Five more and I get a set of steak knives.

Sorry for the silence the last couple of days, but real life has been busier than usual at home. (Not in any kind of bad way, but just busy.) Anyhow, time for a momentous revelation:

Five years ago today, Byzantium's Shores went "live".

Five years and more than five thousand posts later, here we are, keeping the beat marching on. How much longer can I go? Who knows? I suspect that there are fewer days ahead for this blog than there are behind, but you never know. Sometimes I get the hankering to sign off from Blogistan, but I'm kind of like Crash Davis in that regard: "Well, I quit! F*** this f***ing game! [beat] Who do we play tomorrow?"

I started off as a pseudonymous blogger, writing brief posts about books and movies and TV shows and the occasional sporting event. Now, I'm pretty much non-pseudonymous, but with the same kinds of posts about books and movies and TV shows and the occasional sporting event. The only real difference is that I've gotten more long-winded.

But five years is a pretty interesting chunk of time over which to survey once it's over. In that time I've held a job I hated (and at which I sucked), got fired from said job, moved to Syracuse and spent a winter there*, moved back to Buffalo, spent a year-and-a-half unemployed, joined The Store, spent fifteen months attempting -- and ultimately failing -- to raise a son with severe cerebral palsy, and more. I've also met a whole lot of fine bloggers, both in cyberspace and outside of it, enough so as to enrich my life handsomely.

Anyhow, thanks to all my readers for dropping by over the past five years and to all the fellow travelers in Blogistan who have linked me from time to time.

* Hey, Buffalo, you want to know what winter's like in Syracuse? Imagine the last week or so, and extend that from mid-December to mid-March. Why it's Buffalo that's got the snow-and-cold reputation is beyond me.