It's been a while and I assure you I'm still alive. This month has just been a little hectic. Last weekend was Ian's first plane trip to Boston and my mother came with us to watch him while Rich and I were doing our conference duties. In addition to being a great babysitter, it was a treat to have that much time to just chat with Mom. One thing I noted was several of her stories involved my grandparents and her friends' parents drinking. I think every single friend my mother had as a kid had at least one alcoholic parent. Apparently it was just the thing to do. Amazingly, my mother hardly drinks herself.

This brings me to our Living Out Loud theme for the month. Tell me about your relationship with alcohol. Are you a cheap date? Is your liver about to secede from your body in protest? Did you have a great experience the first time you got drunk? Do you even remember the first time you got drunk? Are you the perennial designated driver? Do you have a really great "no shit there we were" story?

Details include:

• Write something personal about yourself using the previous paragraphs as a guideline. Do not feel that you have to address each issue above. The spirit of this project is to share something about yourself; I'm just throwing out ideas.

• Once you have completed your entry and posted it, please email me the link at genie [at] inabottle [dot] org. Remember, if you don't email me, I'm likely to forget to include you in the recap!

• If you do not have a blog to host your story, you can email me the story directly and I will add it here as a guest post giving you credit. The more the merrier!

• The due date for entries is Sunday, February 7th (the first Sunday of the month) at 5pm Eastern.

• Once I have collected all the entries, I will post a wrap-up to list them all and announce a winner. The winner will receive some sort of prize to be determined but all participants will receive fame and glory and a link on our Living Out Loud blogroll.

Mosey up to the bar and bear your soul to the bartender. It's just between us.