Happy Birthday, Aisle 424!

About a year ago, I decided I wanted to start a blog and came up with the idea to re-create the conversations I have each summer with my summer family up in Aisle 424 at Wrigley.

I fiddled around with the template, wrote my first post, and announced the blog's existence in an e-mail to friends and family and got a response from a friend who has been blogging for years: "Welcome to the dark side."

It was an appropriate comment because I really had no concept what to expect.  I figured that maybe a few friends and family would read my nonsense every now and again, but that would probably be it.  It turns out that has pretty much been correct.  But, to my surprise, there have been others who have found their way to this tiny corner of the interwebs.

It has been very interesting to see how people have discovered this blog.  According to Google, the top draw has been people searching "Sammy Sosa cream" or some variation that ultimately draws them to a very silly post I put up on the spur of the moment.  Other popular searches that have led here are:

• Variations of "Cubs song" or "Go Cubs Go" because of a post where I wish the Cubs would play something else after a victory.
• "Wrigley seat location" and other similar queries draw up a frustrated post about the ushers at Wrigley.
• My interview with the baseball gods, and an earlier post where I defiantly tell them to suck it have attracted more than a few folks searching "baseball gods."
• An offhanded mention of Alyssa Milano and an accompanying picture has brought any number of folks searching for images of Ms. Milano - though it wouldn't surprise me if those people didn't leave my site extremely disappointed in the amount of clothing she is wearing in the photo I used.
• Oddly enough for a mostly-Cubs blog, Michael Jordan and his Hall of Fame speech drew an inordinate number of people looking for "jordan speech" and such.

Over the past year among many topics, I have hated Aaron Miles, grew an unhealthy man-crush on Jeff Baker, got called stupid by Dave Kaplan, created a mix-tape for disgruntled Milton Bradley, mocked Steve Stone, called a walk-off grand slam, found that some curse-related antics are too stupid for even the Cubs marketing department, watched Chicago's Olympic dreams end in a spectacular crash of Cub-like proportions, unleashed my inner fashion critic, did what I could to make the term "fisted" a part of our vernacular, and blatantly stole from Obama's speechwriters.

Somehow, the number of people who follow this blog has grown into the double digits, which is a whole extra digit than I anticipated.  Additionally, I have managed to accumulate over 650 followers on Twitter, of which at least ten are not spambots trying to get me to look at a video of Britney having sex.

It is crazy to me that there was an entire world of Cubs blogs I knew nothing about when this started.  Of course, if I had known that blogs like Hire Jim Essian, The Cub Reporter, Wrigleyville23, waxpaperbeercup, A League of Her Own, and many, many others (see the Reading Material section on the left) existed, I may have never started this one for fear of being horribly inferior.  There have been occasions when other established Cubs bloggers have linked to me, commented on a post, or sent me kind words via e-mail and I'm always a little surprised that they have not shunned me from the club since I have never been banned from BCB.  It was another form of validation that I never expected to receive when I started writing.

When I kicked this off, I had visions of chronicling a march to the playoffs again and a hopeful World Series title that I could celebrate with my Aisle 424 brethren.  Of course, now I'm fairly certain that we won't be celebrating much beyond a hopeful season-ending elbow injury to Carlos Silva anytime soon.  But while the disappointment of the nonexistent celebrating lingers, the fact that I have been able to share the pain and commiserate with others in the sorrows of Cubs baseball has been fun for me, and I hope it has been fun for those who have been reading.

I appreciate everyone who stops by and I hope you will keep coming back as Aisle 424 moves into its second year of existence.  I'm looking into options to make commenting easier without overhauling the whole site.  I may eventually decide to try to move off of Blogger, but that is not coming anytime soon.  I expect the Triangle Building will be built before that happens.

Thanks again for stopping by and Happy New Year!