fairwell, '05

Having surfed a number of blogs tonight, it would appear the hip thing to do would be to make some sort of top ten list. My favorite lists have been the "Top Ten Posts I Made This Year". I think I saw a half dozen of this type. This would only happen online.

Think about it - Would you sit at a dinner party with friends and recite the most clever things you've said in the last year, ranked one through ten? I hope not. This kind of self centric blogging is precisely the sort of thing that will keep the internet from replacing real life conversations for quite a while. The internet removes the natural sense of shame that keeps many of us from making dorks of ourselves in realtime. It's a little-acknowledged fact that at times, our inhibitions are our friends.

All that to say, I still can't resist the temptation to wax reflective. 2005 was a wild year for the Bohlenders. We lived in a postmodern commune that was later featured on Nightline. We drove 90 MPH outbound of DC while fighter jets raced over our heads. We celebrated our sixteenth wedding anniversary and lost an unborn baby not many weeks later. We returned to Kansas City to discover it had become home while we were gone. It was good, bad, fun, scary, and 365 days long, In other words, not much different from your year.

Everyone wonders how they're perceived. Too often, blogs become alter-egos for people. If I had to pick a word that I'd want to describe me over the last year, I think I could overlook 'fun', 'exciting', 'witty' and definetly 'dorky'. I'd hope for 'consistent'. Maybe that's another way for saying faithful. I'd hope that those of you who know me in realtime would be able to attest that this blog is reflective of who I really am. If you've found otherwise, feel free to apply for a refund. Line forms at the right. Please bring two forms of ID and familiarize yourself with the phrase 'blood from a turnip'.

Good night, and good year.

Randy