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1,000 posts

This is our 1,000th blog post! When Jeff started Wilton Diaries back in 2006, I never imagined it would survive so long or that I would become the principal writer.


I suppose that my writing many of the posts is not that surprising. Growing up I thought of becoming a writer or an English Lit major. Practicality won out and I graduated with a BS in Computer Science.


I have learned a lot by writing on the blog:

* Writing is hard work. It may seem effortless, but a lot of time is spent crafting ideas, taking pictures and putting the content together.
* Deadlines are tough. To maintain interest, I try to post every few days. However, life is not always interesting and even Cooper and Otis have settled into a predictable pattern
* My admiration for talented authors has grown. It seems that I often fail to find the words that truly express what is in my heart. Yet for some, this is a seemingly simple task.

I am still pleasantly surprised that people take the time to visit our blog and share in our Wilton adventures. To all our readers, thank you!

Snow, Snow, Go AWAY!

After 2 days of solid rain, the snow began to fall early this morning.

There is now 5 inches of snow on the ground. Cooper and Otis are happy. There is nothing they enjoy more than eating fresh snow.

I on the other hand am not happy. I miss the sun and seeing green grass.

It is supposed to snow all night and tomorrow.

Merry Christmas!

To all our friends and family we wish you a wonderful Christmas! We know that we are blessed by having you in our lives.

Cooper and Otis send greetings to all their four footed friends in Maine and Connecticut.

Merry Christmas!

Comments

We have gotten a fair amount of "Comment Spam" lately. Comment Spam is where an anonymous person posts a link to their website as a comment on your blog where the comment has absolutely no relevance to the article. They do this to help their "Google Score". The number of times other people link to your website increases your Google Score and gives your site a greater likelihood that it will show up at the top of a search listing.

As such, we will be moderating all comments from now on. Keep commenting, but there may be a delay from when you post the comment to when it actually shows up.

Life dictates that a few bad apples spoil it for the rest of the tree.

Today's Masthead

Today's Masthead courtesy of good old Cooper with a nod to Sarah Palin. For those email only subscribers, I have attached the picture. You can go to Wilton Diaries to see the full effect.

57.5

Cooper now weighs 57.5 pounds. Every ounce of weight is pure muscle.

It is amazing how quickly he flies up the stairs - more like he is one, not five.

Morning Walk

As we were walking Cooper at 6:15 am, Jeff said isn't it amazing how often you overlook the beauty that is all around.

Wilton Villager

We received a call from the Wilton Villager the other day asking if Kara could interview us. It seems that she read about Cooper's adoption and wanted to meet us.

Alex the photographer showed up first. Cooper does NOT like to have his picture taken and is distracted by a camera flash or shadows on the floor. (You may have noticed on this blog that Cooper's pictures are fuzzy/unfocused). Alex was very patient and after waving treats and what seemed like 20+ photos, one was deemed acceptable.

Kara spoke with us and asked about the blog and why/how we adopted Cooper.

Could it be that Cooper will become another famous Wilton canine ?

Therapy

I've debated long and hard about where Wilton Diaries should go now that our main writer has lost her inspiration. Sure, I can keep you abreast of what's going on in Wilton but this blog isn't really about Wilton, it's about us.

Our life.

And a great part of our life was Danny.

And a great part of our life now is coping without Danny.

From time to time you might see a post about Danny pop up when I'm thinking about him. If that turns you off, I am sorry. Maybe, just maybe, remembering him will help the healing. I also don't want this blog to become an electronic wailing wall. Occasionally it will be, but mostly it will be about us. I appreciate your companionship on this journey.

More Snow

More pictures of the latest snow.

In total we got about 10 inches!

This month's masthead

The picture for this month's masthead comes from our trip to Asheville, North Carolina. The Biltmore Gardens had a greenhouse full of poinsettias that they deploy through the house during the holiday season.

