Hello, my name is

Yesterday I signed up for this free stat counting service. It only tracks so many hits per day, but since I have all of four readers (and one of you is my mom, hi Mom!) I didn't think that was a big deal. I copied the code to the site and obsessively watched my stats page to see if anything happened. Turns out my free stat counting service is WAY COOLER than the measy information doled out by Typepad, if and when the Typepad hamsters feel like telling you about your stats. For one thing, there is a MAP. I can MAP you people! It gives me a nice (yet freakish) list of google search strings. It tells me what pages you visit, it tells me how long you stay, it tells me your IP address and better yet, it tells me who has that IP address REGISTERED. I have all the tools I need to become a Bona Fide Stalker. I know where you live, suckers!

However! All this information has made me a teensy weensy bit uncomfortable.

For example, I now know where you people are coming from. I could have found out this information before my free stat service, but frankly, I'm too lazy to go about hunting down every single IP address. Believe it or not, I DO have other things to do. Also, who cares! Apparently, I SHOULD CARE. A frightening amount of you are IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD. Like, DOWN THE STREET. You people are making me nervous. Do I know you? Also, there are quite a lot of you in places I have never visited. Where did you people come from? You can't ALL have found my website via some bizarro search engine hit. Why are you reading some dorky website written by a nerdy neurotic girl in the Pacific Northwest? I sincerely question your choice of online content.

When I started this website I didn't give a lot of thought to anonymity. For one thing, it was mostly just to write home and post pictures while I was on a trip. I figured I would probably want to have a Real Blog like all the cool ones that occupied my brain at work, but I didn't set it up to keep any secrets or vent about real people. My IN-LAWS know about my website. I will be hanging out with some friends and telling them some story when they start telling me the end and I realize they have already read the entire thing on my blog. (Which is very very embarrassing.)  My family and nearly all of my friends know about this place and there's nothing on here that I wouldn't tell them in person anyway. (And not that they actually come here. Some of them are all, "Website? Internet? Friends in the computer? ARE YOU DATING ONLINE?") But! There is this thing called Work and whatever semblance of a Professional Life I may possess. I might die a trillion deaths were someone from the work section of my life to discover this thing. And why have I been gallivanting about the Internet thinking that that will never happen? I write very specifically about my city. All that has to happen is for my old boss to type in some city-specific search string and TA-DA! He will spend the rest of his afternoon reading about how I could not sleep for six months in 2002.

I got so obsessive yesterday I began to think YOU were tracking me down. Here is what I was thinking: If one had a lot of time on her hands, she could use her stat service to see MY IP host, and then, assuming my IP address is registered to my company name (is it? ACK!), she could find out where I work and know exactly what I'm talking about whenever I write a thinly veiled work post. Horrors!

But today? Meh. I may have to go through and delete a couple of the truly irascible work posts, but I'm not sure I care so much about everything else. Really. An anonymous blog would be nice for the times I'd like to use a choice curse word or two or let the neurotic demons go wild, but that feels kind of secretive and alter-ego-ish to me. Of course, I'm lucky enough that the people I know in Real Life are nice enough to keep their ridicule and scorn to themselves. Although I take comfort in my name being someone else's name and therefore un-google-able, I don't have any important identity to hide or protect and I can't think of a whole lot I need to keep secret anyway. If I think of anything, I have my new Nancy Drew journal to hold it for me. (My new Nancy Drew journal is awesome. I love Nancy Drew almost as much as I love TV.) If you have an anonymous or anonymous-ish blog, why did you choose to go that route? (A perfectly acceptable answer is, "Because I don't want the entire world knowing where I live, like you do MORON." I can see how that makes excellent sense.) If you don't have an anonymous blog and you have more readers than your mother, does it ever make you feel Weird?

Actually, I think the most offensive part of the whole stat counting thing is seeing how many people are visiting and NOT TELLING ME THEY STOPPED BY. The lost opportunities to inflate my ego just really bug me.

So, all of that is to say: Yikes! Public! But! Whatever! I still don't care! Back to regularly scheduled programming. (Which would be The Office. Don't tell me you're doing anything ELSE tonight.)

Comments

[orangepaas]

so you chose the office instead of grey's. Fine.

And you know where I live. Fine...how can *i* get this software, lol!

I try to keep my blog somewhat anonymous (thanks to my mom hounding me for including too much information)...but with your newfound skills, why bother?

[maggie]

Oh, orangepaas, I ALREADY knew where you lived! Kisses!

[Renae]

Hi Maggie,

I found your blog through Arwen's. In fact, she recommended you one day as she had nothing to talk about.

