Making it Up As I Go

Google has a nifty little tool that allows you to see how many people are visiting your blog, where they are, and (kind of) how they found you. While the information is interesting, it’s also somewhat baffling. Who is it in Oslo who comes back every month or so? Who is it in England that’s reading? And Australia? There are some people I can guess, but others I have no idea.

I have on average, 25% new visitors each month. I know I got a decent influx from Gary linking to me from his awesome blog, and hopefully some of those people will stick around. So, in honor of De-lurking Week, which just ended yesterday, I’ve added a little guest book on the right. If you’re so inclined to help me stop going crazy wondering just who in fact found me from Bangalore, please click over and leave a little note. And if I already know who you are, go ahead and pop over there anyway if you want; you know, for posterity and all.

Seeing as its a new year I decided to spruce up the place. What do you think? Besides the pretty new layout, there’s a new link on the right side that goes to an index of all the books I’ve written about over the years. It doesn’t do much right now (I have to put in all the linkies), but hopefully it will be up and useful soon.

This is so interesting. B found this site where you enter text  (either fiction or non-fiction) and it uses a fancy algorithm to predict whether the author is male or female. (It analyzes certain word usage and stuff.)

That in itself is interesting, but what’s really interesting (because stuff about me is always more interesting than other stuff) is that my fiction writing comes up as being written by a female, while my non-fiction and reviews come up as male. Even my blog posts- if it’s about books, it’s male; about anything else, female. Isn’t that fascinating? I think so. So head on over there and see if you write like a girl or a boy.

I tend to think of my reading audience as pretty small and intimate, but a couple of incidents have made me realize that perhaps there are more people reading this than I thought. So if I don’t already know that you’re reading (you know who you are) please post a little comment letting me know, and tell me how you found me. Just because, well, I’d like to know. Because I’m like that.

In response to my cousin Kim’s decision to stop actually writing on her blog and instead just link to other people who write about her life, here is a post about her being at my brother’s wedding. My cousins Kim and Danna, and Danna’s husband JD, drove out from Utah to be here for my brother’s wedding, which was on August 4th. It was wonderful to see them, as I don’t get to see them nearly enough. When they lived in California I really only got to see them on Thanksgiving and Christmas and random other times, even though they only lived about ten minutes away. Since they moved to Utah, I really never get to see them. And that makes me sad, because they’re both awesome. My cousins Becky and Mike only live about half an hour from me, and they’re super awesome too, and I don’t see them nearly enough either, but since this post is supposed to be about Kim, I’ll focus on her.

Kim (and the other cousins!) kicked butt at the reception, helping us get all the food ready and out. She bonded with Zoë, holding and generally entertaining her while I ran around like a crazy person. Later she hung out with Bruce, which was great because he thinks she’s hilarious. I think she’s hilarious too. She got to see her nieces and nephews who she doesn’t get to see as often, and our Uncle Richard, who she sees more often than we do. She finally got to sit at the kid’s table, which was the highlight of my evening. She stayed until the bitter end to help clean up, which was more than I did, as I had to get Zoe home.  I think she and Danna and JD left the next day, but I’m not really sure about that. I’m not really sure about much else, so she’ll just have to break her own rule and post if any one has any questions for her. She’s been breaking that rule to post about all kinds of things, so I don’t think she’ll die.

Welcome to my new blog home! Isn’t it pretty? I’ve been meaning to change things around a bit for a while, and when it looked like I’d secured a great blogging gig I thought that would be the time, but that fell through so I decided to strike out on my own. With the help of my darling husband (who is far more clever than I when it comes to these things), now I have my own new, neato blog. It’s a conglomeration of the couple of blogs I had floating out there, which will now all live in happy harmony here. So take a look around, check out some old posts if you like, (see the categories in the right column? You can even choose a specific topic there and only see those posts!) and check back in often, as I’m going to be attempting to post more frequently.