Welcome, my friends, to the blog that never ends...for this is
"ATMOSPHERIC RUMINATIONS" Post #600!

Wow...600 posts. Each time I visit my posting-page, it shows me the number of blog entries I've "committed", so I've been aware that I was approaching "600" for some time now. I am not sure how festive an occasion this is, but hey, I'll go "all out", by making each paragraph a different color. No room for stupid hats or party favors on the internet, after all. (Al Gore hasn't authorized them, ha ha.) And, I've been thinking about what I was going to post, once I reached this point. Hence, the not altogether original observation typed in green below...

I see this blog as sort of a "conduit" through which my thoughts flow, and in a way I feel like a phony, because, I am a lot more 'together' here, than I am in real life. I have anxiety attacks that at times make it hard for me to communicate. In the 'manic' phase of my bi-polarity, I feel like I must be 'tweaking' on something, although I've never actually 'tweaked' on anything in my life. I wish I could be more like the person I appear to be in this blog; you know, the casual, relaxed, yet sharply critical and knowledgable individual I try to be when I post here. And, one more observation: first red, then green paragraphs. Looks like a Christmas post, huh? Well, today (June 25th) means there's only 6 months 'til Christmas. Better get that holiday shopping done!

A blogsite I habitually visit time and time again was wondering, what a "blog-year" would be. Seems like ages, don't it? On that blogsite, I replied that if, say, the overall blogging average for everyone who blogs is twice a week, then, I suppose a blog-year would be somewhere around 600. (That's actually less than a calendar year's posting at two per week.) I began this blog in the fall of 2005, and posted like a madman, sometimes with two or three (or more) posts per day. Well, I just don't have the energy to post like that anymore, nor the desire, really. Although I seem to have stepped up production lately. Sometimes, I can still churn out 3 or 4 posts a week. And according to the handy-dandy little "counter" thing below, there are those from various sites who visit here. F'rinstance...

One noteworthy visit to my blog actually got me mentioned on some medical website! I was griping about how stupid the Sally Field commercials which advertise some sort of bone-density drug are...Sally's friend says she has to take her medication once a week, which is SO time-consuming, to which Sally says, she only has to take hers ONCE a month! Meantime I take at least 6 pills every night. I'd written, "do the people who write these commercials think we're MORONS?" And that got picked up by the medical community. I googled "Atmospheric Ruminations" one nite, and there it was! There I was, raisin' hell!

However, something quite noteworthy did (or, actually, didn't) happen to me today. Here in my little Oregon Coast town, I was driving into the downtown area (which I still don't know all that well yet) and I saw lights flashing in my rearview mirror! ACK!!! I began mentally tweaking. Help! The lady cop who got out asked me (as all cops do to everyone they stop), "do you know why I pulled you over?" And of course I gazed up at her with innocent doe-eyes and said, "no". Turns out I ran a red light! And get this: she gave me a WARNING! No ticket! I actually asked her, "are you cutting me a break?" And she said, "you don't want a ticket". I guess she'd had a good day or whatever. I didn't mean to sound chauvinistic about this, but I told her, "it's awfully sweet of you to do that". And then, I tried to rectify that, by saying she was "very professional". She let me go after running a red light. There is still some mercy in this world. If I'd run a red-light in the town I USED to live in, they would have thrown the book, the bookshelves and the entire LIBRARY at me.

Well, the time has come to shut down this 600th post. Hence, a paragraph in basic black. I've just heard Paris Hilton is going to be let out of jail in a few hours, to once again be a free (and slightly anorexic) do-nothing, talentless, image-oriented popular-sort-of-person who's never earned the celebrity she has. A changed woman, she says. Maybe I should've typed this paragraph in Orange, for THAT'S THE COLOR OF THE JAIL JUMP-SUIT SHE HAD TO WEAR while serving her time. I bet she didn't like the way it clashed with her bleached-blonde hair. Oh, there I go being "sharply critical" again, as if I were perfect or something. Hey, we need Paris Hilton. She gets our mind off all the other tragic news that's happening out there. For a while, anyway.
____________________

Well, how do I bring to a conclusion this historic (if not hysteric) 600th posting? Well, I suppose I'll observe this occasion by first shutting down this laptop computer, and then I'll finish off the box of "Cheese Nips" that I started last night. Yeah, that'll work.