the site's history:
In the spring of 2000 I began keeping journal-entry-ish "updates on my life" on a personal web page, which I would send to friends in parts afar. I loved the medium. Then, around the same few weeks in the fall of 2000, I found the journals of Sara Astruc and Jessamyn, and the blog of Kevin Whited -- and realized people were actually doing this online all the time, and for the general public.
In April 2001 I started with PineappleGirl.com. In August 2001, I lost my job (ergo, my income), and had to move my site to Diary-X, which I'd hoped was only temporary. In April 2002, I couldn't renew my URL and an Asian nudie-girls site stole it out from under me, so I took this one (with the dash) instead. In July 2002, I could afford a server finally (much cheaper than my first one), and started over with the present incarnation.
Some numbers: in the 3+ years since I began the Pineapple, I've received zero hate mails from strangers (isn't that remarkable? You'd think I'd have pissed more people off). I've had one stalker. I've been a Diarist.Net award finalist
more recent updates:
In August 2005, I stopped updating here. I had just signed with an agent and was hoping to get a book deal, so it was time to start writing with the name under which I'd (hopefully) be publishing. A year later, I hadn't sold the book -- but I didn't see any need to come back here. I was "PG" online at a different time, when "blogs" were the exclusive purview of tech geeks and all us highfalutin "literary" types played at "real writing."
And my life is very different now. Pineapple Girl in 2001 was perennially single, chronically underemployed, and usually shooting from the hip; her life was fairly exciting. Now I'm a boring old married lady, with a steady full-time job and a decidedly dull social life. Don't waste your time reading about that, friend. ;)
Why "pineapple girl":
I hate the fruit, except as juice for cocktails, but I like its symbolism. The pineapple has represented hospitality since the days of colonial America, when it was a rare imported fruit. It was extremely expensive, so when a lady was hosting company, if she had a pineapple on display in her home it showed that she spared no expense for her guests. Even more impressive was when the guests got to actually eat the fruit... it was common for fruit vendors to rent pineapples out to hostesses to put on their tables, and then sell them to someone to actually consume later. Isn't that crazy?
Anyway, hospitality is important to me, and being hospitable is one of my daily life goals. I'm just a pineapple sort of girl. Plus, I'm a big believer in logos and marketing. In 2001, no one was really using a pineapple as a brand or logo, nor the word as an internet persona, so it was instantly unique and easily identifiable.
four five times, and actually won one of them. The site has had over 250,000 850,000 unique hits. At one time I hosted another journal here, but my pal Adam got found by his colleagues, and he works in a pretty sensitive high-tech atmosphere. I've fundamentally changed my home page design four six times.