as a result of the post, and possibly the most surprising one there was the fact that I'm now followed by the official Twitter account of the New York Post.

At least, I'm assuming they follow me because of the Walter Reed thing; the only other possibility would be that they started following me because of my post about St. Margaret's Center in Albany. My friend Jaclyn was working hard to raise funds and clothing for the residents of this complex medical needs facility, where she volunteers, and I lent her whatever power my blog may have to increase her visibility. I put her in touch with the wonderful Debbie Tenzer of Do One Nice Thing, who only too enthusiastically jumped on board to help.

How much I may have helped, I don't know. But Jaclyn was overwhelmed by the response to everything; her bake sale, which was the primary focus of my post, raised almost $500. Her clothing drive brought in about ten large black garbage bags full of clothing, and they received four big boxes of books for the residents as well. There were also boxes of other generous donations too, and the residents had themselves a wonderful Christmas. I'm so proud of Jaclyn for her hard work, and so grateful to any of you who took the time to spread the word or contribute to the effort.

So now, with the December festivities (and, you know, the year) drawing to a close, we come to this post. If I get just 600 more visits in the next few days, I'll reach a hit count of 5,000 by the end of 2010, which would be amazing. There's also that whole Blogger's Choice Awards thing, which I don't expect to win but find terribly amusing all the same. And really, how cool would it be if I could say that mine was voted "Best Blog About Stuff"? That's about the best way you can possibly describe it.

Thanks for reading, gang. You've helped to make the last three months a lot of fun. I hope you'll stick around and see what's coming next, because I myself have no idea.

Milestones, Monoliths, and Other M Words

I'm writing this, my last blog post of the month of October, from my mother's house. With as many windows as this place has, and as many trees surround it, it seems like it was basically built for the express enjoyment of autumn. Autumn is my favorite season, and October is my favorite month (usually). There's something about the smell of wood fires and fresh-pressed cider that makes me a little nostalgic, even if I don't always know what it is I'm feeling nostalgic for. With that in mind, I thought I would offer this retrospective of some of the highlights from my writing career.

I use the words "highlights" and "career" with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Just saying.

I first decided to become an author when I was nine years old. I have long since forgotten exactly what prompted this decision, but unlike most of my other childhood ambitions, this one has never wavered. Other career options I considered during my youth were to become a minister, an English teacher, and the first female President of the United States. Turns out that I hate teaching, I hate politics even more, and -- well, I was a church secretary, so I did at least work in religion for a time. But I was writing all the while.

Very shortly after naming it my lifetime goal, I actually became a published author... as long as one subscribes to an extremely loose definition of the word published. Actually, what I did then is not entirely different from self-publishing in today's media world, except on a much smaller scale. I received a typewriter for Christmas that year, on which it was generally expected that I would hammer out a magnum opus. What I wrote instead was my first short story, a thrilling mystery starring myself, my sister, and several of our neighbors and my classmates. We were out to solve a recent ring of dognappings throughout our extremely small community, and ultimately discovered that the dogs had been stolen by a gang of thugs. The reason for the animal thefts was never explained, nor did I ever bother coming up with one. This story is memorable chiefly for the fact that the leader of this gang of thugs was an anthropomorphic tube of toothpaste.

I'm not even going to try to guess what freakish logic my younger self was employing here. I've long since forgotten and I think that may be for the best.

Anyway, the reason I say this was published is that my grandparents had just acquired a copy machine for their home office. It was an early-model copier, the kind that still required the use of carbon paper, and my grandmother (bless her goofy heart) decided that my story deserved to be copied and distributed to some of the neighbors and other relatives. So she ran off about ten copies, had me autograph them, and shared my genius with our extended acquaintance.

As may be expected, I was praised by the adults (if only for my spelling and punctuating skills) and mocked extensively by my peers, though at the same time they were laughing hysterically they were also asking to be in the sequel. There was a sequel, actually. We were assisted in our efforts to solve another mystery, concerning a genuinely haunted house and with no toothpaste anywhere, by the Ghostbusters, but I don't recall that one ever getting finished.

I continued writing, usually at my grandfather's typewriter, which was much bigger and cooler than my own. He saved everything I ever wrote, too, and gave it to me in a folder shortly before I was married. It was mostly short stories of varying quality, and poetry.

In high school I attempted to write a horror novel, and used the school as the setting. I recruited volunteers from among my classmates to serve as victims and had possibly the most deliciously morbid fun of my life constructing elaborate, disgusting deaths for them all. Oddly, I don't even like the horror genre, so I'm not sure what I was hoping to accomplish, but members of my graduating class declared me "Most Likely to Be the Next Tim Burton."

I started freelancing in my twenties, thanks to a college friend who worked as a magazine editor. She added me to their stable of regular freelancers, sending me completed interviews and having me turn them into articles. I also wrote my first book, Saving the World in Your Spare Time, which hasn't aged very well but hey, I wrote a book. I was even interviewed by CNN and got mentioned on their website, which kind of resulted in me screaming. (The book is about volunteering, and CNN was doing a very short piece on the subject.) The biggest deal about that whole thing was that it turned out to be the only book I completed before the deaths of my grandparents, so I was frankly just grateful they got to see it.

I've just completed a second book, although it's not really a showcase for my writing. God is in the Details is a small gift-size book of my photography, and is only available through its publisher, Lulu.com. I'm at work on a novel, though, and hope to have it finished by the end of the year; expect some shameless self-promotion when the time comes. If you'd like to see the photo book, just click on the handy link on the right where it says "Store!" and you'll be taken to my Lulu spotlight; click on the book to view it, and then click on it again to see some preview pages. It was just something I did for fun. Right now I'm trying a bunch of new things.

Like this blog. This was honestly just an experiment -- sort of What should I do now? combined with That looks like fun. And it really did seem like a good idea at the time. I must be doing something right, too, because Blogspot's stats have just informed me I'm on the verge of breaking 1,000 pageviews. That's much more than I expected or even hoped to get in the space of the first month! So thank you all for reading.