I’ve been at odds with words for a long time. I hate words, words hate me, and we’re often cast as adversaries in hackneyed parodies of songs from children’s television shows. Now, that might seem like an odd thing to say for someone who occasionally composes pieces containing several hundred of them at a time, but true hate requires just as much familiarity with its subject as true love. Really, I do it just to show those words who’s boss — I reckon that if I can prove to them that I’m capable of beating a good handful of them into submission in short order, the rest will fall into line and everything will be set. This hasn’t happened quite yet, but I’m holding out hope, mostly because otherwise I’ll eventually have to face justice for my heinous abuse of language and I’m a complete wreck on the stand.

It’s under this tense climate that Flight 515 wraps up its seventh year on the Internet, which is the most fruitful one it’s had in a while. I actually managed to write coherent prose and couple it with a few images with recognizable features, something that was sorely lacking in 2008 when I made updates a grand total of about three times. For bonus points, I also came up with a new design that probably would have caused eye damage costing millions of dollars to treat had anyone actually looked at it.

Flight 515 also moved out of my mom’s basement this year, which at seven years of age is the Web equivalent of finally looking for an apartment only when the last living relative willing to offer a bedroom has died of annoyance. Its new place is still in pretty good shape, and I hope for its sake that it stays that way because real estate speculation on trashed property is hard.

I get to have a 2 in front of my age in a handful of weeks, for which I’m as excited as you can be for a logical mathematical progression. I’m not sure I deserve such an honor, but nobody seems to have filed a formal objection with whatever authority is in charge of the constant, unrelenting passage of time, so I’ll take that as a consensus that I’m up to the job even though I don’t know what that job is. I’ve been told that political approval ratings work the same way, so at least I have the backing of one of America’s most storied institutions.

A toast to seven more years — of which you’ll be cheated out of about five since it seems the world’s going to be ending in less than thirty-five months. Sorry, I don’t offer refunds.