I keep reading because you are funny. I am just a freakisly neurotic chicky from the middle of nowhere, Iowa. I am also a (GASP!) lapsed Catholic. Actually, I don't even think that's the proper term. I chose to go to another church a few years ago because there was no one my age or life category and I had NO fellowship at my church. So 5 years later and I'm at a Baptist church in west central Iowa. Hubs and I would like to go back to the Catholic church but probably not until after we move to Michigan.

BTW, it has been raining all day hear and is cold and dreary. Makes me think of what Seattle might be like. Oh yeah, and my bestest friend from college is from Seattle.

Renae

[Jenn]

Sometimes I swear that my neighbors must read my blog because every time I complain about something they do, it stops. When I complained about the stupid red van that didn't run and had sat in their driveway forever, they sold it the next week. When I mentioned that they run their AC non-stop with all their windows open, somebody showed up to fix their AC the next day (apparently it was broken). Maybe they're just spying on us. Or have our house bugged.

I am super careful with who I tell about my blog. It's just one more example that I'm Krayzee, because I will write for all the world to see and yet only 2 people that I know (the ones I met through my blog don't count) know about the blog. Me = WEIRDO.

[Maureen]

Which stat thingy do you use? When I first put StatCounter on my blog, I checked the stats about every two seconds, because I am an internet addict. Which is also why I check your page 30,000 times a day. I promise I am not stalking you, I am just really really bored and would rather check to see the blogs I read have been updated than do work. And look! Sometimes it pays off! Because here you are with a new entry!

[Maureen]

Oh, and in answer to your questions up there, I have chosen to remain anonymous on my blog because I don't want to publish my full name and stuff unless I get an unlisted phone number. I don't post pictures of myself or my friends for the same reason. But at the same time, I never post anything that I don't want people to know I wrote, because that's just asking for trouble.

[Vanessa]

I second Renae's finding of you through Arwen and I just find you funny. Straight forward and funny. Sometimes it's the most mundane things in life that are the funniest and we tend to over look that. Plus I have ABSOLUTLEY NOTHING TO DO AT MY JOB!!!! And you, you are a break in the monotony.

As for the TV show - I JUST found Grey's Anatomy and am madly in love with it, but it is on the same time as CSI and I am not cool enough to have tivo - serious dilema.

[Theresa]

I also found you through Arwen. We moved to Seattle last spring, and I keep thinking I should write to see if you want to start a Catholic-women's-book-club-read-Flannery-O'Connor-and-eat-chocolate-thingy. But I don't know anyone else to join. Except me. Plus, emailing a stranger is sort of creepy.

[kellilu]

officially de-lurking...

i can't remember exactly how i came to your site... my friend rachel has a blog, which got me into the world of blogging, and jennifer (of perfectwork) often comments there, which led me to her blog (which has often given me food for thought) which *i think* led me to yours...not positive, though. the joys of newly unlimited internet service (i'm that far behind the times that i just now have non-dial-up internet!) is that such things can be found while wandering..

i live in far-off philadelphia (so now you know who your philly reader is) but have many friends who are seattle residents/ex-residents, and many catholic friends (though i am presbyterian), and many friends who are chinese/caucasian married couples... so i felt a bit like i was stumbling on the website of a friend, though i don't know you! i hope you don't mind. i haven't yet had the chutzpah to put together my own blog, so i can't refer you to anything but a measly myspace page...

anyway, kudos for your clever writing that often makes me laugh out loud!! and your pink flamingoes always make me smile.(c:

cheers,
kelli,
west philadelphia ...
(you know you want to sing the rest... (c;)

[Catherine]

I'm a random international lurker, I confess.
Found you through Arwen, who I found through Selkie, who I found randomly. I like to read interesting and funny blogs about other people's lives. Which actually sounds way worse than I intended....
It's nice to know that people are people are people, all over the place. And I like to read well written things, and the internets is sadly full of less well written things, so when I find good stuff, I keep reading.
Also, I have some anxiety stuff going on, and sometimes it's nice to know I'm not alone in that.

[Melissa]

I can't remember how I found your blog, but I think you're funny and we have a TON in common like, I'm from PNW too (Central WA state), we're both married, and well, that's it!! Oh, and I love TV. I don't have a blog because I'm very boring and if I had a blog I would never post because it would become a chore, which I avoid at all costs!

[Mykal]

Hi! I'm over from Arwen's too. Greetings from Massachusetts! Your a great funny writer, keep it up.

[Christina/Mrs Broccoli Guy]

Apparently Arwen gave you a big ol' boost in your readership. LOL. That's how I found you too. :-) Glad I did, you are lots of fun to read.
I have an anonymous blog for sharing my daily ramblings/adoption stress and then a password-protected blog for the family to keep up on the adoption details. I just don't like the idea of some stalker knowing things about me or my kids. I know, I'm paranoid. Definitely watch too much News.

[Antonia]

boo!