What's the deal with the (808)?

I've had a lot of people ask what the (808) in the name of my blog means. (808) refers to the area code for the state of Hawaii. And "eight" rhymes with "Kate", which sounds kind of nice.

You may have noticed that my URL doesn't match the title at the top of the page. Here's how we got here. I started this blog back in July of 2007 (!!!) when I was still in Minneapolis. When I signed up with blogspot I didn't take any time to develop something literary or meaningful when I signed up for an address. I thought I'd throw my name in there and some other random info, hence kate-mpls. Heck, I'm not even sure I realized that the name of my blog could be my address too. I just wanted to get something up and running and didn't put much thought into it. (There is probably a way to make my URL match my blog title at this point, but that would take a certain amount of effort.)

While I was in Minneapolis, the blog was called "Kate's Blog". (I have worked with very creative and very gifted writers over the years, and I have never been confused with any of them.) That named worked well enough for me, because for all I knew I was really the only one reading it. Once I moved out to Hawaii I decided to try and come up with something new for a title, since all of a sudden my blog became a de facto communication tool for my friends and family to keep up to date on my life. I wanted the title to have something to do with Hawaii, and I ran through about 10 seriously hokey names in my head before I finally settled on the area code idea. Something about Hawaii invokes really cheesy blog names to me. Maybe it's because I feel a little bit like I live on the set of a 1950s Elvis movie.

Even though I'm not 100% happy with "Kate's (808)", I don't feel like straining my brain to think up something else. It will do for now. I suppose I could just keep renaming it with the various area codes that I'll be living in for the next 10 years. That will be my plan until I come up with something better. Unless some one out there has a better suggestion . . .