Hi There

Yesterday I discovered the stats tab on my blog dashboard. For those of you who don't know the terminology, the dashboard is the control panel, where I choose the font size, add links, set the background color, and of course, post the blog entries. The stats tab is a treasure trove of information! It tells me in lists and on maps how many times people have opened my blog and where you live (not the actual street address or I would send flowers). It tells what kind of browsers you use. It breaks down readership by the day, week, month and total. Not surprisingly for an American-based blog, I have the greatest readership in the United States.

But here’s what’s really interesting (to me anyway and I’ve got the above aforementioned control panel) is that after the U.S. the next biggest readership of Is It Just Me is in Malaysia. Hello, Malaysia! I’m cyber waving to you. Also in the top six countries for readership is Russia. If I could find a font with Cyrillic letters I’d give you a shout out. Hallo Nederland. G’day Australia, Turkey and Canada.

Maybe I need to change the title to Is It Just The United Nations? Or Pissed Off People Around the Globe.

Close Shave

We got a very confusing water bill.  It covered two different periods of time.  They overlapped.  By a lot.  The bill was huge, close to twice what we're used to.  I called the water department (doesn't that sound strange, the water department?  how about the air department, the food department?).  Anyway, in an uncharacteristic move for me, I asked polite questions.  After weeks of dealing with ATT, I was way beyond being polite to any company but I decided to try.  So I asked all the obvious questions and the rep explained the bills were for two different properties, our old house and our new house.  When I looked at my calendar, I saw that indeed the water department had it right; we had possession of our new home before we moved out of our old house, the dates lined up.  I said into the phone, "Boy, I'm glad I didn't start with my angry voice."  She laughed.  Hard.

Now, if only ATT had actually done things right, I wouldn't have used my angry voice with them, either.

New House

What is it like to live in a new house?  It's disorienting, for one. Now, where did I put the salad bowl? And the Q-tips, and the hammer, and the Tupperware lids, and my underwear, and everything else for that matter.

And why don't any of the light switches I flick ever turn on the light I want?  Here's me at the light switch: Flick. "Oh, gosh darn." Flick "Dang! Not that one either." Flick, "Damn it! #*!! Who the hell designed the switches in this house, anyway, a medieval labyrinth nut?  A dyslexic monkey?"

We've been here two weeks and I still haven't found the lights on the garage.  If I don't find them soon,  I'm hunting down that monkey and making him explain his work.  It couldn't possibly be that I'm a slow learner, could it?