milestones

Regis looked at my blog stat counter the other morning and noticed that I’m closing in on 10,000 hits. Maybe because we watched Julie and Julia last night, he got interested in how many readers I have…and maybe he’s thinking I’ll get a big fat book contract and be rich and famous. Or maybe not.

He thought I should write a special commemorative piece for the big 10,000 roll-over like when you were a kid and your car’s speedometer rolled over to some big milestone.

We started this blog in October of 2006 as a way to document our efforts to walk 500 miles in a year. We amused ourselves along the way by thinking of witty and sarcastic things we could put in the blog. I would write, then Regis would retort. Pretty much like our real life. We didn’t make that goal because, as we quickly realized, the math was against us. If you’re going to walk 500 miles in a year, you can’t take a day off without racking up future miles. It started to look painful. So we quit the 500 mile walk but we did (or I did) continue with the blog.

If you’re a regular reader, you know that I go through periods where I am not quite as entertaining as others. I can’t explain it. Many times during the day, I observe things from the point of view of the blog and then I compose passages in my head. If I have a memory lapse, those things disappear into the morass of spent electrons swirling about my head. Like Pigpen in the Peanuts cartoon. Often they aren’t very good at coalescing on the page in the evening when I’m in the mood to write.

I also have a couple other creative outlets, Facebook for one. I know, I know. Social networking and a big fat waste of time. Did you hear that Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube are going to merge into the biggest time waster of all-time called You Twit Face? I think that’s hilarious. I have enjoyed Facebook as a way to connect with family I don’t see very often, work friends I don’t see very often, and for general nosiness. I usually post something every day and it’s easier to come up with a one-liner that fits in a Facebook update space than a whole bunch of something to fill a blog page. Just the way it is.

I read an article in the paper yesterday that said younger people have forsaken blogs, like they have email and crank telephones, in favor of the more immediate and much briefer twitter and such. So maybe I’m just riding a trend here.

When we talked about it this morning, Regis said he thinks my focus has changed since my surgery. I asked what he meant and while I see it myself, I’m not sure I understand what he is seeing. I think he means that I spend my time differently for one thing. I get up at 4 most mornings and go to the Pulse to exercise. While that doesn’t take time out of the middle of the day, it’s a considerable energy expenditure. I’m often out of gumption by 8 and shut the computer down. That used to be prime time for piddling around and turning out those witty blog posts.

Other than that, I’m stumped.

The last almost 24 months have been a wild ride. Since the day in March of 2008 when I decided to make an appointment to go through the Mayo evaluation program for bariatric surgery, things have gone crazy. I eat differently, spend my time differently, I’ve learned to enjoy exercise, and I think I look at a lot of things differently. Tiffany said last weekend that I seem younger. I feel younger and not really in years but maybe in attitude. Beyond that, I’m the same middle-aged crank I have always been.

I bought myself a Kindle this week and so far, I enjoy it. I love the easy access it gives me to books. It’s amazing.

I have a yen to have a Blackberry like phone. If I wouldn’t have to take out a second mortgage to pay for the monthly data plan, I would do it.

So, there you go. I just checked the counter and see we slid right past the 10,000 mark. And I see I just past the 1,000 mark on number of posts.