There is something kind of paralyzing about the first day of Holidailies. You feel weirdly compelled to make your journal super-fantastic-awesome, since it's the first glance a lot of people will have at your writing. The first day is when people decide who they're going to pay attention to all month! It's your only chance! If you suck today, NOBODY WILL EVER COME BACK!

Which, really, is kind of stupid. Even if I were to write something totally unbelieveably fantastic today (highly unlikely), I'd just go back to my regularly scheduled rambling tomorrow, and no matter how totally mindblowingly great the first entry was, people would catch on that this is probably not the place for truly staggering levels of wit and discussion. Not that I'm not witty, mind you. But I'm that kind of witty where I tend to find myself very amusing, and while that's helpful on a very boring drive to work, I'm not entirely convinced it translates to scintillating blogging.

Dammit, I'm already calling this blogging. I suppose I'd better just accept that this is a blog and move on with my life. But I've had my online journal for three and a half years now (although you can't read the first 18 months or so due to a fucked up template that I'm working on fixing), so I guess it's reasonable that it would take me a while to shift my nomenclature.

Several people have been asking about why I moved my journal. Part of the reason was really just a total lack of attention span on my part - I get bored easily, and after three and a half years I was ready for a change. Part of it was that I've kind of hit a new stage in my life, and I like the idea of having my old journal function as a story with an ending of sorts. (Yeah, yeah, getting married is not an ending but a beginning, blah blah blah, whatever.) And partly I just needed a fresh start, with new possibilities and opportunities. For one thing, I was really fucking tired of the journal name (Things and Stuff, while a fairly apt description of what I talked about, ie not much, is not going to win any awards for creativity. It was named because that's what Jamie always said when I asked him what he was thinking about, and it seemed like a pretty good way to sum up the inner workings of my mind. Or something.) I am already very partial to the name "Monkey Pants and Hippo Dignity," which came about after a lengthy discussion of possibilities. (Monkey Pants alone was a good name as well, but I am very fond of hippos and wanted to incorporate that. However, Hippo Dignity by itself sounded like a fat-acceptance journal, and while I am both fat and generally accepting of that fact, it's not really what I want to write about. Somebody pointed out that I could just combine the two names, and here I am.)

So rather than try to woo you all with fascinating prose and thrilling stories, I'll just be up front. I talk about knitting a lot, I am somewhat obsessive about Buffy but am more inclined to talk about Firefly these days since that's what I'm currently watching, I get far too involved in both Amazing Race and Survivor and will inevitably have a fit about the outcome of one of the two if certain people (coughWEAVERScough) win, I am totally hyper about Christmas, and I talk too much about my cat. (Not so much these days since I don't live with her anymore, but I feel I should warn you anyway.) My husband is both very cute and extremely useful around the house, and I may occasionally write about him. I have awesome friends for whom I am no longer going to bother with pen names unless they specifically request it , and I overuse both parentheses and em-dashes. I also like to swear a lot.

There. Consider this your disclaimer. Welcome to Monkey Pants and Hippo Dignity. Please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times. Please do not feed the animals.