Today I’m going to share some of my favourite posts and memories from the earliest years of my blog.
(This doesn’t strictly include or exclude art or costume posts – sometimes they interconnect, but posts specifically about art or costumes will be covered in the next 2 weeks.)
As I mentioned in my first post about my blog’s 20th birthday, I first started “blogging” on my site just by creating an HTML file and typing out whatever I felt like, with random pictures and scans added in. I was able to recover a few of these by going back through archived HTML files and the wayback machine, but a lot of the earliest ones are lost forever.
Which is probably a good thing. I mean, some of those teenage posts should never see the light of day, ok? Some of these are bad enough as it is.
Once blogger became available, I switched to that in 2000, which made posting a whole lot easier and my regular random postings became much more frequent.
So let’s get started!
May 20, 1998: WHEN I ICE SKATED WITH KUNO
The first non-art specific post I was able to recover, in which I talked a dream I had about ice-skating with Kuno from Ranma 1/2, anime ramblings, and a giant spider.
(How old was I here? I’ll leave that to you to decipher.)
July 13, 1998: WHEN I HAD TO EXPLAIN THE INTERNET
In which I ramble about the X-Files (wish I still had those pics of the action figures. I think I just stuck them in my scanner to “take a picture.”), I got a job and tried to explain the internet to my grandparents (my grandpa got pretty good at the internet. I still have a bunch of emails from him over the years I’ve saved.)
September 20, 1998: WHEN I POSTED TRIP PICS
My first birthday post! Also a collection of scans of photos from the Alaska trip my grandparents took me on earlier in the month… unfortunately I don’t have those scans anymore, nor do I know where the actual photos went š SAD.
October 25, 1998: WHEN I THOUGHT ABOUT HALLOWEEN COSTUMES
In which I think about ideas for next year’s Halloween costume – I ended up eventually doing 5 out of 8 of these costumes! Ideas never die.
November 10, 1998: EARLY SUNDOWNER SKETCHES
This one will cross-sect with art, but these were my first character sketches for SunDowner, so kind of a momentous occasion for my site that can’t be skipped.
December 26 1998: WHEN IT WAS CUTE
My first Christmas post!
I’ve always had a tendency to overshare gifts I’ve been given/things I’ve bought. Just lists of stuff like this. I still remember getting called out for it once early on, that I “post too much about buying stuff/stuff I’ve been given and I come across very materialistic.”
Honestly I felt kinda bad about it for a while. until somebody told me about the 5 Love Languages, and mine is 100% Gift-Giving. “Gifts are visual representations of love and are treasured greatly.” And when I post them on my blog, or social media, or where-ever, to me that’s saying “I want to show the world how much I love this thing you gave me.”
Honestly It’s why I have a hard time decluttering because I don’t want to get rid of something somebody gave me.
And as for my “look what I bought while shopping” – I still do that because I personally like to see the random stuff other people buy, especially geeky stuff. So that’s just a preference I guess.
Anyway! That was a ramble.
March 14, 1999: SUNDOWNER ISSUE 1
Another milestone for my site — the first issue of SunDowner was released.
September 4, 1999: WHEN I LISTED THE STUFF ON MY FLOOR
I just feel like this post is a perfect microcosm of me, circa 1999.
(this pic is a later mess. but a close enough visual representation.)
September 26, 1999: WHEN I LISTED MY LOVES AND HATES
WHOA these lists have changed. Move pizza, steak and and italian food down to the loves and move fish up to the hates. Probably why I’m so much fatter now LOL
April 17, 2000: WHEN THE WONDER BREAD FLEW
A weird day with a dog on the roof, flying wonder bread, and wet dogs ruining my art. I forgot about all this til I read it here.
July 10, 2000: WHEN WE STAYED IN A CONDO ON VACATION
The beach vacation my fam, Ash’s fam and Kevin’s fam all took that summer was the best. I just recently got ahold of the film photos from this trip to scan eventually. And I did an entire sketchbook that vacation which became The Super Freak Out Part 1.
August 14, 2000: WHEN A BIRD GOT IN THE HOUSE
OMG I still tell this story about catching the bird in the lunchbox.
October 11, 2000: MY FIRST BLOGGER POST
My first blogger post! I had it set up to post to my own site, which was super handy. Honestly I’d probably still be using them if they hadn’t taken that capability away.
