Pitch Invasion is back. Our winter hibernation is over -- it touched a balmy 50 degrees here in your editor's hometown, Chicago, recently -- and we have a few new posts in the works. We're also looking for contributions again, so read on.

Modesty is for chumps, or something. It's pretty cool that Pitch Invasion has been nominated for Best Soccer Blog in the 2009 Best of U.S. Soccer Awards run by the federation down the street from me in Chicago, so thank you to every reader who took the time to put us up for this.

The infamous White Horse Cup Final pitch invasion

I didn't notice until glancing at the Wordpress dashboard just now, but the previous post on here was number 1,000. It took us almost two and a half years of posting to reach four figures, with no fewer than 37 different writers appearing here, to whom I am eternally grateful.

Readers and friends: I have never expected to make a living from this blog, but it has become a joy to write and edit over the past three years, taking up about 20 hours of my time per week. I'd like to be able to keep committing that much time, but it is getting increasingly hard to justify as I'm in grad school and I don't have any other income to speak of.

Forgive us a moment of self-congratulation, as I received word today from across the pond back home in England that Pitch Invasion had won a Gold award in the When Saturday Comes Web Awards. The magazine's selections are a who's-who of some of the best football sites on the web, and it's an honour to be chosen among them.