Daily Archives: April 7, 2006

Apr 7

Why Do I Doubt the Butcher?

The house looks spectacular.  You can walk in.  You can see the couch.  You can actually sit on the couch.  The floor has been vacuumed.  The beer bottom that was out on the back porch for years?  Gone.

It’s amazing.  It’s so nice.

Well, nice for this place.

But I’m sorry I doubted the Butcher.

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Apr 7

Well, that was nerve-wracking

I just spent a good twenty minutes huddled in the bottom of a stairwell with my co-workers, listening to the not-so-comforting sounds of the tornado siren.


I kept calling the Butcher for updates, who kept saying “I’m not a meteorologist; I’m just watching TV.”


He’s at home with the animals, the landlord, and the potential buyers, who are all taking refuge from the weather in our place.


The Butcher was, back when we thought the weather would only be rainy, supposed to keep the dog out of their hair.


So much for that plan.


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Apr 7

The Secret to Patrick’s’s Green Beans

Patrick’s is this awesome restaurant that I never get to often enough.  Today Huck and I went.  I had the pork po’boy; he had the oyster po’boy.  He had fries.


I had their heavenly delicious green beans.


And, the waitress told me the secret to their green beans–a hint of lemon.


Garlic and lemon.


I knew the garlic, but couldn’t place the lemon.


And, folks, here’s the other exciting thing I thought while eating the green beans: imagine a simple pesto sauce: basil, pine nuts, garlic, salt, pepper, olive oil AND lemon juice.  It could totally be my secret pesto ingredient.


Well, except that I just told you.

Apr 7

What’s the Worst that Can Happen?

The Butcher just called claiming that the house is clean, all except his room, and that he’s now going off to play because it’s his day off.

Dear Reader, I ask you, he cleaned all the carpeted areas in only two hours?

Okay, answer me this: that’s the worst that can happen?

The place does not meet the landlord’s threshold for cleanliness and what?

Apr 7

Keeping Track of Comings and Goings

I was just about to send an email to Coble about this and then I realized I couldn’t remember if it was her that I’d been talking to about this or someone else.  So, on the chance that it is someone else, I’m just posting it here instead.


At Blogger, I used Sitemeter for a long, long time and then, on the advice of Tim Morgan, I added Stat Counter.  Now, I have Squarespace’s stats.


And here’s what I’ve learned.  If you are using Sitemeter, it’s probably underreporting the number of hits you have.  When I was at Blogger, the difference between the Sitemeter count and the Stat Counter count was about fifty.  Some days it was closer to 100.


I had this theory for a long time that Stat Counter’s timer must have been different than Sitemeter’s–that Stat Counter had a shorter amount of time someone could be away from Tiny Cat Pants and return and get counted as a new hit.  And that may be part of it.


But I was also doing side-by-side IP address comparisons* and it was clear that Stat Counter was recording IP addresses that Sitemeter wasn’t.


When I left Blogger, I was averaging about 375 hits a day according to Stat Counter.  According to Sitemeter, it was closer to 300.  About half of these were search engine hits for people looking for porn or whatever.  And half of them were you, dear readers.


Now that I’m over here, I have this window where I’m not getting very many (four total) search engine hits at all, so I can see how many actual people are here a day–about 200 of you.


Assuming Squarespace’s numbers are the most accurate, this would indicate to me that Stat Counter was also pretty accurate as, if there are about 200 of you, and about half of my hits used to be coming from searches, 375 or so hits a day seems to be closer to the truth of the matter.


So, all this is to say that if you’re only using Sitemeter, you may have more readers than you think you do.


 


 


*Because I am a giant nerd.

Apr 7

Prevent Warm Brass from Bouncing Off Your Forehead!

Say Uncle is having a blogger meet-up for gun nuts.


I will not be going, because, of course, I don’t have a car and I live far away and I am not a gun nut.


However, as a show of solidarity with my gun nut internet relatives, I will be wearing a hat with a bill to prevent warm brass from bouncing off my forehead. (Folks, I know that’s a reasonable and wise safety precaution.  Still, it makes me laugh so hard I can’t even tell you.)


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Apr 7

The Countdown to Four O’Clock Friday Afternoon

So, my part of the house is amazingly clean. 

Wasn’t I going to make out with all y’all earlier?  I think I was.  You should totally come over right now and make out with my in my clean kitchen.  Then, we can make out in my clean downstairs bathroom.  And then we can all take a shower together in the upstairs bathroom.  I’ll scrub your back if you’ll wash my hair.  And then we can retire to the bedroom.  But you’ve got to get here before ten, because I’m dog-tired* and must soon go to sleep. 

The Butcher needs to clean the living room and vacuum it, clean his room and vacuum it, vacuum the stairs, and clean off the back porch.  And this all must happen before four o’clock tomorrow afternoon.

Can he do it?  It seems like it should be physically possible.

Will he do it?  I’ll admit, I’m nervous.

The Professor was saying–she came over to keep me company while I cleaned–that her favorite thing is that the Butcher’s idea of clean is to just stack things in piles on the periphery of the room.  That’s true.

It’s also true that Mrs. Wigglebottom’s favorite thing** is to stack all her stuff right in the middle of the room.  Right now, in the middle of the living room is a dog, three bones, and a rope.

Between the two of them, they make quite an interesting mess.

 

 

*Yes, the tired of a dog I know better than to take to the dog park!  Don’t worry, busy bodies!  No dog were attacked in the making of that figure of speech.

**After menacing folks at the dog park, of course.

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