Post-Mortem Legacy

Quite frequently an artist or other creative professional will receive very little acknowledgement or appreciation while still in this mortal coil. It is only after they have left us all behind that we finally see what we could not, or would not, before. If these so-called starving artists could receive the benefit of their post-mortem fame, they would certainly be well fed indeed!

I am musing upon this because I discovered recently that Blogger (as of last June or July) has added a Stats tab to the administrative pages of each blog. I don't know why I didn't notice it last summer, but I looked at my stats for the first time about a month ago.

I was particularly happy about the almost real-time updates of blog statistics. I can look at them frequently throughout the day if I so choose and find out how many people have been visiting my blog today, yesterday, last week, etc. I can also discover where they have been coming from and what kind of searches they do to find my little corner of the universe.

For example, according to my stats page, I have had 1,393 page views since last July, 161 of them last month. Yesterday, I accumulated 17. Today still shows 0 views on the list, but the graph shows 10 throughout the course of the day. My main audience hails from the United States, but the U.K. and Russia take 2nd and 3rd place. China, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, Germany, Poland and South Korea also made the list. I have found all of this very interesting, but have no idea what to do with this knowledge. I haven't carved out any sort of niche in the blogging world with my little ruminations. I merely strive to update friends and family about my various meandering experiences and perhaps share a few cute moments and cute crafts with the world.




Some of you may know that once upon a time I was an Activity Days leader. I also had an Activity Days blog that I updated with the fun times I had with those girls. That blog has a total of 41 postings, the last of which I wrote in April 2009. I don't give that blog much thought and have considered shutting it down simply because I haven't done anything with it in almost two years. The only thing that keeps me from doing so are the occasional requests for more information or documents that I mentioned using. I cheerfully email those out and then move on with my life.

I decided today to look at the stats on that blog. I had never done so and was curious if my erstwhile activity was receiving the same attention that my current blog is getting.

My reaction to my findings: WOW!!

Pageviews Today: 14
Pageviews Yesterday: 151!
Pageviews Last Month: 3205!!
Pageviews all time history (as of June 2009): 17,815!!!

Um. Wow.

I shant bore you with the details of countries and referring websites, except for one. While I was chatting with my absent husband online, I came across a referring site that knocked my socks off!

You can find the website here. My little Activity Days blog is mentioned in the 3rd paragraph.

My response and my resulting typed message to my husband was: HOLY CRAP

I sent him the link and, after finding the reference to me, he responded with: WHAT?!?!?!?!?!???  You're a celebrity!!

I quickly tried to shrink my ballooning ego and said: In an extremely small circle, yes.

I am flattered to be mentioned by anyone anywhere for any reason at all.... except for bad ones, that is. I am astounded that a blog that has been mostly neglected for almost two years is getting extraordinary traffic, at least in my apparently naive opinion.

So, what I'm trying to say with all of this is: I appear to have died and received my post-mortem legacy and minor fame.

At least in the Activity Days Blogging world.

Activity Days Blog

Hey guys,

For all you people out there reading.. yes all 3 of you.. I have put a link to my Activity Days Blog. I'm putting up all the Activity Days fun that we've had so far.. I will be adding more as we continue to have more activities.. we have 2 a month! :)

Even if you aren't involved with Activity Days, there are some really cute ideas to do with kids of all ages! I've been having a ball with it over the last 1 1/2 years.

I have it organized by labels you can click on to take you to specific categories.. or you can just browse through chronologically..

Have fun!

The Good, The Fun and the Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day....

Today is Ben and my ninth anniversary... it really is a wonder that it seems to go by so fast and yet filled with so much. It's also a wonder that I'm not a million years old with all the road (virtual & real) that I've walked. I gave Ben his anniversary gifts this morning: a hand-held Tetris game (which he positively beamed over as it's really the only video game that he likes and promptly forgot that I had another gift) and a peridot tie tack. Peridot is his birthstone and, strangely enough, no one has ever given him one. The other interesting thing about the tie tack is that it has one of those chains attached to it so you can fix it to your shirt (presumably so your tie doesn't go flying around). He said that he'd never had a tie tack with one of those either... so, it's a first for a lot of things today... He then put on a small frown and said, "Think about what you want so we can get it today.." He has been agonizing about my gift for weeks and I have been (as usual) completely blank on gifts for myself. I'm also promising myself that I WON'T get another video game... THERE IS A NEW WILL WRIGHT GAME COMING OUT TODAY CALLED SPORE!! AGGGHHH! Ugh.. I'm so disgusting.. I can't help my addiction to Simulation/Creation games.... Oh crap, I just looked up the Spore website and now I REALLY WANT that game.. there goes another year of my life... sigh..

I'm the Senior Activity Days Leader for my ward. Senior only because my partner has been doing it for 5 months instead of 1 1/2 years. Activity Days is a program for girls 8 to 11 years old. They come to the church twice a month and we have some sort of activity that encourages talents, living the gospel and serving others. I was really, honestly afraid the first time I got up in front of those girls and tried out one of my little ideas on them. Now, my fear has slowly become a calm panic that builds the 2 days before each activity and crests just as I'm getting into the Primary Room. After that, I'm typically okay.
The reason I bring this up is that we had an Activity Days yesterday and I am just sooooo proud of myself... well, as proud as someone as unpretentious as I can be. Two weeks ago I assigned the girls to research a famous artist and bring a short report on them. They were not pleased. School just got out and here I was assigning them homework! I laughed a little on the inside..
Starting on Monday (I think.. it's been a positive blur) I realized that there would be girls that showed up that didn't have anything to report. These girls can be a bit forgetful and their mothers end up finding out about assignments the day after they were due...
So, I started looking up pictures and biographies on all the artists I'd assigned so that I would have something for everyone to report. It took forever and I soon discovered that biographies are varied and prone to the biographers personal impressions and not just fact. The pictures were a challenge as well as most of them were about the size of postage stamps online and tended to pixelate when enlarged. By Wednesday morning, I was in a positive meltdown and frantically trying to get everything together before my early afternoon dental appointment where I was sure they were going to rip out two of my teeth. I had everything done before Audrey went down for her first nap... siiiiiiigggggghhhhhh....

Speaking of which, I've had a broken tooth for 4 1/2 years... bottom right wisdom tooth. I broke it while eating mashed potatoes on my lunch break at Walgreens.. I was on the phone with Ben and promptly burst into tears when I realized that part of my tooth was missing and that I had EATEN it... I was very good and went to a dentist as soon as I could. Unfortunately, the dentist balked when I informed him that I was on some herbal remedies: Kelp and St. John's Wort. He said that one of them was a blood thinnner and he was concerned that I wouldn't clot if he pulled out the tooth... so, he wanted me back in a few weeks.. we ended up moving in the interim.
So, 4 1/2 years later, pain brought me to a new dentist who asked me a battery of questions, looked at the tooth, was amazed at my capacity for pain and promptly gave me a referal to an oral surgeon... He also gave me an Rx for antibiotics because he said the hole in my face was infected.. surprise, surprise...
I now get to wait a week for the horror.. the smell.. the sounds.. the panic attack of another dentists office..