Friday, May 22, 2009

Happy Cuatro de Bloggo

This is to celebrate the fourth anniversary of my wife's blog, called I'm Mad and I Eat. I may be mad in the other sense, but I think it's a great name. Her nom de fume, Cookiecrumb, is more ironic than apt, though. In meatspace, she's more of a tough cookie or a whip cracker, a saucy little treat who doesn't even like sweets. Pardon the Mix-Mastered food metaphor.

Four years. She's been blogging longer than Twitterers have been tweeting or Facebookers have been facing and getting faced. When she started her food and occasional Bush-whacking blog, Bush was popular, expensive restaurants were still opening, housing prices and the stock market were rising and newspapers were only folding in the paperboy sense of the word.

That was a long time ago, especially in digital years. I'm surprised that blogs themselves still exist. I know mine barely does.

But I love blogs anyway, at least hers, and all it's done for us.

We have a whole new set of friends. She visits with them every day, even the ones in exotic lands like Italy, Australia and Michigan. I hear about them from her, look over her shoulder at their photographs of fine edibles, and know them by their goats, children, personal travails and plating techniques. It is a food blog part of the blogosphere, but there's far more to it than that. To get serious for a second, she has had friends who have died, had babies, suffered illnesses, undergone divorce and gotten married, and she has mourned, worried and celebrated, without ever having met most of them, except Facebook to Facebook.

We also have a whole new social circle and party circuit. We meet regularly with many of the local food bloggers here in meatspace. And I do mean meatspace. A couple of my favorite new friends are master grillers, and no party with them is complete without coming home smelling like charcoal, bacon and the rare juices of USDA Choice vegan repellent.

We have recently been invited East by one of Cookiecrumb's online friends who is a master chef and artist. He's having an opening at a gallery, and he even promised not to serve bad wine. I'm tempted to load us all into the Suburbaru and hit the Interstate, even though I know this guy only second hand from the master hand at our family keyboard.

Hell, I might even blog more.

2 comments:

Nancy Ewart said...

It's good to read a new post by you - they are so well written that they are worth waiting for - although I do wish that there wasn't such a long wait inbetween (..ahem..) Bay Area Food bloggers - and food bloggers in general - are the friendliest folks. I also have a host of new friends, including you, cookiecrumb and Zoomie and my day isn't complete until I visit their blogs and leave a morsel or two of comments.

Zoomie said...

You and Cookie are two of the very best blessings of this blogging obsession. Thanks for the new piece - I am always envious of your wordsmithing.