My girlfriends Annalisa and Vanessa sent me some lovely flowers on Monday to further brighten my day. They're just so pretty I had to bust out the camera and save them for posterity.
I thought the little faux bird was actually quite cute--I didn't even see him at first!
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So, I've been playing with my visitors reports, reviewing them and trying to see when and why traffic increases, and for the most part I pick up a few new readers every couple of days who take a look and come back once in a while.
But today someone new spent an hour and half straight going through what looks to be every single public page on my blog, and a bunch of photos too. This wasn't some auto-crawler that loads a page for a second and moves on, it was definitely a person and with an ISP affiliated with a university too.
Not sure why that weirds me out. I guess I just figure that much time should be followed by at least an email or a friend request or something. Maybe part of it is that most of the people who read regularly or in-depth(ly?) have made themselves known to me, even if in just via an online profile.
Well, nothing to be done about it now. This public adventure can't be erased from memory, though I'm not sure I'd want to if I could. Still, it's the first time in a long time I've worried about exposing the best and worst of me here.
Whoever you are, oh Valley reader, you're welcome to stay and come again. And if you feel like it, drop a line and introduce yourself. I've probably double the number of public posts that only my Vox neighborhood and friends can read, so if you're interested in those, an introduction is the first step.
]]>Yesterday was my first real day completely back in the land of the living. I woke early, feeling blissfully rested, and began a day of small errands--cleaning the house, organizing my garage and my tool bench (yes, MY tool bench), and pulling all the dollar weed out of the front lawn. I also took Evita for her first real walk in two weeks, and we were both glad to be out in the sunshine.
I also went out on the town a bit last night, attending a birthday party for a friend. It was quite the schedule. I skipped dinner and the after party, but went to the pre-party and the club--a new Austin club, Pangea. (It's a nice place, and they've got at least one girl dancer who can move her body like a cyclone, so it was an entertaining night all around.) Just one quick anecdote for the evening: Before we left the apartment, the birthday boy took me aside and started to chastise me about not planning to go to the after-party. He said, "Come on, Vanessa, don't do this to me," jokingly of course, and then said, "besides, there's someone I want you to meet." My completely filterless response was to look him in the eye and blurt out, "I'm not divorced yet." I immediately felt like, oh, I don't know...some sort of provincial greenhorn...I mean, of all the witty things I could have said (and trust me, I'm quite the witty girl), that's what popped out of my mouth. Good grief. I guess I will have to work on visualizing actually looking for love instead of just hoping and praying for it.
I'm relaxing now, but I have a banana pudding to make for a Super Bowl party so I need to log off in a sec. But first,today's ridiculous moment, brought to you by staying out late and being distracted on the phone. So, I went to the grocery store earlier to pick up a few things, and when I was finished I walked out the door and blankly stared at the parking lot. I absolutely could not remember where I parked. And I'm not talking about, "I thought I was in this aisle, but I was one over," I mean that I had no recollection of parking at all and no idea of where my car might be. Close in? Off to the right? No joke, I wandered about eight aisles of the parking lot, up and down and back again, for about ten minutes before I found my car. (Dear lord, I'm not even thirty and I'm turning into my mother!)
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