In which the author reassesses his place in the blogosphere

My blogger friend Silverback, a.k.a. Ian, of Leeds in the UK and Sebring, Florida, in the US (he divides his time about equally between both places), said a couple of days ago that his blog has had visitors from 84 countries.

So I thought I would check mine (it’s a guy thing). Since the Live Traffic Feed thingy over there in the left margin shows only the last ten visitors when it is not expanded and only the last fifty when it is (by clicking on “Watch in Real Time”), what I do is I right-click on any new flag I see when the thingy is in expanded mode and then save the flag in a file in a folder. If there is a better or easier way to do it, I don’t know what it is. (I know I could put an actual Flag Counter on the blog -- I’m not a complete idiot -- but I don’t particularly like the way it looks or how much space it consumes. Call me an odd duck. On second thought, don’t.)

Anyway, I counted the flag files in my flag folder and there are 104!

This puts me slightly ahead in the Blogs By Aging Male Cardiac Patients Who Have Crossed The Atlantic Ocean category, but it pales into insignificance when compared to someone like Ree Drummond, who is neither aging nor male nor a cardiac patient. Okay, full disclosure here: I have no idea whether she has ever crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Ree writes Confessions of a Pioneer Woman (Mrs. RWP’s favorite blog). Ree lives on a ranch in Oklahoma and gets hundreds and thousands of blog hits every single day and goes on book-signing tours to exotic places like Phoenix and St. Louis and Kansas City and Minneapolis and several other cities and has appeared on Bonnie Hunt’s television show on more than one occasion. Ree also writes about her four children and the herd of wild horses on her ranch and rounding up the cattle and regularly displays on her blog a close-up photo of her husband’s blue-jean-clad bottom. On top of that, Ree does a mean imitation of Ethel Merman singing “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” Let’s face it, Ree is in a league of her own.

So while Ree receives the accolades of the adoring masses along with the royalties on her best-selling cookbook, and Silverback a.k.a Ian rides around his palm-tree-lined lake in Sebring, Florida, on a golf cart in the middle of December, I can only report that a frost two nights ago put an end to the blooming of our encore azaleas for another season and this morning when I took the dog out for his walk, big snowflakes were falling.

I ain’t displaying nobody’s blue-jean-clad bottom on my blog for no amount of money or readers.