Wow. Just think about it. When I started posting my babble on the internet on that fateful day in March 2000, I was just a crazy kid with stars in my eyes and a pocketful of dreams.

So, yeah. Technically, I've had the site for more than three years. What's your point? This is my 365th entry, OK? That means it's my one-year anniversary, OK? Shut up. I said, SHUT UP!! You don't even wanna know how long I've been planning this.

***

So, we're gonna have a lot of fun today. I'll share a few wacky anecdotes, put up a few links to some of my favorite old entries, and let you in on some behind-the scene stuff on Making an Online Journal For the Ages. What? I'm so all about the ages. One year, yo. Oh yeah? How many entries do YOU have so far, biznitch? That's what I thought.

***

One of the traditional things done in a First Year Retrospective Entry is to put up links to some of your favorite entries. This was really hard. I love all these entries like my own children. I kept reading along, and thinking, "Hee! Good one, me. I'm really pretty funny sometimes." There were a lot of entries that amused me, but weren't quite good enough to merit a link. (And, just so you don't think I'm totally egocentric, I should point out that there were easily just as many if not more entries that I read and cringed. But there's a lot of good stuff in the archives too.) So, check these out, and then maybe hit the "previous" and "next" buttons a few times, just to see what comes up.

Oh, and before you start clicking madly on links, I feel I should explain something. For a while, I was a raving paranoid loony, and gave aliases to all my friends. Then, one day I decided that was silly, so I stopped, except for a certain few key people. I could have gone back through the archives again and at least made everything consistent, but I decided not to, because I really do have the best interests of you, the reader, at heart. See what I did for you! It's not just a journal anymore, it's an action-packed carnival of fun! See if you can guess who all the "other" people really are! Wheee! (OK, the truth is, cut'n'pasting my way through everything AGAIN would have been really annoying.)

The first thing I noticed while going through the archives is that I have a lot of themes that pop up again and again. I'll spare you the 50 or so entries that were basically me whining about money. There's also far too many about how much work sucks. Once in while, that's OK. But it gets sort of tedious if it's all I ever talk about.

Fortunately, it isn't. As a pet owning diarist, I was always careful to meet all the mininum quotas of entries about my cat. I also played the substance abuse card every single chance I got. So many different substances. Damn. What the hell is wrong with me??

What else do I do a lot of? Besides substances, that is. I like the ones with conversations. My friends are some funny people.

Strangely, some of the ones where I had nothing important to talk about turned out really well.

I sing, sometimes.

And, well, then there's a whole bunch that really sort of defy description. Wait. Fiction is a description, isn't it? Some of these are fiction. Kind of.

***

I so hate the href. I may never link to anything, ever again. What else can I do to celebrate my anniversary, that won't involve links?

***

QUESTIONS THAT I'VE NEVER BEEN ASKED, BUT THAT I'M PRETTY SURE HAVE BEEN FREQUENTLY THOUGHT. OR SOMETHING.

I don't get it. What's an "anang?"

No, no, no. You left out the hyphen. It's two words. Ana. Ng. And pronounce it "Eng." Please.

So, why "ana-ng?"

"Ana Ng" is the name of a song by They Might Be Giants. The song has no particular relevence to me, but it's my favorite band. I'm a girl, so Ana Ng seemed like a more logical name than "Mr. Me" or "Particle Man" or "A Guy Made of Dots and Lines."

So what's this TMST jazz?

The actual name of the site is That's MY Shiny Thing! It's been titled that in the top of your browser forever, but maybe you never noticed. I was going to try and work the title into the design when I was revamping last time, but then I didn't. Maybe next time.

I suppose now you have to tell me all about what "That's MY Shiny Thing!" means.

Don't you take that tone with me. Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. There's this British TV show called Red Dwarf. I may have mentioned it a few times in passing. One of the characters is evolved from cats. He's basically a humanoid, but overly obsessed with his personal grooming and little pieces of string. Good stuff. The Cat has a whole running theme about discovering random crap (a carton of cigarettes, a yo-yo), and without even knowing what it is, claiming it for his own. So, in my personal lexicon, anything I want, even if it's not particularly shiny, I'll say, "You can't have that! That's MY shiny thing!" It's funnier in person, maybe. So, I find a toy like an online journal, what else could I have called it?

***

I guess that's about it. I hope you enjoyed this total stroking of my ego as much as I did. Maybe next year (read "2047") I'll do it again. Oh, and one more link. It's a totally gratuitous link to Ken, just because I hear he's into that sort of thing.

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