My first blog entry

As part of my bucket list (and the fact that I saw that a friend had started a blog), I am realizing a dream of mine by starting a blog. Really, I always thought I'd write a book or write magazine articles about my life but that just seemed too complicated. Plus, a book is really long. I figured this would be much easier and at least my friends would find it entertaining.

One friend I need to give a shout out to in my quest to blog is Bob Biondi. He's a book editor and way back when I was about 26, he tried to get me a job working at the publishing company he works for. I interviewed and got the job working in public relations. The starting salary sucked (I was making "big bucks" as a bookkeeper) and when I told them I couldn't take the job, they offered me $4000 more dollars so I jumped on it. I went to my boss the next day and gave my notice. The day after that, my boss offered me a $7000 raise plus bonus. (Lesson - When it appears to be to good to be true, it is.) Dumbass that I was, I stayed at my bookkeeping job and was subsequently subjected to a year and a half of pure torture when a few days later, my one boss abandoned the business. But that's a story for another day.

A few years ago, my friend Wendy and I started an online fake magazine called "What Is Up?". The title came from a very proper guy we knew who would walk into the Kennett Square Inn and say "What is up Wendy and Carol?" To which I would respond, "Nothing much is up, Tony. What is up with with you." But the premise was we wrote stories based on a strand of truth about people we knew it Kennett. Kinda like The Onion, I guess but way funnier. The 5 or 6 people that read our magazine loved it and said we really needed to take it to the next level but we were just lazy and never did. I'll have to post one of the articles.

Again - Bob read our magazine and kept pushing me to blog. He even named my blog Maximum Red over a year ago. I changed it to Maximus Red today because when I was double checking the spelling of maximum today, maximus came up. My brother, who had a variety of nicknames for Max, used to call him Maximus so I went with that instead. Bob also came up with some cool graphics but I have no idea had to get them into layout.


In the meantime I discovered Facebook. Initially, I thought it was lame but I did like the idea of being able to lurk around undetected and see what people were up to. I think I had a Facebook profile for a few months before anyone even friended me and even longer before I friended anyone. But as a recovering smoker, I quickly became hooked. Where else am I going to amass over 300 friends? I think I only have face to face contact with about 10 people a day. Maybe 4 on the weekends. I found people I haven't seen in 25 years. People I've never met all of a sudden wanted to be my friend. I mean, I have to admit it was pretty flattering. It's only recently that I started ignoring friend requests from people I don't know. Who has time for that? I have not de-friended anyone yet. I like to follow the wise advice of  "hold your friends close and your enemies even closer."

Not only did I become addicted to FB (as I've come to refer to it as), but I became obsessed with the "status line". My daily goal became (and continues to be) to post something so witty, that people feel compelled to respond. And so far, it's been a huge success for me. Who would have thought 1-2 sentences a day could impact the world in such a positive way?

For me, the status line, at times expands to the Note Tab. Which really was the precursor to the blog in my case. All of those "25 Random Things, What your kid really things about you, Think Fast Memories" just brought me closer the realization that I needed to blog. Especially after my brother died. I had to write. I had to get it out and in that particular case, writing it somewhere no one would ever see wasn't going to cut it. I was oozing grief and I needed everyone to know. And I think they did. But the respond was so overwhelmingly positive (although I'm sure some people were like "shut up already") that I have no regrets. And I'm sure that you'll see some of that part of me on here too.

So here I am, my first blog entry. I did it!!! Sign up, tune in and I will try hard to entertain.