Confessions of an Internet Crossdresser

So you know how you see screen names and sometimes think, "is that really some creepy dude sitting in the house in his boxers with his little soldier poking out?" Well, that's me -- kind of. I hereby swear on my lucky d20 (it's a Dungeons and Dragons reference -- find a dork and ask them to explain it) that I was fully clothed during all of my time spent as SnowboundGal.

SnowboundGal is an account I created to handle all of the communication necessary to organize Jen's digital birthday party. (For those of you who have just left your Amish homestead and are wondering what I'm babbling about, you will be enlightened by reading the two posts from the 15th.) I wanted a separate account to eliminate the risk that Jen would accidentally see a message relating to the surprise, and I also needed an account in order to make comments on some blogs whose owners didn't post their e-mail addresses. I chose a female-sounding name because most of the blogs Jen reads are authored and read by women and I desperately wanted to fit in. Finally the (extremely lame) name was one of those mental "Column A, Column B" exercises.

The rest of the story is pretty self-explanatory. About two weeks prior to Jen's birthday, I spent an afternoon gathering e-mail addresses, drafting a mass e-mail explaining my little project, and compulsively checking my feminine account for responses. I was immediately inundated with positive responses (including one that bordered on a wedding proposal.) I spent the remaining time answering questions and leaving what I hoped were enticing comments on the few blogs which did not have easily accessible e-mail addresses. Any of you bloggers wondering who SnowboundGal was and what her "secret mission" was, that was me and my project. In a fit of paranoia, I thought Jen might see this crazy SnowboundGal chick leaving comments about a secret mission and feel left out. So I left a comment for her and ended up carrying on a conversation about a made-up thesis concerning the ability of an internet community to remove barriers when talking to strangers. It was only a few e-mails, but I had to be careful so SnowboundGal's correspondence didn't come through with my "voice".

So yeah, I'm pretty good at lying to my wife. Do I feel guilty about it? Not in the least. I Love her and thus I will use my powers only for good.

To say that the surprise was a success would be a gross understatement. Jen spent most of the day giddy (her word -- I prefer twitterpated), and I know she ended up crying a bit when she first realized what was going on. I was amazed by how willing people were to take time out of their busy lives to make Jen feel special. It says a lot about how closely-knit the blogging community is -- obviously you are much more to each other than a group of pixels on a computer screen. I tried to look at each post and leave a comment (as Jeff) for the author. My apologies to anyone I may have missed. Each post was special, but as Jen and I were talking last night, a few stuck out. We saw posts with poems, videos, comics and some extremely strange stick formations.

To finish off the bloggy (is that in the Scrabble dictionary?) theme to the birthday, I also purchased a half-dozen of Susie's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Balls and they were delicious. Susie went to a lot of trouble to make sure they arrived on time, even though the rush was necessitated by my procrastination. Thanks, Susie.

Because I'm a numbers guy I wanted to throw out some quick little metrics. Jen averages about 25 comments per post. We each made a post on her birthday and by the end of the day they had received 68 comments (his) and 96 comments (hers). I looked at the number 96, and went back to the featured posts from her SITS day and saw a maximum count of 87 comments for a single post. Upon seeing this I bellowed, "Behold the power of my surprise party, for it is even greater than the power of the SITS day!" I then remembered that SITS does this not once in a lifetime like me, but...

Every. Damn. Weekday.

...and I was immediately silenced. Jen's birthday party also quadrupled her usual traffic (from about 125 hits per day to over 500), and we saw the incoming traffic from referring sites skyrocket.

Finally, a big thanks to everyone who helped support this project, whether it was by posting on your blogs, leaving comments the birthday posts, or both. I hope you all enjoyed being a part of it as much as I enjoyed putting it together. Jen loved her present and I fear that I'm going to have to get extremely creative to top this next year.