At the Stroke of Midnight

I waited all day. I didn't want to post about this in the middle of it all. And I don't want to write about it tomorrow. I've already got something crucially important to say tomorrow. It involves cupcakes. You don't want to miss that.

But just now, I looked at the clock and it said 12:00 On The Dot. So I figured that was my chance. I could post it in neither yesterday nor today (or it is neither today nor tomorrow? I'm so confused). As you know if you're a regular reader (and if you're not, please explain yourself and haul yourself over to that little button that says "subscribe" right now, y'hear?), I'm a big fan of liminal space. The in-between.

It was an invitation I could not resist. As my mother would say, it's an omen. So here I am. The omen slave. Nice to see ya.

So here's what I'm here to say, and then I really am going to go to bed, I mean it: Today was a wild ride.

You see, some time ago, I submitted my blog for inclusion in the New England Blogs section of Boston.com, a site that encompasses, but is not limited to, the Boston Globe (our local dying newspaper). It's a pretty extensive blogroll, but I figured what the heck. Maybe I'll pick up a reader here and there, and it's good for my imaginary sense of legitimacy.

So this morning, I opens my computer and I looks at my stats. I do that now and then, even though they change about as much as the weather reports in Honolulu. If nothing else, it's a little self-check, as good a measure as any of my level of compulsivity on any given day (let's see: Coffee or ginseng tea? Compare. Contrast.) I don't take the stats too seriously, but sometimes it's interesting to try to imagine how that person in Abu Dhabi happened to wind up at Here's What I Don't Get.

I hover somewhere around 50 visitors a day, about 1/3 of them loyal folks who always stop by (read: family and friends) and the rest new people who stop in and rarely linger. I do not lose sleep over how to get them to stick around. You like what you like. No big deal.

So this morning, when I checked my stats at 9 a.m. and saw that there were 119 new visitors, I was a little startled. Now, I'm no dummy, so I'm thinking "Wha?" (brilliant, eh?). I did have enough sense to try to figure out where they were all coming from--like moths to a porch light. And it turned out--get this--that Boston.com had featured my blog on their home page. There it was. All day. It was like my 15 minutes, except it was damn near 24 hours. It's still up there now. I just checked. Because it makes me feel famous, that's why!

Now, the day is over. I had 700 visitors. It's amazing what a little exposure will do (besides give you a big head, albeit temporarily). Tomorrow--or today--whatever--we return to our regularly scheduled programming. I'm here to say it was a heck of a fun diversion.  But most of all....most dear to my heart....it made me feel like a Writer.

And so, in the spirit of my mother, who always said it (I never knew the reference, I thought she made it up), in the spirit of the funny feeling of fame for a few fleeting minutes (I love alliteration, especially when it's accidental), in the spirit of the transition back to being a regular old non-featured blogger probably sometime in the middle of the night, and (apparently, again accidentally) in the spirit of the July 4th holiday, I want to express my gratitude to the powers that be (such as they are) at boston.com, who saw fit to pick li'l ole me. And so....

"My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you...and I thank you."
(Yankee Doodle Dandy, 1942)