{Celebrate Good Times}

Guess what? You'll never guess, so I'll spit it out. This is my 100th post on Archives of Our Lives. (Every time I write "Archives of Our Lives," I feel like the word "our" should not be capitalised, because it's so short. It doesn't seem important enough to get its own upper-case "O." [Being six feet tall, I am occasionally prone to further demoting short things in my life--it makes me feel good about myself.] But "our" is not an article, so I guess it deserves its rightful capitalisation. But I'll never be happy about it.)

I have been wanting to do a blog giveaway for a long time, but haven't found a good enough reason to. My 100th post seems like as good a time as any. It's only fair to try and reward people-who-read-my-blog [I can't call you "my readers," because that makes me sound a lot fancier than I really am], for providing me with feedback and validation. If I thought nobody ever read Archives of Our Lives, I wouldn't continue with it--I write so people will tell me I'm a good writer, not just to vent like our friend Emily Dickinson did. I think it's really exciting that real, live people might actually want to read something I write. (Also, in an attempt to gain further validation, I am hoping a giveaway will make people come out of the woodworks and comment, perhaps congratulating me on my hundredth post...or just saying "hello.")

So here's how it works:

1) Comment on this post. Make it clever, witty, or at least interesting to read. I will choose the cleverest, wittiest, or funniest commenter and reward said commenter with a $25.00 gift card to said commenter's choice of establishment (i.e. amazon.com, iTunes, Best Buy, or a lunch-y place like Applebee's).

2) Commenter ought to then mention this giveaway somewhere on their own blog, because that seems like a nice thing to do. And being nice is what I'm all about... If any commenter doesn't have a blog of their own, then obviously, it isn't necessary to mention the giveaway. They could write about it in their journal, if they wanted to, but that doesn't really do me any good. Nevertheless, anyone witty can win, blog-keeper or not.

3) That's it!

If anyone is worried that he or she is too boring to possibly win the clever comment contest, he or she ought to still comment, because I am also giving away a $15.00 gift card to one lucky random winner--boring or not. Same guidelines apply.

So, comment. Just do it. What have you got to lose?

p.s. Though my blog archives may only read "99 Posts," I am counting the little gem I wrote and subsequently deleted last month whilst visiting my family in Arizona. It was all about keeping Mayberry...Mayberry; it may well have been one of my best works. If there are two things I regret about my life, they are playing the piano instead of the flute for Junior Miss during my senior year of high school, and deleting the "Mayberry" post from my blog.