Eight friggin' years

You know what happened in 2006?

• A Maryland judge struck down a state law banning same-sex marriage saying the measure violated a state constitutional amendment prohibiting sex discrimination.
• The Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Seattle Seahawks 21-10 in Super Bowl XL.
•  AIG apologized for deceptive business practices and reached a $1.64 billion settlement with federal and state securities and insurance regulators
• "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" was the top grossing movie.
• The United States won nine gold medals, nine silver medals and seven bronze medals in the winter Olympics in Italy.
• "Heroes" was on TV.
• Vice President Dick Cheney shot a dude!
• The Blu-Ray disc format was introduced in America.
• "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley was the #1 song.
• Suri Cruise was born.
• Gerald Ford died.
• And on this very date, June 18th, 2006, this blog began with this.

My God. Get me a slice of cake or pour me a drink. Or both. I've been doing this for eight years (or approximately seven years, eleven months and two weeks longer than most blogs last). Sheesh. You'd think if I had something significant to say, I'd have said it by now. Maybe in another eight years, I'll get around to it.

Thanks to Gail Worley who's been at it even longer than I have for all her support over the years. She'll always be the pink to my purple.

Thanks to The Comics Curmudgeon, the first blog I ever followed and the one that made me think I could do it too.

Thanks to two women who sort of legitimized this whole thing by saying yes to interview requests when they had no real good reason to do so, Lynne Austin and Maria Bamford.

Thanks to John Fontana and all my colleagues at Raw Charge for letting me write about sports (specifically my beloved Tampa Bay Lightning), which prevents you (mostly) form having to read about it here.

Thanks to Appleby's, which I wrote about as being terrible a long time ago. People continue to chime in with agreement six years later, making it the most popular post I've ever written.

Thanks to my writing partners Jeff Hickmott and Michael Noble with "The Unbelievables". Honestly, if you aren't checking that out on at least a semi-regular basis, you're missing out on some LOLZ.

Thanks to Keri Ramos, Jessie and Pavel Stehlik and Amy DeMilo for helping me squeeze a book out of this nonsense. If I hadn't been able to work with exactly the people I wanted to, I wouldn't have even done it.

Lastly and by far most importantly, thank you to you as readers for sticking around as long you have. Hang out for another eight years and let's see what happens, all right?