Today is an important day, my friends. Its my sister’s birthday, but that’s not the reason for this post. Not that her birthday is not important, its just that, you know, this is more important.

Today marks the second blanniversary (thats blog anniversary) of Amish In The City, the blog you have to come to love as the place to go when you run out of other things to do on the internet, the television, and life in general. Its hard to fathom that I’ve been doing this for two years now. I generally have a hard time committing to a grilled cheese sandwich, so this…this is quite a feat. Its been a lot of fun doing this over the last two years. A quick recap…

Posts written: 190
Comments received: 424
Posts Gawkered: 3
How Much You Care: -14
Number of People Still Reading: 0

This blog started as an outlet for boredom, and a place for me to share my stupid post-college anecdotes and rants with my close friends. While the content is still pretty much the same, my audience has slightly expanded. Through many strokes of luck (and occasional shameless self-promotion) I’ve been linked by a bunch of other blogs that get way more traffic than I ever will. (By the way, check out the blogroll on the right. I owe them some traffic.)

So its almost fitting that on blanniversary eve, I went to a bleet-up (thats blogger meet-up, keep up) with some of these bloggers. I was a little nervous at first. I barely have any friends that have blogs of their own, so the social aspects of blogging are foreign to me. These were people who are big bloggers - they post daily, they have big readership, get linked all over the place, etc. I felt like the dorky kid who finally got invited to sit with the cool kids. Sure I was happy about it, but in the back of my mind, I was thinking “Am I dreaming?”

It felt like a gigantic blind date. Though some of them knew each other, I had never met these people before, and most of them have taken the faceless, nameless route on their blogs. As I walked into the bar, I realized I had no clue who I was looking for. I found a big group of people sitting at a table, so I slowly walked up to them, waiting for someone to make the “Hey, you’re the Indian guy we invited” look and let me know I was in the right place. As introductions were made (everyone referred to themselves by their blog names which was kind of funny), I was still worrying about how the night would turn out, if real life interaction would be successful, or if I would feel out of place.

Turns out they’re all a bunch of booze-hungry retards like me.

We got our drink on and everyone mingled around, conversation springing up quite easily. I guess when you publicly share your most personal stories on the internet, there’s not a lot of ice left to be broken. It was neat to see all the [attractive] faces behind the blogs, though in my case, the experience was a little weird.

Kate: Your should change the pictures on your blog.
Amish: Huh?
Kate: Your pictures aren’t very flattering. You’re so thin- I was expecting someone 50 pounds heavier.
Amish: Thanks…I think?

After a few beers, the group decided that we should go do Karaoke (Blaraoke?). As is usually the case with me and Karaoke, I proceeded to get shit-faced and sing terribly. We had a private room to ourselves for two hours, and the hits (and booze) just kept flowing.

The song book was about 100 pages long with no discernible organization scheme. About 10 pages were filled with an alphabetized listing, and the rest of the book was just a clusterfuck of songs listed in random order. There are two songs that I absolutely must hear when I go out for Karaoke. “I Want It That Way” was easy to find, but the second song was proving difficult, until Kate stepped in.

Amish: [opens book to random page] Kate, help me find ‘Since You Been Gone’
Kate: [points randomly on page] There.
Amish: No seriously…wait…how the fuck did you do that?

My memory’s a bit hazy after that. I might’ve been offered a job at Gawker? I’m not sure. Word on the street is that we went to a second bar, but I have zero clue if I made it there or not. I don’t remember how I got home. I do remember knocking a glass off my nightstand when I got there. And then covering the water and glass shards with a towel, because that seemed like the logical thing to do. I woke up today with a big headache and a giant wad of cash, which excited me, until I realized I paid for the karaoke with my credit card. Its now 4pm and I still feel hungover. Happy Blanniversary!

Oh, ‘Cotton’ is the gift theme for second anniversaries. In case you feel like getting me something, here’s a suggestion.