The Return of Personal Blogging

It's New Year's Day somewhere, right? No, wait. That only works with 5 PM. Whatever. The flu tore through our family around Christmas and yesterday was the first day I felt back to normal. In fact, yesterday was the first time I left the house for reasons other than grocery shopping or doctor visits since December 22. So my year is off to a banging start, and the Happy New Year post is a week late.

Personal blogging is back. Maybe. The shenanigans at Twitter have opened the eyes of a lot of people to why pouring your life into a corporate controlled platform is a bad idea. I've added a lot of blogs to my feed reader over the last couple of months. I don't know that blogging will ever gain the mainstream position it hade just before Facebook showed up, but it's certainly more vibrant today than it has been in quite a while. I'll take that as a win.

Does this mean you'll see updates from me 3X a week? Probably not. An actual personal blog post that isn't a travel update once per week is possible though. We will see how it goes. I published 60 blog posts last year, which I suspect makes me a one-percenter among still "active" blogs. I'll be quite happy if the term blogosphere stays dead and buried though.

It's a dreary Sunday morning in Richmond, overcast, chilly, with rain in the forecast. The bird feeder in the backyard is busy though, as the Dark-Eyed Juncos that are wintering in the trees behind the house are cleaning the yard of spilled seed while Bluebirds, Song Sparrows, American Goldfinches, and House Finches fight for space on the feeder. There is a Mourning Dove on the ground right now too. There were at least 12 birds at the feeder a few minutes ago.

Yesterday I went out birding for the first time this year, just down the road from the house at Echo Lake. I saw 17 species, including a stunning Belted Kingfisher, the Great Blue Heron that lives at the pond, and a male / female pair of Hooded Merganser. You can see my checklist from yesterday if you are interested.

I also completed my first book of the year this week, The Cartographers, which is a mystery thriller with some fantasy elements set in the world of the maps department at the NYPL, and involves a mystery involving a cheap fold out gas station map. It also digs into some meaty questions such as why do we make maps, and does a place exist if there is no map to get there? I stayed up late 3 nights in a row to finish the book, which you should take as a ringing endorsement.

I've been watching The Rockford Files again. I started it last year, unfortunately 2 or 3 weeks before it dropped off of Prime. It's available for free on Roku now, and the commercial breaks aren't overly annoying. We are also in season two of a Warehouse 13 re-watch (first time for Michelle), and we are in season 2 of The Americans.

January was scheduled to be a 3 concert month, but the flu forced us to skip The Kennedys at Jammin' Java last Friday. Drivin' N Cryin' is in town this coming weekend, and Abby Bryant will be in Charlottesville at the end of the month. Hopefully we'll make it to the upcoming shows.

2023 feels like the year where we settle into the new post-pandemic normal, whatever that may be. Personally, I'm over living in "interersting times." I could go for a couple of years of routine and boring.

And I'll wrap this up with a fun fact. January 2023 is the 40th anniversary of the Pyromania album from Def Leppard. Jan 1983 was closer to the end of WWII than it is to today.

What's up with you? Hit that reply link below and say hello.