Category — Virtual Lushary

Grey is the new black.

Stripes are the new dots.

Gin is the new wine.

Wait, bourbon is the new wine.

No, I was right the first time, gin is the new wine.

Comments are the new hug.

2350 is the new goal.

Tomorrow is A New Day and Manda had the good sense to kick open the doors to the Lushary. I thought everyone could gather here for a drink before they went over to Our Own Creation and Sweet Zoë to knock those old dates off the dashboard wall. And, for Manda, who has been over here polishing the glasses since the weekend, a strawberry drink in honour of her festival. I have pried myself away from Facebook long enough to make it.

For those who have no clue what I’m talking about since I posted about Allison’s situation right before Memorial Day weekend, please click here and read about A New Day because we really need your help tomorrow. Well…starting tonight. Starting at midnight GMT and running through the entire 29th of May. 24 hours of clicking your heart out at her blog. She will have a start post up when the time starts and then put up an end post when the 24 hour period is over. Just so you know if you’re clicking at the right time.

We haven’t yet opened the doors to the bar this month and it seemed like a perfect time to do so. As always, it has been a bit more than a month since we met, bitched, cried, comforted, and caught up each other on our cycles and lives. Pull up a seat and I’ll pour you a drink. Let everyone know what is happening in your life. The good, the bad, the ugly. My only request is that if a story catches your eye, you follow it back to the person’s blog and start reading their posts. Give some love, give some support, or laugh with someone until your drink comes out of your nose.

I have a ton of assvice in my back pocket and as a virtual bartender, I will give it to you unless you specifically tell me that this is simply a vent and you do not want to receive anything more than a hug.

So if you have been a lurker for a while (or if this is your first open bar as someone who found this space through NaComLeavMo), sit down and tell us about yourself. Remember to provide a link or a way for people to continue reading your story (or if you don’t have a blog–gasp!–you can always leave an email address if you’re looking for advice or support. If not, people can leave messages for that person here in the comments section too). If you’re a regular at the bar, I’ll get out your engraved martini glass while you make yourself comfortable. And anyone new, welcome. I’m glad you found this virtual bar.

For those who have no clue what I’m talking about when I say that the bar is open, click here to catch up and then jump into the conversation back on this current post.

So have a strawberry cocktail and tell us what is up with your life and then go over and help out Allison.

A few sips into the Manischewitz at the seder and I suddenly remembered my beloved Lushary. Do you ever jump mentally to your blog when you’re in an uncomfortable space? You’re having a conversation with someone about their pregnancy, but mentally you’re tracing the borders of your blog’s banner? You’re talking to them about how you should just have a drink and relax so it “can happen” but your mind is really running through the list of blogs in your Google Reader?

Do you remember that scene in The Phantom Tollbooth where Milo, Tock and the Humbug all end up sailing out of their car and landing on the Island of Conclusions with Canby? That’s sort of how I imagine myself when I am ensconced in an uncomfortable conversation. I just picture my body sailing out of the room and landing firmly between two Microsoft Paint icons.

Is this unhealthy or healthy having a mental space to retreat? It sounds like something you would learn as part of a visualization technique and yet it’s not really on par with the whole waves-lapping-on-the-sand-happy-place we’re always led towards.

We haven’t yet opened the doors to the bar this month and it seemed like a perfect time to do so. As always, it has been a bit more than a month since we met, bitched, cried, comforted, and caught up each other on our cycles and lives. Pull up a seat and I’ll pour you a drink. Let everyone know what is happening in your life. The good, the bad, the ugly. My only request is that if a story catches your eye, you follow it back to the person’s blog and start reading their posts. Give some love, give some support, or laugh with someone until your drink comes out of your nose.

I have a ton of assvice in my back pocket and as a virtual bartender, I will give it to you unless you specifically tell me that this is simply a vent and you do not want to receive anything more than a hug.

So if you have been a lurker for a while, sit down and tell us about yourself. Remember to provide a link or a way for people to continue reading your story (or if you don’t have a blog–gasp!–you can always leave an email address if you’re looking for advice or support. If not, people can leave messages for that person here in the comments section too). If you’re a regular at the bar, I’ll get out your engraved martini glass while you make yourself comfortable. And anyone new, welcome. I’m glad you found this virtual bar.

For those who have no clue what I’m talking about when I say that the bar is open, click here to catch up and then jump into the conversation back on this current post.

You may have tied on four glasses of wine at your Pesach seder, but how many imaginary drinks can you down at the Virtual Lushary?

I love Google Reader so much that I’m holding a contest to design a drink for the Lushary in its honour. The Googlerita.

