Monday, January 19
... or the whole fainting thing could have something to do with me eating a total of, um, two oranges, a box of Triscuits, and a pint of leftover pasta since my parents left Friday morning.
I'm an idiot.
I'm an idiot.
Okay, this is just not my day.
I was sitting in front of the heater, got up to turn on the radio, got one of those dizzy spells that you get sometimes when you stand up so fast, but ignored it and walked over to the radio. The next thing I knew I was laying on the floor. I must have fainted, I guess, but why I have no clue. I'd knocked down my keyboard, and I must have been laying there for a minute or so, because there was this puddle of blood where I'd cracked my chin on the desk.
This is only the second time I've fainted in my life.
What the hell? Did I piss off a witch or something?
I was sitting in front of the heater, got up to turn on the radio, got one of those dizzy spells that you get sometimes when you stand up so fast, but ignored it and walked over to the radio. The next thing I knew I was laying on the floor. I must have fainted, I guess, but why I have no clue. I'd knocked down my keyboard, and I must have been laying there for a minute or so, because there was this puddle of blood where I'd cracked my chin on the desk.
This is only the second time I've fainted in my life.
What the hell? Did I piss off a witch or something?
I was trying to thaw out a waterer this morning and, with the collaboration of an evil gate, managed to dump a quarter-bucket of hot water down my shirt instead. Which sounds funny until you realize that our hot water is 180F.
I was very lucky - my clothes absorbed a lot of the water and the heat, and I got ice on it shortly after, so it looks like I've gotten away with minor scalding on my neck and chest and hardly any scalding on my breasts. It could have been a lot worse. Still, I was sitting on the ground and crying for a good two minutes after from the pain, and I'm sitting around half-naked now because I can't bear the touch of cloth on my skin. Sooner or later I'm going to have to put a shirt back on. I am most definately not looking forward to the experience.
Oh, well.
The post I'd planned before me and Mr. Water got all intimate went something like this:
I am addicted to my site stats.
At first it was just the pure numbers - how many people have visited my site? I like getting my ego stroked as much as the next person - and, like most writers, I write for the joy of writing, but I also write to get read. You've got to love it to do it, sure, but it's not nearly so fun if you don't know people are reading and enjoying what you write. My stats could assure me of at least the former.
Then it was the linkage. This has a large element of ego-stroking as well, of course, but also an element of curiousity. How in the hell were all these people hearing about me? What search terms were they using to find me? The last was particularly interesting. Some were using predictable enough terms - "speculative fiction generator", the names of various literary agencies - good ego-stroking, there, because I like knowing people are using the resources I poured time into. Others were understandable mistakes, like "social contract neitze". And still others... well, I may not be up to the weirdness quotent of A Violently Executed Blog, which was once found by someone searching for "ass raped by rhinos" (and now I suppose I will be too), but... "dancing chopstick"? "Individually wrapped livesavers"?
What was it, exactly, that these people were looking for when they found my page?
And then there's the list of countries.
At first this was just fun. "Oh, look, someone from the UK's reading me! Someone from Germany's reading me! Someone from Brazil's reading me!" As I casually knew people from all three places, I wasn't terribly shocked. Then there was the surprise: "Someone from Israel found this page? That's pretty neat. And people in both Sweden and Norway..." and then the pleasure "The Philippines? Wow," and then the confusion: "Slovenia? Um, that's in Eastern Europe somewhere, right?" and finally, yesterday.... " Seychelles? What the hell ? I've never even heard of that country!"
I had to go look it up in the CIA Factbook. Seychelles is a tiny group of islands in the Indian Ocean, north of Madagascar. They have a total population of 80,000, a president who's been reelected since 1977, and a struggling tourist trade. And I had no idea they even existed.
Wow.
Just goes to show that even unhealthy ego-stroking obsessions can have educational side benifits.
I was very lucky - my clothes absorbed a lot of the water and the heat, and I got ice on it shortly after, so it looks like I've gotten away with minor scalding on my neck and chest and hardly any scalding on my breasts. It could have been a lot worse. Still, I was sitting on the ground and crying for a good two minutes after from the pain, and I'm sitting around half-naked now because I can't bear the touch of cloth on my skin. Sooner or later I'm going to have to put a shirt back on. I am most definately not looking forward to the experience.
Oh, well.
The post I'd planned before me and Mr. Water got all intimate went something like this:
I am addicted to my site stats.
At first it was just the pure numbers - how many people have visited my site? I like getting my ego stroked as much as the next person - and, like most writers, I write for the joy of writing, but I also write to get read. You've got to love it to do it, sure, but it's not nearly so fun if you don't know people are reading and enjoying what you write. My stats could assure me of at least the former.
Then it was the linkage. This has a large element of ego-stroking as well, of course, but also an element of curiousity. How in the hell were all these people hearing about me? What search terms were they using to find me? The last was particularly interesting. Some were using predictable enough terms - "speculative fiction generator", the names of various literary agencies - good ego-stroking, there, because I like knowing people are using the resources I poured time into. Others were understandable mistakes, like "social contract neitze". And still others... well, I may not be up to the weirdness quotent of A Violently Executed Blog, which was once found by someone searching for "ass raped by rhinos" (and now I suppose I will be too), but... "dancing chopstick"? "Individually wrapped livesavers"?
What was it, exactly, that these people were looking for when they found my page?
And then there's the list of countries.
At first this was just fun. "Oh, look, someone from the UK's reading me! Someone from Germany's reading me! Someone from Brazil's reading me!" As I casually knew people from all three places, I wasn't terribly shocked. Then there was the surprise: "Someone from Israel found this page? That's pretty neat. And people in both Sweden and Norway..." and then the pleasure "The Philippines? Wow," and then the confusion: "Slovenia? Um, that's in Eastern Europe somewhere, right?" and finally, yesterday.... " Seychelles? What the hell ? I've never even heard of that country!"
I had to go look it up in the CIA Factbook. Seychelles is a tiny group of islands in the Indian Ocean, north of Madagascar. They have a total population of 80,000, a president who's been reelected since 1977, and a struggling tourist trade. And I had no idea they even existed.
Wow.
Just goes to show that even unhealthy ego-stroking obsessions can have educational side benifits.
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