Happy Friday!  There are lots of random thoughts rolling around in my head today, and I won’t even pretend that they’re related.

1.  Blogger has a feature that allows you to check the statistics of your blog – how many people have seen it, which posts have been viewed the most, etc.  My new favorite is “Traffic Sources,” which tells me how people found my blog.  It shows me emailed links, individual Google searches, and any other way that people wandered through the internet and ended up here.

Some are pretty funny and make me very confused about how the internet works – for example, somebody recently found my blog via www.buygenericsfromindia.com, which I did not know existed and certainly am not associated with.  There are also some great search terms that have led people to There and Back Again, like “jemaine,” “tixt missage” (I guess someone was interested in the Kiwi pronunciation, which I apparently mentioned in my very last blog post from New Zealand), and my favorite: “where’s waldo bar crawl.”  What a novel idea!  I can’t say it has anything to do with me, but I still think it’s funny.

So anyway, I logged on to Blogger this past Tuesday and was shocked when I realized that the number of people who had viewed my blog in the past 24 hours was about seven times what it normally was.  And then I checked Traffic Sources:

I find that very hilarious.  Apparently, on the night of The Bachelor season finale, the web exploded with people trying to find a lookalike picture of Ben and Francine, which led many of them to stumble across my blog.  Who knew writing nonsense about reality TV could be so rewarding?

2.  Anyone notice the minor blog switcheroo?  No?  That’s reasonable.  I just changed my blog post titles to Times New Roman.  I quite understand that this is not very interesting news, but here’s why it happened.  I had my blog post titles in this super cool font called Pacifico which sort of ties in to the banner at the top, so I thought things were lookin’ like this:

However, when I randomly used another browser one day, I realized that Pacifico is a “web font” (i.e. not supported on all systems), and that to some people (and possibly many of you), things were ACTUALLY lookin’ like this:

Comic Sans?!  Not cool.  Now, I used and abused Comic Sans like the best of ‘em when I was writing my PAWPs in fifth grade (remember those?!) or typing letters to stuff in my friend’s lockers in middle school (yeah, we typed our notes… I don’t know why).  However, they heyday of Comic Sans has sadly passed, and it is not quite how I want to make my internet presence known.

SOURCE

I am neither a Fortune500 company nor a lemonade stand, but point taken.  Touché, passive-aggressive businessman.

3.  I forgot to mention this little gem from my trip to New York last weekend.  As it turns out, when you fly somewhere to host a bridal shower and are bringing a bunch of decorations, utensils, game materials, party favors, and presents, this will lead to a nearly-empty suitcase upon your return home.  Luckily, your friend will have just opened a ridiculous number of kitchen appliances and will be well-stocked with bubble wrap.

Sorry for the terrible photo.  But to answer your questions, yes, my luggage did get searched at TSA, and yes, I did get laughed at.  Ah well.

4.  It has been extremely lovely on the Outer Banks this week!  I’m sure all the visiting spring breakers are quite happy about this, but us locals are enjoying it just as much.  Irie and I have been walking to the sound almost every day after work.

5.  Yesterday I went to a marketing seminar on dealing with negativity in social media.  It was actually very interesting, and although my beach-bum self was originally dreading putting on nice clothes and high heels, it was sort of fun to dress up and feel business-y – it’s not often called for on the beach!  Also, with my new wealth of information, I will now know how to appropriately handle it if you tell me that this is the most rambling post ever and you hate this blog (well, the second part… the first part’s just true).

Enjoy the weekend!