Category: I’m So Hungry I Could Eat A…

Seriously, sometimes I think they just pull the words out of a hat in random order.

I’m afraid it’s an XY life, ma girls:

Rock and roll.

When gravy and crazy get together, look out!

[Note the word "fast" over there on the left. Fast grazy is so much more untrouble than slow grazy.]

Stay away from those imitation extremes:

Errr…. okay.

See you in the year 3821, you design style m.f.

Any idea what the bottom line says? I suspect that’s the best part.

It appears I’m an unobservant idiot— I haven’t received any blog comments in my e-mail for about three weeks now, and I thought it was because you guys suddenly decided you didn’t love me anymore. Then today when I was digging through my admin panel I discovered nearly a hundred comments that I hadn’t been aware of. Upon doing some research, it appears that the most recent WordPress upgrade broke comment notifications for some blogs, including mine. I’ve implemented a code fix to the relevant php file, so hopefully that’ll unbreak that. We’ll see. I’ve also gone back manually through those missed comments, and hopefully I’ve responded to anything that needed attention (i.e. those of you who asked for a response from me on a specific issue or topic). If I missed something important, let me know.

So, I’m sorry if you thought I was being lazy or ignoring you— neither is the case. I’m just not very observant.

I want you to look me straight in the eves and tell me you are number.

Well, hello there! You might be wondering where I’ve been, but chances are you were already on top of that story. The good news is, I successfully completed my NaNoWriMo novel (yay!), and melissamaples.com has just recently had its one-year anniversary (double yay!), so things are fantastic over here and I’m ready to start getting back into the swing of things and making some changes and improvements to mark the start of my second year here.

The first thing on the agenda is a little experiment— the weekly bazaar is one of the more popular features with our ever-growing readership, and in recent months people have started commenting more and more frequently that they wished we could have a bazaar giggle every day of the week instead of just on Thursdays. So, in light of those suggestions (and because change is a good thing), effective immediately the weekly Thursday Is Bazaar Day feature will be slimmed down into daily doses for your Turklish reading pleasure. There will be at least one new photo everyday, and they’ll be ones you haven’t seen before, fresh and chuckle-worthy to get your day started off the right way, seven days a week. I do take your feedback seriously, so hopefully this is a move in a direction that reflects what you’ve been asking for.

There will be a few more changes around here, most of which will be cosmetic. The site is pretty as it is, but I think we’re all ready for a new layout, yes? There will probably be some shuffling of content as I start to incorporate more useful information into the site, but I’ll try to keep the confusion to a minimum, and as always the blog will remain on the front page, so those of you who come here looking for light-hearted fun won’t have to change a thing about the way you view the site.

Lastly, I want to thank each and every one of my readers for making the first year of melissamaples.com a wildly successful one— it’s gone better than I ever could have imagined, thanks to your loyalty and patience with me. As I ramp up the changes here, please do keep those comments coming and let me know what you think. Your opinion is important to me, and what you guys want directly affects the content you see here.

So, let’s get our bags packed and head swiftly into our second year together, shall we?

Here’s to a new year full of the mysteries and delights of the language we like to call Turklish.

An apology: I never got around to going to the bazaar on Thursday, and for that I’m truly sorry. I spent the day in Kemer with my close friend who was visiting from Denmark, and I thought I’d be back in time to hit the bazaar, but as often happens with good friends, we milked the time until well after dark. And then I made the excuse that about 80% of you were probably away on Thursday with your families anyway, so I that’s how I let myself off the hook. <sheepish look>

So here’s the consolation prize— a few photos from our day out in Kemer:

We went inside the mosque, and the imam was nice enough to let us take photos. The Kemer mosque is small, but it’s beautifully decorated.

No seats in a mosque, you just kneel directly on the floor.

I was surprised at the amount of bling they have in there now. The mosque has had a remodel since last I saw it.

In fact, Kemer has changed a lot over the past two years since I lived there. This clock tower, for instance, didn’t exist when I was a resident.

But some things will never change— no peon schmucks allowed.

I hope you guys have all had a great week— I’m writing like a madman and drinking a lot of wine. It’s fantastic.