and not so hard days seem impossible

i have the pleasure of sharing an office with a wonderful, beautiful, highly intelligent young lady. tragically for her, shes cursed sharing an office with me.

even though she has no ambition to replace me if something horrible happens to me, several times a week i will spin my chair around and say, “if i ever get eaten by sharks or smacked in the head by a falling safe, you really should probably know how to do this…” and i will try to teach her part of my job.

usually she will look up from whatever document im pointing at and say, “why dont you just stay out of the ocean or away from safes because i never want to have to do what youre about to do.”

told you she was highly intelligent.

most nights i leave the office around 8 or 9 o’clock and i go to the subway and i ride home. on that ride i think about my day so that i wont have to run through the day when i eat my dinner.

tonight on my walk i was pretty happy until i got to the subway and started going over the day and i was all, damn dude, that was sorta a really hard day. and it made me think if someone had put acid in my cheerios this morning because none of how hard the day was sank in. i just kept going from meeting to meeting, answered email after email, and did whatever task was ahead of me.

sometimes when i see the picture of the dude standing in front of that tank in china i think, that dude just really wanted to get to his next task. that tank just happened to get in the way,

poor tank.

on one hand we were usually breaking records, so that was great, and it was right to celebrate. on the other hand i was usually like, omg how are we gonna do *better* than that.

and because of that fear i was reluctant to post our numbers on the busblog… cuz what would happen if the next month we didnt continue to grow…

now that i no longer work for LAist im happy to post their numbers as they are unreal. and i promise you this is no april fools joke. but for the month of march, 2008, LAist did over 2.2 million pageviews, about 6 times better than what we did just a year ago.

basically LAist had more pageviews than pretty much all of their so-called competition combined.

i am very proud of them, i am very happy for them, and most of all – as a fan – i cant wait to see what they are able to do with momentum.

momentum means so much. it doesnt matter if youre talking about a sporting event, or a relationship, or traffic on a blog – when you are rocking you continue to rock and magic shit happens. when youre floundering and continue to floundering horrible shit happens.

LAist has been on a bit of a roll for a while now as the chart shows. could they be able to get 12 million pageviews a year from now?

as someone who was deep inside that magical beast, and is now removed from it i can honestly say this – anything is possible with LAist. anything. it is free of so many things that slow down corporate sites and blogs, and it has the ability to shift on a dime. meanwhile it has the momentum and the staff and the street cred to do things that solo blogs would never be able to do.

this weekend i stopped by the LAist monthly bbq to congratulate them and have some of their mojo rub off on me. it was very nice and i wish them the best.

and puts puppies on the home page.

wrigley field, youre next

a day i really hate since my life is built on trust

but today is also Just a Girl’s birthday, a girl i heart.

last summer she flew to canada to meet me. its ok that she doesnt know that i live in america. apparently in holland they think that all of north america is america which is fine cuz we think that all of europe is england.

in real life JaG is taller and prettier and hotter than in any of her pictures. her boyfriend is also jealouser. especially in regards to hanging out with tony pierce for a week. in canada. in the summertime.

dont ask me why.

fine ask me why.

probably because in real life tony + jag = something really special and if i was a bf id be ascared too and maybe i would have txt messaged her a gazillion times day and night asking “did he steal yr heart yet?” “are you still mine, still?” “has he hypnotized you with that busblog mojo yet?”

she picked me up at the airport in vancouver. we took a cab to my hotel. by the time we got there the chemistry was already flowing and i found it all particularly interesting because at my age i didnt think that such things were still possible. but alas…

best thing about her? her profession. probably the best thing a smart person with courage could do for money. something we all should be doing if we werent at the xbi. and for that it proves how good a soul she is. and for that i heart her even more.

JaG probably picked up on the magnetism and good vibes between us, which clearly werent a fluke from when we first met a year before in amsterdam, because she hid out with her lesbian friends for most of the week and left me to hang out with foxxy, the hells angels, half of vancouver, lowercase carmen, and maxim girl keira-anne.

and fireworks.

and sushi.

and beer with the kids.

and etc.

so it was cool.

in another time in another place im pretty sure that JaG and i would probably be married, if you can believe it. shes pretty much the perfect girl. she likes all the right things, shes sweet, shes curious about most things, shes open minded, and she has the cutest accent.

i hope today she has a great birthday in her favorite spots in town. so why not go over to our little dutch girls blog and tell her happy birthday in european.