One Thousand

"It's early days yet, but I'm hoping to use this place to talk about politics, soccer and adoption. Hang on while I get myself organized and I'll be back."

That was Monday, the 17th of July, 2006. 1,423 days ago. Three years, ten months, twenty-three days, some hours, minutes, and seconds ago.1,000 posts ago.(Almost exactly 7/10s of a post per day, for those of you keeping count, BTW...)

I would say that I've fulfilled the promise I made to talk about politics and adoption. Soccer? A bit. Birding? Not so much. But bike racing and music and cool things in North Portland and geology and parenting and kiddos and travel and love and fear and success and failure. I hope that all that has been worth coming around for a read now and again.

As for us, along that way we lost a dog, lost (or perhaps never really had...) - and then gained - a daughter, aged three years and change, retired from the Army after 22 years, changed jobs, changed cars...

It's been quite a ride.

I have no idea how much longer I'll keep doing this. I suspect that I may have a few more posts in me. But as long as I continue to enjoy it...and as long as there are a few friends along to upbraid me and keep me straight...I will be here doing business at the Fire Direction Center, perhaps for another thousand posts.And let me just, for a moment, turn this back on you the readers. I've gained more than I've given over the past 1,423 days from your comments and observations. I will always regret and miss those of you who no longer visit; Atomic Mama, Wicked Witch, Millicent and Floyd, Beeb, wzgirl, Dee, holly. And I treasure, and enjoy, those of you who still do. If this place, this thing, this "blog", means anything, it is in the interaction between you and I, between what I write and what you write back.

I had a conversation recently with someone who was contemplating removing herself from Facebook - not all that horrific an option, IMO - but compared it to the "epistolary friendships" of the Nineteenth Century. And so this has been, in a way, a long conversation carried on in writing, between those of us who have visited here and elsewhere.

So, in honor of this 1,000-mile mark, of you all, and of myself, a pint raised to us; who's like us?

Damn few.

And they're all dead.

Thanks for the last thousand. Hope we're here for the next thousand more.