It really is so tedious when people blog about blogging, and I generally skip that sort of self-referential tediousness, but yet please do try to bear with me as I delve into a bit of this metablogging.
Okay! So you probably didn't notice when I installed a Mapstats utility, allowing me to see how many people are reading and where they are located, but it soon became an obsession with me. I check the Mapstats several times a day. I spend more time staring at that then I do actually writing here. (It takes me back to my days as a young associate, when my best lawyer chum and I used to snoop about and keep tabs on who was billing how many hours, and I swear if we'd put that energy into our work, we might have met our own billable hours quotas. That was back in the dreaded legal recession, when there weren't enough billable hours to go around and firms were laying off associates in waves. Now it's all so different, as I was reminded the other day when I asked a friend if her lawyer brother, moving back to town, had a job lined up yet, and she looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language. Indeed I was, indeed I was, remembering the Bad Old Years, and I didn't even get laid off myself but still got traumatized).
Anyhow, I am always delighted to see how international my readership is, because I love to travel, although I can't afford to do it these days, now that I have procreated and, more to the point, purchased a picturesque old house. Whenever you see those pretty postcards of the San Francisco Victorians, remember that for each one of those beauties, there's some poor stressed out bastard[s] who has to meet the mortgage and keep the frigging roof repaired, and someday you might ask me about the Huge Big Fucking Traumatic Plumbing Disaster of 2005, which actually caused me to take paying work for a while and the poor old husband to take a second job and which caused me to face reality and stop my rudimentary plans for a Barcelona vacation. I have had readers from all over, including the following locations [note: there is a very long list following, and if you are not a Proust-like aficionado of placenames, then do skim down past the list. I promise it is leading to something]:
Viborg, Viborg, Denmark
Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Luxembourg
Voorweg, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands
Eskisehir, Eskisehir, Turkey
Unterwinterbach, Bayern, Germany
Kleinobringen, Thuringen, Germany
Guildford, Bracknell Forest, United Kingdom
London, Lambeth, United Kingdom
Móstoles, Madrid, Spain
Auckland, New Zealand
Manchester, England
Fa Yuen, Hong Kong
Banstead, Bromley, United Kingdom
Conisbrough, Rotherham, United Kingdom
Brentford, Slough, United Kingdom (there have been a number of readers from Slough, which is especially delightful as I am a fan of the British show, "The Office")
Derby, Derby, United Kingdom
Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom
Carabanchel Bajo, Madrid, Spain
Bombay, Maharashtra, India
Bat Cave, North Carolina, United States
Taipei, T'ai-pei, Taiwan
Rozelle, New South Wales, Australia
Seixo Alvo, Porto, Portugal
Gadderbaum, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Simei New Town, Singapore
Santiago, Region Metropolitana, Chile
Voorweg, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands
Kilchberg, Zurich, Switzerland
Jakarta, Indonesia
Peru
Brussels, Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest, Belgium
Suwon, Kyonggi-do, Korea, Republic of
Shawford, Hampshire, United Kingdom
Deschênes, Quebec, Canada
Varese, Lombardia, Italy
Vienna, Wien, Austria
Barão Do Iriri, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Tauranga, New Zealand
Maarssen, Utrecht, Netherlands
Yoogali, New South Wales, Australia
Great Wakering, Southend-on-Sea, United Kingdom
Kathmandu, Nepal
Auboué, Lorraine, France
Brusow, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany
Auckland, New Zealand
Anyhow, given my wanderlust, seeing these foreign locations makes me happy. It fuels my daydreams. I imagine that should I visit some of these locations, perhaps a reader would take the old Drunken Housewife to a delightful local bar and teach her to say in the local patois, "Please bring me your house specialty." However, I've been curious about a few things. In particular, two of my most devoted (or despising yet oddly riveted? Let us not leap to conclusions) readers, who check in more frequently than any of my actual real-life friends, have been objects of curiousity to me. One is located in Fa Yuen, Hong Kong, and has revealed himself to be Rups, a Hong Kong banker. The other is located in Luxembourg and remains a mystery. Rups has delurked with some questions about marriage, which I promise to address soon, after some thought, and I hereby offer to my mysterious Luxembourg reader: I will write a post on the topic of your choice, a custom-designed entry, if you speak up and tell us who you are.
The other miracle revealed to me by Mapstats, which also records search terms, is that my poor idiotic orange cat, Al, has a doppelganger across the seas. A Gibraltar resident found the page on September 21, 2006 by running a search on Google for "my cat is allergic to his own teeth." I have been to Gibraltar, I have climbed the hills and had a Barbary Ape actually leap onto my shoulders and seize my hair in his humanesque hands. And there, too, so far away, there can be found cats who are deemed allergic to their own teeth. I wish for news from Gibraltar: do the vets there recommend total extraction, too?
9 comments:
Well, color me miffed! How come San Antonio isn't on the list? Okay, I'm kidding, 'cause I'm sure you also get visited by lots of cool places around this country too. But I do want to assure you that, should your wanderlust pull you in a Southern direction, I will be more than happy to show you not only great watering holes but lots of lovely countryside as well. Your wallet would thank you. As for your cat...allergic to his own TEETH?? Good god, that's a new one.
I have been to San Antonio, and I did like it. I thought it was so beautiful by the river. My experiences with Texas are so overtaken by family, though: Husband 1.0 was a Texan, and we had to go visit his family (in the Victoria area, plus some around Dallas/Fort Worth), and my parents retired to west Texas.
I'm just in awe there's a place called Bat Cave. How cool would it be to say you lived there?!
This is your opportunity to bring about world peace.
Fa Yuen means garden in Chinese, and appears as part of many place names in Hong Kong. I suspect it's only part of the full place name of Rups' home.
From another Hong Kong reader
i found your page by going from pointless link to pointless link on this lovely friday afternoon.
i think it was the "i am a rockstar, i pee everywhere with my penis" line that someone else found amusing that i ended up here.
either way
you're funny, i like you
--all the way from DC, not as cool as luxembourg.
Did you happen to see the New York Times article headlined as Cosmopolitan Moms? I believe it ran in the November 9 edition.
I guess you have 2 HK based fans! The place I live in is called King's Park.
From another overseas lurker... "J'aimerais essayer votre cocktail maison" will be useful if you come and visit France. I enjoy reading your blog and recognise myself in many things you write. Now you can add Paris to your funky list !
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