The birth of a blog

Lots and lots and lots of people have blogs nowadays. So what makes a good blog, one that I want to come back to day after day and read faithfully? Well, as I thought about starting a blog I realized that a good blog starts with a good name.

I brainstormed for a week to find the 'perfect' name for our blog. I came up with a long list, mostly from song lyrics such as 'These Are Days' and 'Don't Blink' and 'Learning How to Bend'. None was perfect, though. I wanted something quirky, maybe a little nerdy, something military- or deployment-related, and something original. Developing the perfect name turned into quite a challenge.

A few days ago, I prepared custom cards to send to my family and friends with my husband's deployment address in Baghdad, my deployment address in Afghanistan, and our son's new address in California. I wanted to include the distances of our separation in the card, and in doing so, I found that the distance from Bagram, Afghanistan, to Glendora, California was within several miles of the distance from Baghdad, Iraq, to Glendora, California. Hmmmm. My 10th grade geometry class came flashing back to me like strobe lights at a disco, and I somehow conjured up the term 'Isosceles Triangle'. (I then googled the term to make sure that my memory wasn't failing; turns out that it wasn't.)

My husband, son, and I will be like a very large isosceles triangle in 2009. James and I will be separated by 1425 miles, and Matthew and I by ~7650. It seems like a humongous distance at this point, but I hope that the internet, skype, video and digital cameras, and email will make the distance more bearable. By Christmas of 2009, we will still form an isosceles triangle, only at that point the sides of the triangle will be several feet rather than the length of half the planet. :-)