Lucky Seven

On this day seven years ago, I was

• single,
• living in an apartment that was getting overrun by books,
• in the midst of losing 30-odd lbs. on an Atkins regime,
• a week or so from receiving the typescript of a 9/11 novel by Paul West,
• working on the 30th issue of my magazine,
• planning a trip to New Zealand,
• finishing Arthur Phillips’ Prague, and
• reading Gould’s Book of Fish, Rembrandt’s Eyes, and Minotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archeology of the Minoan Myth.

Now I’m

• married,
• living in my ancestral home, with lots of room for books,
• keeping my weight around 40 lbs. below its peak,
• retired as a book publisher,
• working on the 100th issue of my magazine,
• not planning any major trips,
• starting Eddie Campbell’s Alec: The Years Have Pants, and
• glad that I finished reading Gould’s Book of Fish, even though the other two books fell by the wayside.

And seven years ago today, I started this blog.

The world and I have gone through plenty of changes since that day. I’m happy that I’ve had Virtual Memories to help me try to chronicle it. To paraphrase Tony Kornheiser, I’ll try to do better next time.

Bonus: And we’re celebrating by having some glass guys remove the big smoked-mirror wall in our living room (installed by my dad, c.1989). Good thing they didn’t break any of those panels, or it’d be seven years of bad blogging ahead!