For no particular reason, today was the day...

Actually, that is a lie.  There IS a reason.  My college roomie had a baby girl yesterday.  She named her Dorothy.  This made me think of The Wizard of Oz.  And, well, this will all make sense by the end of this post.

Maybe.

(Seriously.  There are no guarantees.)

It has been 7 years, 5 months and 27 days since I started this blog. And for 7 years, 5 months and 27 days I have been irritated that my little corner of the internet is called BLINKY MOMENTS.

Yes, I know: #firstworldproblems. It is amazing I can sleep at night.

The original name for this blog is now (FINALLY) the name of this blog. BLINKY MOMENTS was only supposed to be temporary. Except I am notoriously lazy and have never been motivated enough to simply sit down and figure out how to change the header. Which, as it turns out, is ridiculously easy and took less than two minutes.

Awesome.

For those of you who are curious, LOSING THE UP-TO-UP-TO-SIDE-TO-SIDE ROPES is a reference to an inside joke from college. And by “inside joke” I really mean “I said something incredibly stupid and everyone is still laughing at my expense twelve years later”.

Stuff like this actually happens to me all the time.

For instance, for years and years and years I thought cows were traded on Wall Street. When I heard that so-and-so bought whatever stock, I envisioned a cow wearing a blanket with a company logo on the side. I always felt bad for the cows that were bought and sold constantly and never had a nice, consistently loving home. I even once vowed as a child that I would be a good stock owner one day, and provide my cows with some emotional stability.

Because cows need stability.  Especially those living in New York City on Wall Street.  Because NYC is all concrete and skyscrapers.  Not green pastures and acres of farm land like those "happy cows" have out in California.  New York cows need to know they are loved.  Because life is hard for the city cow.  They need a reason to carry on.

(THIS MAKES SENSE TO ME!)

Of course, it helps if I mention the fact that my dad, grandfather and great grandfather were all cattle ranchers. At least there was a context for my confusion. Granted, you would have thought I would have figured it out before, say, high school (let’s not talk about that). And yet, to this day, I always picture a bunch of cows when discussing or reviewing my portfolio.

Case in point: Yesterday I debated whether or not to sell a stock because my grandfather gave it to me DECADES ago. Rationally, I know that there is no such thing as a sentimental share of a publicly traded company.  It is just business. But that didn’t keep me from imagining an elderly herd of cows that once knew my grandfather.  They were counting on me.  If I sold them, they would be back out THERE.  In the chaos of the trading room floor.  That's a young cow's game.  Sending old cows back out there is just...well, cruel.

(You can’t make this kind of crazy up, people.)

(And, yes. I still own this stock.  All of it.)

(Moo.)

Similarly, I was well into my double digits before I finally figured out that pharmacists weren't drug dealers. After all, they worked in a DRUG STORE with DRUGS.  I just couldn't figure out why the cops weren't on to them.  If they simply raided all the pharmacies, they would find all the drugs and they could confiscate them.  National drug epidemic SOLVED.

It didn’t help that I once saw a movie where a drug deal went down in an alley behind a drug store.

And then there is the Dolphin Show I coordinated in my mind to the theme song from Top Gun.  But that is an entirely different post all together.  But suffice it to say, I thought Sea World was going to be knocking down my door to hire me to train all their dolphins and whales once they got a hold of it.  Mainly because it was a multi species event, and who doesn't love it when nature collaborates on something fabulous set to music?

'Nuf said.

(Stop laughing, Trevor.)

But back to the Wizard of Oz. There is a scene in the movie, after the house gets picked up by the tornado, when Dorothy turns to Toto and says:

“We must be up inside the cyclone.”

Except I always heard:

“We lost the up-to-up-to-side-to-side ropes.”

Because for over TWO DECADES I thought houses were literally tied to their foundations.  Especially in Kansas, the midwest and other tornado-prone areas.

And, even though I now know that houses aren’t tied to the ground (thanks to the hysterical laughter of all my college besties), my mind always flashes to imaginary ropes underneath our home during particularly bad thunderstorms. Which, since I live in tornado alley, is pretty often.  I know these foundation ropes don't exist, and yet I always find myself crossing my fingers and saying a little prayer that they hold strong anyway.  Because, you know, I'd hate for my house to be blown away like Dorothy's,

If any of this is making you blink at your computer screen, then you know how I coined BLINKY MOMENTS.

So, there you go.  A new name for an old blog.  Except it is the original name.  So it is really an old name for an old blog.

Welcome to the world, baby Dorothy.  You are loved.