Happy almost blogoversary day to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Thank you for agreeing to participate in (1) more of my harebrained ideas and (2) my totally undeserved celebration (or...more accurately, we all deserve an international, online celebration so we should all beg for one every once in a while).

So here is a rundown of the week (since some activities require forethought and preparation).

The festivities kick off on June 18th with invisible booze at the Virtual Lushary. Come, drink imaginary drinks, and read what everyone has been up to since the last open bar. This is a great way to pick up lots of points for the Commentathon (see below): just follow bar comments back to the author's blog and read a new story. Or two. Or eighty. And leave a comment. And count that as a point.

The Commentathon will take place over the course of the entire week. Our aim is to spread the love over the blogosphere by collectively leaving 1000 comments. This is how it will work: (1) beginning June 13th, people can "register" and tell me a comment goal for the week. Be realistic, but pledge how many comments you will give out during the week. For every comment you leave on someone's blog, you get one point. For every comment you return that was left on your blog (in other words, someone leaves a comment on your blog and you go to their blog and return the favour by leaving a comment. We'll call these "double back" comments), you get two points. So, let's say that you pledge 10 points per day, you may leave 6 comments as well as return 2 comments for a total of 10 points. (2) starting June 18th, keep track of how many comments you leave over the course of the day. Each morning, send me a note to thetowncriers@gmail.com and let me know how many comments you wrote on infertility and pregnancy loss blogs* the day before. Again, every comment counts as one point and every double-back comment counts as two points. So keep track of how many points you have daily. This is, of course, done on an honour system. (3) keep track and send in numbers until June 25th (there will be three "catch-up" days that you can use from the 26th--28th if you're away between the 18th--25th). (4) we'll see if we can write 1000 comments as a community over the course of the week. (5) the highest commentors will be announced and awarded on the 29th during the blog roundup.

Secret Public Ode Day will fall on the 21st. This one takes a bit of preplanning too. Choose another blogger and write a paragraph about how much their blog means to you. How you've found inspiration in their words or how their point-of-view has made your journey or coping strategies a little better. You can reference (and link to) specific posts or simply speak about their blog in general. Email me the paragraph with a link to the blog some time between today and June 20th. I will post all of them on the 21st. You will never know who wrote the paragraph about you so don't even ask. Just bask in the love and know how much you've changed someone else's world. This is sort of in that vein that people never take the time to say nice things about a person for when they're alive and can enjoy the compliments. Moreso, this is a reminder that even though you may think your blog is expendable, people would be very sad if you ever took it down or stopped writing. If you have the energy, write more than one paragraph and send them to me! Make sure you also try to write about the smaller blogs you read that people may not know about yet.

On my actual blogoversary, the 25th, we will hold the Great Cake Day. Bake or buy a decadent dessert, but take a photo for your blog pre-consumption (or during consumption. But it's just a tease if you post a picture of an empty plate with a few crumbs and a grubby fork). Post your picture and sent me the url for the post. I'll make a massive list of everyone eating cake on the same day across the world. If you live in the same city as many other bloggers, set up a date to get together and consume cake together. Or if you live in the middle of Kansas and you're the only stirrup queen for miles, proudly chow down on your chocolate cake alone (though, you're not really alone because everyone else is chowing down on their cake and talking about it online so it feels like we're all together at an enormous international party). If you bake your cake, post the recipe too. Or if you buy your dessert from a fantastic bakery that everyone should know about, provide a link in case someone else lives in your city too.

I had a few other ideas, but I fear that the week will be too packed so I may hold off and do a few more things later in the summer. So...that's the schedule. I'll post registration for the Commentathon in mid-June. But right now, you can get started on your ode to another blogger for Secret Public Ode day. Or two bloggers. Or, 50 bloggers if you have the energy. Send them along once you write them and I'll start compiling them into a post.

* Infertility and pregnancy loss is a simplistic name that encompasses any blog related to infertility, treatments, living child-free, adoption, GBLT assisted reproduction, donor gametes, secondary infertility, pregnancy loss, pregnancy-after-infertility, and parenting-after-infertility
(as well as any other categories I inadvertently left off the list).