This is my 400th blog post. That’s pretty big. I started here on WordPress back in June 2011 after leaving Xanga. I don’t write every day like I did for years on Xanga, but I try to put something out there on a fairly regular basis. Of course, over the past year or so, many of my posts have been book reviews, but people seem to like them, so I’ll continue that. I often feel like I don’t have anything interesting to say, so I don’t say anything.

During this time, I’ve had nearly 18,000 page views, have received nearly 500 comments, and have collected a little over 300 followers. I want to thank all of you who have or do stop by and read what I write. I really appreciate that. I often wonder why I don’t get more comments, considering all of the followers, but I guess that’s a mystery I’ll never solve.

So far, 2014 has been big for Gretchen and me. In January, we got the new house. In February, our beloved cat Toby died due to kidney failure at the young age of six. That week, we moved into the new house. I’ve been busy all year preparing to move, packing, unpacking, and helping my mother search for a place of her own in Knoxville, where she used to live. Last month, she found a condo up there less than a mile where we used to live and she’s moving away from us next week to go to her new life. I feel a little weird about that, but she’s been very time consuming, so it’ll be nice to have a break. Still, it’ll be weird not going over to her nice house just five minutes from us. She’s sold that and it closes next month. As for me personally, I’m soon going to resume looking for a permanent job, knowing the market stinks, and I’m also in a four month jury pool, so I may be sitting on quite a few federal juries between now and August 20th. Gretchen and I went to Maryland to celebrate her birthday, but we have no further travel plans for the year. It’d be nice to go to the beach though. I got my new Toyota last week and hopefully our car repair bills will be minimized. Drastically. We’re attending a tiny Episcopalian church and I’m on the vestry while Gretchen is involved in several activities. We like the people there, although we do wish it was a little larger and there were more people our own age there.

I guess that’s it for now, so I’ll wrap things up. If you read my 400th blog post, thanks. If not, you probably didn’t miss much. More book reviews will follow. Cheers!