On that note, I've learned some interesting lessons. As you can see, over on the right, I use Site Meter for tracking hits on my blog. It takes your basic info: IP address (and thus relative geographical location) you're coming from, time and date you looked at my blog, where you came from (if any, such as a Google search or something), your system information (Windows, Linux, Mac, along with the browser you're using). Why not click on the link yourself? Any of you can look at my stats just by clicking the little "Site Meter" icon over on the right. Anyway, over the past few days, I have seen an explosion of hits. I was getting around 3-6 hits a day, and suddenly I was getting 15-20 hits a day. This completely dumbfounded me, as I had taken no extra steps to try to drive traffic to my site. I mean, seriously, is there anyone out there who doesn't know me personally who'd even be interested in the garbage I write on this thing? So I looked at the stats and did a little investigation. Somehow, the post I did last week in which I discussed Land Rovers, Toyota FJ Cruisers, and Jeep Wranglers linked me through to the Google image search, and voila! I have no idea whatsoever how this happened, considering I didn't even actually post the image, only the link. It doesn't matter, though; I've doubled my hits! An important lesson there, kids...if you want more traffic to your site, just piggyback off something or someone currently famous and let the search engines do the rest. Maybe I'll just start randomly posting images so to see if the theory holds up. Hmmmm...let's try it right now!
In honor of the upcoming 7th Harry Potter book, the one book to rule them all and finally close up the saga of our favorite teenage wizard, the book millions around the world have been waiting for, myself included:
JULY 21ST, PEOPLE!!!!! LESS THAN TWO MONTHS AWAY!!!!
Anyway, we'll see if this experiment works.
Heidi and I were talking this weekend and we discussed how the people of Colorado live in constant climatic denial. For example, and I think I've mentioned this one before, but every year the Denver metro area gets a little bit of snow in May. Not much, just a dusting usually, but it is snow. And every year, everyone around here remarks how strange it is, and the local TV stations interview people, and it gets discussed widely. But it happens every year.
Heidi and I got on the subject of how there has been a rash of small children falling out of open windows lately. She wondered why that is, and I told her, it's because it's been hot and people are opening their windows to stay cool, and the kids are going to the windows and leaning out of them or leaning on the screens and they're just falling out. This led us to discuss another example of Colorado's climatic denial, central air conditioning. There are lots and lots of homes, even brand-new ones, that don't have central air conditioning; cooling systems in homes are pretty much an afterthought, an add-on accessory to be done at some other time. When I was married I lived in a pre-fab house in a neighborhood of pre-fab houses, and half the houses had swamp coolers up on the roof. Since those things are ugly as sin and not every home has one, you just know they're something done years later by the owner who got sick of broiling inside their own home. Now, in Oklahoma it is a mortal sin to build a new home without central air, but here in Colorado it happens all the time. This past weekend, there was much talk about how hot it was and Heidi talked about how hot it is in our house (the rental we live in does not have AC, of course). We keep all our windows at home open pretty much all the time, so we can stay cool. Just like lots of other people here, all of whom seem to believe it just doesn't get hot enough for central air. My final argument to Heidi was, if people here were more realistic, they'd put in AC up front, they wouldn't leave their windows open, and their kids wouldn't fall out.
The consequences of Colorado's reputation as "Paradise on Earth" continue...
On a different note, the above conversation led directly to a priceless Heidism:
Me: "People in Colorado live in a state of climatic denial."
Heidi: "No, we don't."
She then gave me one of her trademark smirks, and we had a great laugh about it. (Kudos to you, my love...that was a good one.) She was definitely on a roll this weekend; Saturday night we went out for a cheap bite to eat, and we saw a minivan with a middle-aged couple and three dogs.
Heidi: "I bet that guy never gets laid."
Me: "Why do you say that?"
Heidi: "Those dogs are like kids! Taking care of them takes so much time, I bet they never get any time to themselves."
Sometimes, Heidi's thought processes amuse me to no end.
Then Connor had one of his own, this time at church on Sunday:
Connor: "How much is left, Dad? We sing, we pray, we sing, and we go?"
(Side note: he got that one from me, because that's what I tell him when we get late in the service and his patience starts to get thin. I was pleased he remembered it.)
Me: "No, we're not that far yet..."
Connor: "Oh, we still have to take community?"
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! It was difficult to be quiet and keep a straight face with him after that one.
This actually brings up something else I subconsciously knew but had never verbalized before. Numerology in human history is interesting, in that there are numbers that seem to come up regularly, across cultures. Some are self-explanatory; 5 or 10 (fingers), two (eyes or ears or nostrils), three (mother, father, and child), or four (arms and legs)...you get the idea. However, there are larger numbers that recur that seem to come from nowhere, at least, not from any obvious place. One such number, one that occurs frequently in the Bible, is forty. During the flood it rained for 40 days and 40 nights. The Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. Jesus was tempted by Satan for 40 days. A few Google searches didn't yield much for me on this, though one site I found did have an interesting insight: 40 is a number that seems to universally be associated with testing. Other than that, the continuing recurrence of the number 40 is unexplained. Perhaps, when my time comes and I go on to my eternal reward, I'll ask God why He chose to use forty.
Tonight is a big night for me. I am going to be officially seated on the Board of Directors at the school. I said it before and I'll say it again; I hope I can do a good job and justify those who voted for me.
Heidi is doing well; she's doing a wonderful job keeping Owen and keeping the house, and she's holding up well to all the demands we have. I wish I could help her more; I do what I can and I sometimes feel it's not enough. I love her dearly and I appreciate so much all she does.
The kids have just a few weeks of school left. Katie is done the end of this month, while Connor and Donovan are done June 8th. My parents are coming to visit this weekend and I'm very excited about that. It will be their first opportunity to meet their new grandson, so we're all very happy. You all know how I feel about being so far from family, from those who could spend time with us and with the kids, from those who could help us as part of our personal community, and I'm always thrilled to have those people close again. We're going to Oklahoma to visit during the entire first week of July, so that will be good. I need some good time back home.
Thanks for reading along.
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