This is actually not my first foray into blogging. I had a blog a couple of years ago, where I wrote about my family, cooking, and various issues that are important to me. I enjoyed the writing process, the discipline that blogging gives you, and the sense of participating in a conversation with the world at large. Unfortunately, I abandoned the project after a year or so; partly, I just was too busy to keep up with it, but I think the real reason was that the blog was linked to our family webpage, which meant that friends and relatives could easily find it. And my mom would make comments! And it totally weirded me out! I would go to family reunions and relatives would ask "So, what have you blogged about lately?" and I would be completely, irrationally annoyed that I had to "talk the blog" instead of just "blog the blog." I suppose published writers have to deal with that sort of thing all the time (and I've always dreamed of being a published writer, which I am not, unless you count a handful of obscure lit-crit articles from my grad school days) but I was unprepared for it, and eventually the blog went by the wayside.

Recently, I've been feeling the urge to blog again. I read a fairly large number of blogs, especially ashtanga yoga blogs and food blogs, and I started to feel like I wanted to be part of the conversation. So this time around, I decided to do it anonymously. I'm not going to any great lengths to conceal my identity, though, and I'm sure clever readers may connect the dots and figure it out over time. And of course, my husband knows who I am and how to find the blog, so I guess complaining about him is out of the question!

Well, enough of the meta-blogging, and on to the main course!