Milepost #1703

Oops.

I just noticed that I let post #1700 on DawnReader slip by me. It's been my custom to pause at each one hundred posts and blather a bit about What It All Means (generally, it means ... Very Little!). But this time, somehow, I forgot to check, and this will be Post #1704 ... so ... deal with it.

As I've said before, I check my stats only every 100 posts, and as of today, I have 291,716 visits to the page--a daily average of--DRUM ROLL!--of 171.29526117422. I'm not sure if that fraction keeps going (my little calculator ran out of places). I'm not exactly sure what .29526117422 of a visit represents--less than 30% of a visit; so, perhaps, someone accidentally visits the page each day, sees what it is, flees before a full accounting can take place? Wise move.

Anyway, I've had a lot of fun doing this blog, and I really don't think about the number of visitors, though I'm always touched to see that 171.--- people have visited. There are so many better things to do.

But I'm pretty sure I'd keep doing this even if my wife, Joyce, were the only visitor each day. I write for fun, for memory, for family entertainment (my family)--now and later. ("Later," meaning, you know, when I'm dead!)

My first post was on January 6, 2012 (link to that initial post), so we are rapidly approaching the fifth anniversary of all of this. I had no idea, back then, that I would find something to say every day (more or less) for five years. But I have. And that's either surprising--or pathetic--or both.

I've sort of developed in pattern in recent years: M-W-F I include segments of a rough draft of whatever long writing project I'm working on at the moment. For quite a while now it's been Frankenstein Sundae, a memoir about my ten-year pursuit of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). I'm over 400 pages now on that project, which, as anyone who's followed it knows, is in need of some major surgery, not a toenail clipping. But once it's all out of me, I'll be able to go back and perform that surgery--maybe even clip a few nails in the final stages.

On T-Th-Sat I write about whatever random thoughts are in my head--from memories to opinions to something I've read or seen or heard about. My medical situation (including a more-than-ten-year battle with cancer). Sometimes, it's just plain nonsense.

Sundays have become, over the past couple of years, "Sunday Sundries," a place where I write in more detail about books I've read, films and TV shows we've seen, weird words I've come across, and, of course, the AOTW, a weekly award I confer upon some deserving (unnamed) soul. (I'm rarely at a loss for a "winner.")

I don't miss many days. Illness, depression, travel--these are about the only reasons/excuses I employ.

So, anyway, here we are, poised on the cliff of 1700 (okay, 1703), ready to jump into yet another 100 posts. I'm gonna do it. I can't imagine, now, not doing it. It's part of my day. A part I love. And what on earth would I do instead?


PS--I should have waited till 1706--that was the address on Elm Avenue in Enid, Oklahoma, where we were living in the mid-1950s when Dad (what was he thinking?!?) accepted a job at Hiram College and yanked us all out of our Southwest Paradise and hauled us off to Ohio. Where, eventually, I would have (to steal a movie title) "the best years of our lives." (Link to trailer for the film.)