Friday, May 11, 2007

Good morning, Gelderland!

This is my 100th blog entry!

I can’t believe anyone but family (and REALLY CLOSE friends) would ever want to look at this page. Blogs are ridiculed in the media for being trivial and self-absorbed, and mine seems more boring and blogger-centric than most…

However, a quick glance at Google Analytics (“We put the ‘anal’ in analysis!”) reveals that people from NINETEEN different countries visited this site last month.

Four visitors from China. Two from Korea. (Maybe my old high school pen pal, Lee Jong Hwa, checking in?)

And who do I know in Vestfold, Norway? Kamloops in Canada? Gelderland in The Netherlands? (Seriously? GELDERLAND? Wasn’t that in The Princess Bride?)

Good thing this blog is free, or those poor folks would want their money back; pictures of May Bee are cute to the people who love her, but couldn’t possibly be interesting to the general public.

On the other hand, sometimes it’s fun to hit the “Next Blog” button and take random peeks into the lives of others…the photos of the lady’s foot after her toenail was removed, the pictures of the zoo trip taken by the exchange student in medical school in England, and we can’t forget Sandra’s knitting enthusiast who types “Squeee!” when she’s happy about her yarn. (I LOVE enthusiasm and plan to use the exclamation “Squeee!” whenever possible.)

And once in a while, strangers leave comments (they probably found me with the “Next Blog” feature!), and that’s fun, too…like the lady who also adores the author Haven Kimmel, and “Blue Princess” (whoever she is), and the Indonesian schoolgirl, and “UK Bus Man,” who is from England, but lives and works in Turkey part of the year.

It IS a small world after all…

Happy blogging, everybody!


P.S. The top keyword that was bringing people to this site was apparently a term used in pornography; I changed it last night to keep out the riffraff. ICK! The top LEGITIMATE keywords that bring people to this site are “Cali Gonzales” (an author and friend from South Texas) and “Trey Forkerway” (the son of a friend of mine). People who are searching for Trey spend an average of six and a half minutes on the site (probably because I only mentioned him once and they're having to hunt for the reference); people searching for one of my favorite authors, Haven Kimmel, spend an average of four minutes on the site, probably reading
http://splendafan.blogspot.com/2006/04/i-know-i-bombard-people-with-requests.html . Which reminds me, I need to check out her book Something Rising (Light and Swift), the only book of hers not yet read...


Random photo...Karen & me on a pony in Georgia. (Check out our Keds and the funny Dalmatian!)


2 comments:

Sandra said...

Wow, the same reason you love to have unknown people visit your website 'drove' me to restrict mine to invited users only. I got very self-conscious about my life when I found a comment from someone I did not know. Kinda like being robbed. I,too, love hitting the 'next blog' button - until sometime last week when the 'next blog' button took me to sites that madke me fall off my chair and Clayton had to find a way to get them off our computer. I think I am healed from the 'next' button. so, if you see any interested blogs, let me know. No more browsing for me....
and: your blog is not boring! (I feel the same way about mine BTW)

Irene said...

squeee! That's great! Wow, 100 blogs. Congratulations. I bet one of readers from China is Lela. Check out her blog: http://chinachat.blogspot.com

I gave her yours not too long ago. Thanks for the suggestion about reader and ANALytics. I've got reader on my google home page and it IS quite handy. I just haven't had time to figure out the ANALytics in detail. Maybe I'm just not that ANAL!

Give Ms. Forkerway a "hug" and "hi" for me....I wonder if she remembers me, she was one of my favorites!