It definitely should have Tequila as a base because just as everyone has a tequila story, everyone has a Google Reader overdose story that makes them wary even though they can’t pass up an opportunity to read blogs through it just as I can’t pass up a free Margarita at an open bar no matter how much it reminds me of the “Incident”–the one that started with high kicks on the dormitory bathroom sink basin and ended waking up in a stranger’s room with the person saying, “I brought you in here because you fell asleep in the stairwell and I had no idea which room you belonged in. No one wanted to claim you as their roommate because you looked like you were going to vomit. You can kick really high, you know that?”

Josh set me up with Google Reader and I have become a massive addict. I keep saying, “just one more feed, one more feed, man. Give me another hit.” I am a huge technophobe and I hate learning how to use new programs so I’ve begged off from actually using a blog reader for years now, choosing instead to click down a list of blogs several times a day as well as my gigantic blogroll at numerous times during the week. And then Purim happened.

Every night, I was silently and not so silently cursing you, calling poor innocent bloggers whores (even the man-pies) for making me click on them when they hadn’t updated yet. I was trying to efficiently blog read in between batches of hamantaschen and it was killing me to click around and not find anything new and use up the two minutes I had before I had to jump back into candy-making-land again.

People aren’t commenting nearly enough right now and people aren’t writing nearly enough right now. I’m just saying.

People have written on and off about how many feeds a person carries and I’m right now conducting an experiment to find my own breaking point. I’ve been adding a few feeds an hour to see when it tips over from being blog reading into blog gasping. I’ll let you know my breaking point. Right now, I’m at 40 feeds and it feels like I am barely reading anything. Which is also scary to think about how many blogs I normally read in a day if subscribing to 40 blogs feels like nothing and I’m thinking it will be well over 150 when I’m finally done adding my daily reads.

So what should be in a Googlerita and why? And tell me what is happening in your life as I pour you a drink.

As always, it has been about a month since we met, bitched, cried, comforted, and caught up each other on our cycles and lives. Pull up a seat and I’ll pour you a drink. Let everyone know what is happening in your life. The good, the bad, the ugly. My only request is that if a story catches your eye, you follow it back to the person’s blog and start reading their posts. Give some love, give some support, or laugh with someone until your drink comes out of your nose.

I have a ton of assvice in my back pocket and as a virtual bartender, I will give it to you unless you specifically tell me that this is simply a vent and you do not want to receive anything more than a hug.

So if you have been a lurker for a while, sit down and tell us about yourself. Remember to provide a link or a way for people to continue reading your story (or if you don’t have a blog–gasp!–you can always leave an email address if you’re looking for advice or support. If not, people can leave messages for that person here in the comments section too). If you’re a regular at the bar, I’ll get out your engraved martini glass while you make yourself comfortable. And anyone new, welcome. I’m glad you found this virtual bar.

For those who have no clue what I’m talking about when I say that the bar is open, click here to catch up and then jump into the conversation back on this current post.

It’s Purim tonight and you’re supposed to get so drunk that you can’t tell the name Mordechai (the good guy in the Purim story) from Haman (the bad guy in the Purim story). Who else is drinking today?

This is the problem with avatars. My picture is this bright orange, smiley rendition of myself in Microsoft Paint. Which works well when things are good. Saying happy birthday, celebrating after a positive beta, congratulating someone on clear tubes after an HSG–all good uses for my avatar. But when the post is serious, when you are trying to give support as the shit goes down, it is a little disconcerting to have that bright, smiley picture in deep contrast with the words.

It’s interesting to look down the comments on any given post and judge the appropriateness of avatar to words. There are belly shot avatars there to console someone after a pregnancy loss. Or a picture of a dog used as an avatar that is left on a post discussing the loss of a pet. It’s a little strange, nu, when you stop and think about it? Of course, the same avatar is the perfect avatar for a different situation. Like my own.

I thought about replacing my orange picture with a neutral head shot. Straight mouth revealing neither happiness nor sympathy. But then I thought about how a happy face is like a stopped watch, correct two times a day if not more. A monotonous face is rarely appropriate unless you’re answering a question like “do you take cream or sugar?” So I scrapped that idea.

Changing avatars based on the comment I leave would tack a few minutes onto leaving each comment, ensuring that I leave fewer and fewer. I’m not even positive that’s possible to do. And I considered going a different route–something that worked in all cases–a star or a leaf–something that conveys no emotions. But how would it look if we were all inanimate objects? And there is something about the human face–even in cartoon–that creates the voice. That makes you imagine the very real person who is saying these words to you. Because, on the other end, we are all very real people.

So I am back at square one, with a orange, happy avatar, sometimes leaving comments on very sad posts and feeling this discordance between the frozen look on my cartoon face and the heartfelt nature of the words. Tell me what you think as I pour you a drink.

As always, it has been about a month since we met, bitched, cried, comforted, and caught up each other on our cycles and lives. Pull up a seat and I’ll pour you a drink. Let everyone know what is happening in your life. The good, the bad, the ugly. My only request is that if a story catches your eye, you follow it back to the person’s blog and start reading their posts. Give some love, give some support, or laugh with someone until your drink comes out of your nose.

