10+ years … and still wagging the dog

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls … welcome to Fenway Park! I love hearing those words, and for the second morning in a row, those words opened the Red Sox game coverage on television — at 6:00 a.m.! Yes, I’ve awoken at 5:00 a.m. two mornings in a row to watch pre-game coverage for the Major League Baseball season-opening series featuring the Red Sox and the Oakland A’s from Tokyo. At least I had access to the game on television — by 6:30 a.m. yesterday the Red Sox online forums and blogs were blazing with complaints from Red Sox fans scattered about the country who suddenly didn’t have NESN or ESPN2. Most of them appeared to be DirectTV customers, who apparently had to settle for watching a re-run of the game Tuesday afternoon (and it was a thriller — Red Sox won 6-5 in extra innings).

So I’m back from vacation — tanned and relaxed — and also back from (yet another) unscheduled blog hiatus. One of these days, I’ll surprise everyone (including myself) and start blogging again on a regular basis. In the meantime, I want to mark an anniversary that passed recently that I failed to write about here. On February 13, 1998 I wrote my very first blog entry: a review of the movie “Wag the Dog” (how funny — or sad, perhaps — is it that 10 years later after so much has changed in the world, some things remain pretty much the same). So woohoo and happy blog anniversary to me: 10+ years and still hanging in there. When I first started blogging, there weren’t a whole lot of folks on the web doing this self-publishing thing. I originally started with something called “Friends at the Flicks” and posted movie reviews. Then friends would read them, email me comments, and I would post the comments manually. Unfortunately, the comments from those early days are long lost. But fortunately, the blog software nowadays takes care of all the comments, categories, and all the pages and navigation. Believe me … I would not have done this for 10 years without the advent of blog publishing software.

The “Friends at the Flicks” concept lasted a little over a year, by which time I was reading some other blogs that had a more general theme covering a wider array of topics. David, Brad, Jonno and Jason were early inspirations, as well as a handful of other folks who long ago stopped blogging and whose sites are long gone from the web — this was, after all, long before Google and cached pages. After a break of several months (which also coincided with buying our house and moving), I launched Leather Egg in March 2000 and have hanging around here ever since.

Thanks to the peers who inspired me and thanks to the other blogs who continue to entertain (and inspire) me. And last but certainly not least, thanks to those of you who stop by to read this site and offer an occasional comment. It’s been a fun 10 years!