Five years ago today I wrote my first blog post.  At the time I was enjoying my second parental leave and had a bit of time on my hands.  A was two-and-a-bit, K was around eight months old, and I had 17 weeks to be a stay-at-home dad.  Starting a blog was an attempt to communicate like an adult – a few precious minutes each week when I would actually put full sentences together and try to form a coherent thought or two.

The blog started out at dearlovequartet.blogspot.com.  After a couple of years I migrated over to WordPress and got hooked up with my very own URL – a Christmas present from my wife, if I remember correctly.  Today, dearlove.ca is the second site that comes up when doing a search for Dearlove at Google.ca – a fact that I’m sure most Dearloves who wind up here find terribly disappointing.  If by chance you happen to be one of the many unhappy visitors hoping for a more entertaining experience, I suggest you pop over to my arch rival at www.dear-lover.com (must be 18+, site is probably not safe for work).

In one of the wonders of the Internet, the most popular post I’ve done has been You Don’t Mess With Texas – a short post about my sister-in-law Meillyn taking pictures of a car in Houston that had its fancy rims stolen.  4,694 car aficionados have checked out that post, including my favourite commenter to date, my loyal reader Joanthan:

damn thats f*cked up i think thats houston rapper
trae tha truths ride mane nah he prob got another pair of dem thoe cuz iseen them in his lateest video

Something tells me Joanthan probably didn’t come back to read my review of the Emanuel Ax recital…

Time to wrap up post number 406.  Thanks for stopping by – we’ll do it again in February 2016 for the 10th blogiversary.  A will be almost a teenager, K will be in double digits, and Sarah Palin will be the leader of the free world.