I have a ton of assvice in my back pocket and as a virtual bartender, I will give it to you unless you specifically tell me that this is simply a vent and you do not want to receive anything more than a hug.

So if you have been a lurker for a while, sit down and tell us about yourself. Remember to provide a link or a way for people to continue reading your story (or if you don’t have a blog–gasp!–you can always leave an email address if you’re looking for advice or support. If not, people can leave messages for that person here in the comments section too). If you’re a regular at the bar, I’ll get out your engraved martini glass while you make yourself comfortable. And anyone new, welcome. I’m glad you found this virtual bar.

For those who have no clue what I’m talking about when I say that the bar is open, click here to catch up and then jump into the conversation.

Martini shaker in hand and a midori sour for myself on the bar. Who else is drinking today?

Wow–I’m really floored by the great response to the book. I’m still reading through comments and I’ll put answers to questions in the Roundup on Friday. But we have something else to celebrate…

Like the sign says, The Virtual Lushary started serving invisible drinks in 2007, which makes it a year old. In fact, it turns one tomorrow on the 17th. The idea that kicked it off remains the same idea that keeps it going: that people need a space where everyone knows their name and even if it is their first time sitting down in the circle, a space is created to include them instantly.

It’s a sucky world where terrible things happen, but it’s also a wonderful world where people jump in and help one another simply by letting a person know that they’re not shouting their hopes and fears into the ether. On that note, it has been a very sad time in the blogosphere. It feels sometimes like things go in waves–we’ll have this rash of good news and then this period where you don’t even want to turn on the computer to read about the next loss. And this is my thought: I want to support all the people who are in the majority–either during a good wave or a bad wave–but I don’t want to forget the minority who are experiencing the opposite news at the same time. It’s a fine balance, walking through the bittersweet.

There are many other communities in the blogosphere and they all have their core group and a sense of cohesiveness–especially those that focus on an issue. I think what differentiates us is how close-knit and organized we are. And on that note, I read a post this week that spoke about how the person felt like they had lost this community and how this is where they drew all of their strength from while they were trying. It’s hard. We’re a community based on what we don’t have therefore, it seems to follow that once you obtain that goal, you would step into a new community. But it’s not that easy. I think because we are so close-knit and supportive, it is impossible to ask someone to build a life elsewhere simply because they have achieved the thing that brought them here in the first place. What a strange idea–it’s like prisoners who want to remain on Alcatraz! But I think you all know what I mean. You are the voices I trust now, the people who give me advice.

Which is the reason for the divided blogroll–so people can find their smaller niche within the group–but the divisions are not meant as banishment. When you move over to the pregnant or parenting categories, it is for the greater community who wants the heads up before they click on a blog but it is also for the people who have achieved that goal–so they can find one another, still draw their support from inside this group, and remain an integral part of the community. Hopefully, readers easily cross over category borders. Without the elders, information would be lost or have to be rebuilt again and again. So as we shift around at the bar, always offering a seat to whoever walks in the door, I ask that you keep doing that even if the patron walks in with a child or a pregnant belly. If they’re walking into this bar, trust that they need to be here.

January is a reflective time. I like looking forward, but I’m a sucker for looking back too. So, indulge that side of me as we celebrate a full year of imaginary drunken debauchery.

If you commented at the first Lushary, I’d like you to click here and read what you had to say one year ago this week. And then, as you update the group below on your current situation, add what was happening this time last year and how life is the same or different. If you joined along at a later bar session, the same idea holds. You can scan old sessions here and then state when you found the bar and what has changed since.

As always, it has been a less than a month since we met, bitched, cried, comforted, and caught up each other on our cycles and lives. Pull up a seat and I’ll pour you a drink. Let everyone know what is happening in your life. My only request is that if a story catches your eye, you follow it back to the person’s blog and start reading their posts. Give some love, give some support, or laugh with someone until your drink comes out of your nose.

I have a ton of assvice in my back pocket and as a virtual bartender, I will give it to you unless you specifically tell me that this is simply a vent and you do not want to receive anything more than a hug.

So if you have been a lurker for a while, sit down and tell us about yourself. Remember to provide a link or a way for people to continue reading your story (or if you don’t have a blog–gasp!–you can always leave an email address if you’re looking for advice or support. If not, people can leave messages for that person here in the comments section too). If you’re a regular at the bar, I’ll get out your engraved martini glass while you make yourself comfortable. And anyone new, welcome. I’m glad you found this virtual bar.

For those who have no clue what I’m talking about when I say that the bar is open, click here to catch up and then jump into the conversation.

Happy Drinking. Raising a glass to another year of imaginary drinks!

Oh…and check BlogHer tomorrow morning for another new post about our corner of the blogosphere.