caleb walker

seven.

This is somewhat interesting. The post I made on this blog on this date seven years ago was the first one.

fasten your seatbelts

I'm participating in NaBloPoMo.

What that means is that I'll be trying to post something every day in November. Though lately I haven't been actually, you know, writing actual, you know, posts here, I've been thinking about the old blog while doing other things. Things like looking for a job, polishing up a story and sending it to a few literary journals, and trying to start a new story.

To start, how about this: We've got three boxes of Trader Joe's cereal in the house and I can't stand any of them. TJ's is great for a lot of things, but cereal? Bleagh.

Yes, it's gonna be a wild month.

happy birthday, cw

Today is the sixth birthday of this blog. It's probably not a good idea to do this, but let's look at the number of posts I've made over the years.

2002-03	143
2003-04	211
2004-05	212
2005-06	153
2006-07	123
2007-08	83

Oof. See that miserable 07-08 number? That includes the highest count in a month, my first participation in NaBloPoMo, in which I posted 30 times in November 07.

Highest post count in a non-NaBloPoMo month: 24 - Apr 02, Sep 04 (tie)
Lowest post count in a month: 3 - Sep 07

There you have it. See you next year.

you may already be a loser

I'm a little surprised at the level of disappointment I feel from not winning a NaBloPoMo prize. Yesterday the winners were announced and Caleb Walker was not on the list. Now, yesterday the participants got an email asking who had become pregnant during NaBlo "...so I can get you on the shortlist," and now I'm wondering if I would have had a better shot at a prize if I'd become mit bambino.

To offset that disappointment I took our clothes dryer apart yesterday. It's laying in big chunks in the basement now as it waits for a new, unbroken belt to arrive in the mail. Turns out Home Depot doesn't have parts like that but it does have a website where you can order them. Just like the big bookstores lately, which don't actually have what you want, but they're happy to order it.

Anyway, have a good Monday, everyone. Stay home if you can. Nobody should have to go to work in the freeing rain we're having this morning.

nablopomo, final entry

Oops. I meant this to be my final NaBloPoMo post (as the title indicates). Good thing I posted that strike post yesterday, because I forgot to post this last night. I worked on it yesterday, then when KR got home after a long day at the shop we watched 30 Rock, which I had taped earlier, and she went to bed. But then I thought I'd watch a few minutes of Sicko, our latest arrival from Netflix, just to see what it was like and I couldn't stop. It was so good I couldn't stop until it was over and I was shaking with rage and it was 1am. The post I meant to post last night follows.

It's the end of November and I can now say that it really wasn't really that hard to complete NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month), the spinoff from National Novel Writing Month, which I decided not to participate in this year because there was too much going on, things like teaching a class and rewriting a troublesome story from scratch for my writing group and i think i did a couple other things this month too, though I can't remember them right now.

Anyway, some of the bloggers who successfully posted something every day will win prizes. I'm not sure how the lovely and talented Mrs. Kennedy knows for sure who fulfilled the requirements and who didn't, but I suppose I can trust that she possesses some elements of omnipotence in addition to her loveliness and talent. (I hope she's also susceptible to flattery too. I'd like her to award me the Archie McFee gift certificate.)

As I was saying, committing to a daily posting schedule was not that hard once I let go of the notion that the posts had to be good. And that's really the issue that keeps me from posting more often. I don't have it in me to write a post worthy of Fussy or Dooce or Defective Yeti every day. I can jot a few thoughts and click the "Save" button, but the funny, the poignant, and the logical do not flow from my fingertips quickly and easily. If I want to work toward one or all of those qualities I have to let the thing simmer and revisit it a couple days later.

That's what I do over at Intrepid Media. I jot notes or a full rough draft then give it a second look a day or two later. Then if I don't delete it immediately I might be able to shape it into something. The problem with this process is obvious when you see the long list of notes (some just a single sentence) and unfinished columns saved in my Intrepid portfolio. So if this blog is to improve, it won't be done by posting daily.

PS: I called KR last night (she was keeping the shop open late) and asked her if pumpkin pie was okay to eat after you'd scraped off the mold.

self-promo

My friend TK over at Intrepid Media posted some great hype about this blog on their boards. Awfully nice of her, but then she's awfully nice. So, since I might have some new readers and since I'm without ideas for a post today, Here are some of the best posts, even if I do say so myself.

Seventeen, in which KR and I do 17 things on our seventeenth wedding anniversary.

Rudeness on Flight 532, in which I treat a woman badly simply because my head's about to explode.

Passing, in which KR and I mislead people into thinking I am someone I'm not.

Driveway Hoops, in which two boys nearly damage themselves with basketballs.

...So Little Time, in which a Russian student finds herself with too much on her hands.

Two Falls, in which I fall down twice.

Simple, in which I learn a little about what goes on in Abi's head.

There are more. Just click over to the Favorite tag.

a post about a possible upcoming post

You've seen these self-indulgent "100 things about me" posts, haven't you? (There are a lot of them.) I just skimmed Tokitikki's and her number 100 ("I’m glad I sat down to write these things. In comparison to my list from four years ago, I’ve come a long way.") has me wondering if maybe I shouldn't create a list for myself. And by that I mean for myself. I would post it here so you could skim it, but I would list 100 things about myself so that, a year from now, I could do it again and compare. It's going to take some time, but KR is driving to Santa Fe next week and I'll have some free time for doing self-indulgent stuff like listing 100 things about myself.

self-congratulatory claptrap

Five years ago today, inspired by the likes of Kottke, Defective Yeti, and Dooce, I wrote my first blog post. At the time I thought calebwalker would cover topics of interest to Interaction Designers and such, though I had been laid off a month earlier when the company dissolved their entire Interaction Design team.

That scheme never really took off. My second and third posts were about astronomy and an overheard funny phrase. Then the government started spewing obvious lies about Iraq, and the media and Congress and public believed them, and we invaded a country and began a war on our own freedom. Then we lost Caleb, our first and favorite dog, namesake of this blog. I was unemployed for a year, then took a job as a technical writer, and thought about making this a Tech Writing blog.

But I guess I'm just not that interested in writing about work. I thought for a while I would post bits of fiction about a character named Caleb, but I haven't yet figured out how to write something share-worthy every day.

I've got no big plans for the future. I'll just plug away at this thing when I feel like it, and my little audience (hi, Dad!) will, I hope, keep me bookmarked.

Some stats, according to my Typepad account (I'm not sure if comments and stuff carried over in the migration from Blogger to Typepad, but who really cares?):

• This post is the 846th post in five years.
• There have been 467 comments.
• Pageviews: 40,521 (since moving to Typepad, I assume). About 30 a day. Most visitors come from Google, where they were probably searching for something different from what they found here.