So even though it's been a slow year in some ways, some big things happened. To start, we bought our first house. HOLY CRAP, we're home-owners. It's almost like that moment your child is born and you start looking around, going, "now what?"
On the blogging front, there was that moment that my post about oranges hit the front page of Reddit, and it seemed for about twenty-four hours as though the entire internet was scolding me for 1. my strained metaphors, and 2. using a Mercator Projection as a model for an orange-peel map. Duly noted, internet. Duly noted.
And it's a little surreal, but also way, way cool to announce that I'll be a speaker at the 2015 Dad 2.0 Summit! When the founder called to extend the invite, it's possible I told him I might pee my pants. Clearly, it's gonna go really well.
And it's a little surreal, but also way, way cool to announce that I'll be a speaker at the 2015 Dad 2.0 Summit! When the founder called to extend the invite, it's possible I told him I might pee my pants. Clearly, it's gonna go really well.
Anyway, here's my round-up of my favorite posts of the year (click here for 2012 and here for 2013) with brief commentary from me and my four-year-old:
My favorite blog posts of 2014
Me: Now that we own our home, I can't help looking all around and thinking of all the cool projects I can do to really make it ours. This was a fun start.
My four-year-old: "Those maps are pretty. They tell me about the world. My favorite one is the Hawaii one."
Me: We've made something of a tradition to do a poem every Halloween (the year before was Poe's "The Raven"). I love doing these with my daughter, 'cause she really gets into them. She's pretty much the cutest Jabberwocky slayer ever.
My four-year-old: "The claws that snatch, the jaws that bite! Beware the Jubjub bird!"
Me: In which we discover my daughter's new favorite outdoor activity: getting buried up to her chin in the dirt so that pirates can find her and dig up this four-year-old pirate treasure.
My four-year-old: "I'm kicking that dirt. I feel pretty good about that. I like to be buried in the dirt, because it helps me to hide from pirate dad."
Me: I really enjoyed this one. I think it came out pretty well, despite inadvertently using the much-reviled Mercator Projection. And thanks, Reddit, for the constructive criticism.
My four-year-old: "That looks like a world made of orange peels. Hey! I see the United States!"
Me: This was my wife's first guest post on my blog, and it shows why I married this amazing woman.
My four-year-old: "That looks like you and me walking together in a corn field. Just walking, and just holding hands, talking about princesses."
Me: My very first post about a product, and in true Neal fashion, my metaphors abound. And of course I invoke Pablo Neruda.
My daughter: "Am I eating something? Maybe it is a deer. Which makes the deer sad. Sorry, deer."