October 12, 2000: THE HARRY POTTER ADOPTION AGENCY
It wasn’t all sunshine and happiness, I bitched a lot too. This freaking Harry Potter Adoption Agency I started was the bane of my existence for a while. I did’t even save the pixel art I did, it’s nowhere in my archives, I’m pretty sure it’s because I hated seeing them after a certain point… LOL.
I’m sure they’re still floating around on the internet somewhere though.
October 28, 2000: WHEN I HAD A HALLOWEEN PARTY
Our first attempt at a Halloween Party.
November 27, 2000: WHEN I GOT AN ELFWOOD GALLERY
I got an elfwood gallery! And that thing was a source of drama for years to come.
December 8, 2000: WHEN I HAD REVIEW COMMITTEE
This day was really seriously fucking awful. I had ulcers for years because of Review Committee.
December 30, 2000: WHEN I FOUND A RIP IN SPACE AND TIME
Fun fact, that “rip in space in time” is still there. It looks like a shadow on the wall but there’s nothing casting it, and it’s apparently NOT charcoal because we were never able to scrub it off.
January 7, 2001: WHEN I GOT ADDICTED TO THE SIMS
My first post about the Sims. Still pops up to this day, in case you hadn’t noticed!
January 10, 2001: WHEN I GOT BOOTED FROM JURY DUTY
When I got booted from Jury Duty for not completely paying attention. Or maybe it was because of something else. I don’t know because I wasn’t paying attention.
I did get a ton of work on SunDowner done while sitting in the jury pool for days at least.
February 10, 2001: WHEN I BLEW MY TOP
Another case of my art being stolen, this time somebody ripped off my whole website including SunDowner. I never understood that. Like why?! And this person went on to do it multiple times.
Had it happen ONCE in costuming, somebody tried to apply to the Rebel Legion using a pic of me, and had their own deviantart page with a bunch of my costumes. Like WTF.
March 2, 2001: WHEN I DOWNLOADED THE HARRY POTTER TRAILER
Just a glimpse at what life used to be like on the internet.
March 23, 2001: WHEN I GOT HOBBES
When we got our Hobbes kitty! He was the best cat.
March 29, 2001: WHEN I GOT SOME SUGGESTIONS
I HAVE to include this one because it cracks me up. I got some costume suggestions from WOFS and my reactions included this gem:
“nor would I want to do a dress (she does wear a dress right?) I donāt like the whole princess thingā¦”
I don’t like the whole princess thing. OMG OK HAHA.
May 9, 2001: WHEN CATH MADE UP A STORY
A few weeks before our trip to Animazement, Cath told me she was having trouble getting out of work. Then one day she tells me it’s fine. I asked how she got out of it, and this is the story she told her boss.
May 29, 2001: WHEN I SHARED MY ANIMAZEMENT TRIP REPORT
My first anime con! My first con report! So exciting!
June 20, 2001: WHEN WE WENT TO DISNEYWORLD
Awesome family trip to Disney world. There were Fly Buddies, spaghetti-o’s on the bed, crappy internet kiosks, abandonment issues, and lots of colouring book pages.
June 29, 2001: WHEN I WAS NOT LEIA
This was a snippet from an ANCIENT roundrobin fanfic we did once, I just think it’s hilarious since… I’ve “been” Leia hundreds of time since then, including in the metal bikini which was the one causing me so much anguish there.
August 4, 2001: WHATāS AROUND MY DESK MEME
Another perfect little snapshot of me, circa 2001.
August 12, 2001: WHEN I GOT WEIRD COMMENTS
Guys I seriously got SO many weird comments. So many mean comments, so many bad comments, too. But I always kinda liked the weird ones. I wish I’d written more of them down.
September 11, 2001: WHEN I WAS PACKING FOR NIAGARA FALLS
9/11. I was supposed to be leaving for Niagara Falls that morning until I turned on the tv right after making this post. The subsequent posts put me right back on that day when I read them.
Also I just realized good GRIEF I traveled a lot that summer.
October 11, 2001: PICS! RUBY MOON AND UTENA PROGRESS
I like looking at old pics of my room.
December 13, 2001: WHEN MOM RAN MY TABLE
My mom and Ash’s mom running my art table at MTAC 2001. The one time I had a serious art table at a con.
December 14, 2001: ART POST: 200K!!
My site hit 200,000 views! I skipped the 100K post so I figured I should do one of them. I wonder what it would be now…?
Tomorrow will start in the year 2002! What will happen next?! Stay tuned…