In between finding the perfect gift and getting sloshed at the company holiday party, take time to remember what this holiday season means to you.

Watching You

This month's masthead courtesy of who else, but Danny the Dog. His defeated expression in Last Bath of Summer translates into a watchful look when you just look at his eyes.

This month's masthead

This month's masthead courtesy of the two fawns that frequent our yard. In certain Westport circles they call deer "rats with hooves" and I thought it was catchy, so I used it.

Welcome to the new Wilton Diaries!

We've had a shakeup in our web development group at the home offices of Wilton Diaries. Seems our old format wasn't keeping up with the changing times and we had a ton of users (ie. me) clamoring for the new features of Blogger to be exploited.

The first big change is that the body of the post will now scale to your window size. If you have one of those new-fangled 20" wide screen monitors, you will be able to get more Wilton Diaries on your screen at a time.

The next big change is the list of labels on the right. You can click on a label to see all the posts related to that particular label. For example, if you are interested in all the "Danny" posts, click on "Danny".

The last change is the "Blog Archive" section can be collapsed and expanded by year. This way, you can forget all about 2006 posts if you want and just look at posts in 2007.

The world famous "Blogroll" remains, as does our email subscription. It surprises me more people don't take advantage of the email subscription considering our sporadic publishing schedule. Oh well, our Web Developers sometimes just like to put features in to justify their existence.

We apologize for some of the poorly placed pictures in old posts, but that's the way technology goes sometimes.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Apologies

Apologies to our RSS and email readers. I added labels to every post and you may have been bombarded with messages after the republishing.

On the positive side, now everything has a label. If you enjoy our wit and wisdom, you can continue reading Wilton Diaries just as before, on the edge of your seat anticipating every post. However, if you want to see all the posts about Danny, click on the "Danny" label at the bottom of one of his posts. If you want to see all the brilliant commentary about life, click on the "Misc" label at the end of an insightful post.

You get the idea.

Our fifteen minutes

You may recall that we were contemplating talking to a reporter about the blog the other day. Well, we decided to talk to him and our story is in the Wilton Bulletin this week.

Newspaper meets blog

For those of you who are tired of hearing about our new dog, you will be glad to know that there is finally a new topic.....

When I came home from work tonight, there was a message on our machine from the Wilton Bulletin, the local newspaper. The message was from a reporter who has been reading this blog and wanted to do a story on our Wilton experiences and blog. My first thought was isn't that funny, a newspaper wants to discuss electronic communication.

My second thought was that I am not sure that I want our blog to be discussed in a news article. Jeff started this as a way of sharing our new home experience with friends and family and now suddenly it would be public. (I realize that the blog is public and anyone can read it, but most people will never find it or see it).

Jeff's reaction was completely opposite. He thinks a news article would be a great way to increase readership. Personally, I think that if you don't know us, you would have zero interest in reading about our home, but maybe I'm wrong. The Internet has a way of making distance irrevelant and provides a sense of kinship among strangers.

Keeping you in the loop

Here at the Wilton Diaries home office, we try to keep the Blog updated on a somewhat frequent schedule (somewhat being loosely defined as when we get to it). To keep you well informed or otherwise occupied, we have introduced an email subscription form at the right. When you subscribe via email, you will get a message when the Blog gets updated.

To subscribe, simply enter your email address and click the "Subscribe" button. A form will then pop-up asking you to verify that you are an acutal person and not an aggregator. You simply type the letters that show in the box and click which buttons instruct you to. You will then be sent an email message with a URL that you must click on to finish your subscription.

If that all sounds too complicated, feel free to continue checking the Wilton Diaries every day.

Anonymous Comments, Round 2

A couple weeks ago I enabled anonymous comments so you could comment on each post. Since that time, a couple people have told me they couldn't post comments, but I got emails with the comment. I have tweaked the commenting a little bit and think this will be easier.

If you read this blog, feel free to post a comment to this entry just to see if it works.