Still Geeky After All These Years

Yesterday was the five-year anniversary of my blog. In that time, I've written fewer posts than many people do in a single year: 183, including this one. In the same five years, I've also written:

2-1/2 books,
a dozen guest posts for other blogs (more or less...I'm too lazy to go back and actually count),
a dozen or so interviews (ditto),
a couple of recommendation letters,
a few thousand emails,
one or two actual snail mail letters,
259 tweets, and
a really bad poem for a contest to make Bella Stander laugh.

When I started this gig, experts insisted that one had to blog EVERY DAY. They were so adamant about this, I almost expected them to hunt me down and slap my face for my impudence. I didn't mean to be naughty. But I knew I'd end up with 1) a helluva lot of crappy blog posts and 2) a very short-lived blog, because 3) all my neurons would explode from the pressure.

Just say no to detonated gray matter, that's my motto.

Which maybe is why I'm still here, writing about geeky stuff that interests me. So to everyone who stops by, thank you. (Pink, so you know it comes straight from my heart.) I truly appreciate you.

Year Six is going to be fun. Puppy adventures. And (I hope) a brand-new foray into publishing. More news on that as I get it. For now, dear and faithful reader, I leave you with this...because nothing says love like yet another goofy cat video.

Gray Funk

"...for he hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain..." Joel 2:23

I don't know what good old Joel was actually prophesying, but if he was talking about the Pacific Northwest spring of 2011, I'd say he hit the nail right on the head. We've been getting the rain. And the former rain. And the latter rain. Day after day, our weather forecasts have called for "steady rain," "increasing rain," "continuing rain," "rain turning to showers," and then, just to shake things up, "showers turning to rain." In between all that downpour, it drizzles. Unless, for kicks and giggles, it decides to hail.

This isn't standard-issue Portland damp. A sample of the records broken last month:

Consecutive days of rain in March: 23. (Old record: 16.)
Total days of rain in March: 28. (Old record: 27.)
Latest date in the year to hit 60 degrees: March 31st. (Average: February 16th.)

I wish I could report that the first two weeks of April have turned it around. But so far, it's been more of the same. You know it's bad when even the natives--who normally pride themselves on their dewy complexions, from all that moisture in the air--get cranky and start complaining.

Anyway, I think the unremitting, dripping gloom is why I've been in a funk lately. That, and the cold from hell that won't go away. The euphoria of spring, the exhilaration and new energy that come with the daffodils and lengthening days...it just ain't happening, people.

Of course, compared to what's been going on in the world, this is nothing. I shouldn't even be complaining. Time to stop moping out the window and kick the cheery part of my brain back into gear. But how?

Hmm. Perhaps I shall type "cutest kitten in the world" into Google.

Oh, yeah. That helps.

So does this *geeking out, yay!!*



What about you? What do you do when the weather gets you down? Does music pick you up? Favorite movies? A special kind of tea? Doughnuts? Please advise, my friends!