Won't you help me blow out the candles?

storyland6, originally uploaded by roxydynamite.

Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday, my little Magpie.
Happy Birthday to you!

Today the Metaphorical Magpie celebrates its second birthday. My first post reported on the Siren Fest in Coney Island, my imaginings about Rhett Miller and italian ices. I went to this year's Siren Fest over the weekend.

This would be a good time to acknowledge some of the bloggers that inspired me at the beginning to start one of my own. In the beginning, there was Alex the Girl. I was quickly drawn into her world and fascinated as she posted entries that were poignant, rencanted and took them down and then did it again and again. Her European take on living in the US is always interesting. One of her most recent posts indicates she's taking a break for a while from blogging about her life and focusing on living it. An admirable pursuit, although I think she'll be back in one way another soon enough. Next came, Not Martha who taught me how to make glass magnets and gives me updates on the city I feel homesick for without ever living there, Seattle. When I first started blogging, I really didn't know what the site was going to become I thought it was going to be almost all about music. The Modern Age was just getting hot and her posts often got me aggravated. Especially when we'd been to the same shows. But I'm not about keeping up the Jones's or the scenesters that refer to themselves as "we" to sound more authoritative. So I've stuck to what I know -me -and what I like- lots of super duper nice things.

This year I joined Self Portrait Challenge which opened me up to a plethora of interesting and wonderful people. Many of them are listed in my links. The community I've found there and the blogs it leads me to continue to educate, nourish and delight me. Many thanks to those of you who stop by here and offer kind words or just take the time to pop in every once in a while to check in on me.

To celebrate my second anniversary online, I'll be launching a new and improved site. I splurged and purchased my very own domain name. Sweets has been toiling for months on a redesign. Some last minute technical difficulties are keeping us down. I had a bit of a pout fest last night when I realized all was not well. Hopefully the situation will sort itself out soon. Stay tuned for the launch.

Isn't the cake photo teriff? Believe it or not, it used to be right in my neighborhood. A theme park called Storyland Village once abutted my small neighborhood. Torn down before my time to make way for a Sears and now a Shop-Rite. More photos of Storyland are here at the Imaginary world site. There was similar park that my grandparents took me to as a child. I remember picnicing under a cake like that.