Visitor # 7001 and beyond

In a post last week, I noted that today, April, 21, is the second anniversary of when I started counting visitors to the blog. I was wondering if I could get 7000 by today, and actually we reached that round number yesterday afternoon. I'm not so much interested in how MANY hits I get (although that is nice enough) but WHO is reading. And my stats show me some of that.

Visitor #7000 turned out to be the Google bot taking a look to see if anything I had posted was worth indexing, I guess. From California, the bot visited at 12:58 p.m. yesterday.

Visitor #7001 was a real person, in New Hampshire, who was looking for news about the Bentrotts at 5:48 p.m..

Visitor #7002 was cousin Debi in Tulsa at 7:53 p.m. Sorry I didn't have anything new up, cous!

Visitor #7003 was using Google at 9:27 p.m. from Washington state to find an obituary of the Rev. Arla Elston, whose passing I mentioned in a previous post. This is kind of amazing because the reference to Arla is buried in the middle of the text, actually text I had copied (with attribution) from Norm's FaceBook page. Those search engines can go deep. I'm impressed.

Visitor #7004 WINS THE PRIZE (to be named later) for being the first to visit on April 21. Doug in Ft. Myers logged in at 3:17 a.m. on his iPod Touch. (Some people will do anything, including going without sleep, just to be first in line!) Seriously, hope your insomnia was not brought on by the e-mail I sent you earlier. g-p-l.

Visitor #7005 was bro in law Don in Garden City at 5:50 a.m. He is always up early.

Visitor #7006 was sister in law Kay in Garden City at 7:05 a.m. These two are daily readers and I love you both!

Visitor #7007 was S-I-L Carol in Texas at 9:25 a.m.. Another Mac user and also one who checks every day. See you on FB, too. Love you!

Visitor #7008 is a frequent visitor from Georgia but I don't know who you are. You looked at 10:30 a.m. today. Maybe if you see this, you'll drop me a line at my e-mail (link on my profile) and let me know if you are who I think you might be.

Visitor #7009 at 11:50 hails from Kansas City and was Googling for Haiti blogs and CONASPEH, the ministry there that I've posted about before. Always glad to help such folks find something that they may be looking for. This visitor is intriguing because he/she is running WinNT on a Mac and browsing with Safari. Didn't know one could do that simultaneously!

Visitor #7010 is the Google bot from California again. It went to my link about our Book Club discussing the book Infidel. Hope it's not being driven by that malicious hacker I've been reading about....

Well that's the round up so far of today's visitors. I won't bore readers by listing any more, but just wanted to observe that being in the blogosphere for going on four years (we started in August of 2006) has been eye-opening for me as I have learned how fabulously interconnected friends and family can be through the Internet. As well as how visible our words and pictures can be to people we don't know. I prefer to think of the latter as friends we have not yet met. As I have become more active on FaceBook (where sometimes it seems one can get almost Too Much Information) I realize that a social networking site is easier to use for quick posts about daily activities. But for a long-winded writer like me, the occasional blog post is still very satisfying, and it's much easier to upload and display favorite photos here as well.

Bottom line: Thanks to all who have stopped by with peaceful purposes in mind, and also thanks to the minuscule few who have commented. (In two years I have deleted only 2 unwelcome comments. Both of them were from trolls who wanted to sell something.) Your feedback, whether it's in the comments or in the direct e-mails you send to me, is always welcome.