Thanks Person From Mongolia!

Here are the stats for readers of my blog for about the past four months which you may find interesting:

Current Country Totals
From 1 Oct 2008 to 22 Jan 2009

United States (US) 1,462
Canada (CA) 123
United Kingdom (GB) 115
Germany (DE) 49
Brazil (BR) 28
Hungary (HU) 28
Australia (AU) 25
France (FR) 21
Poland (PL) 21
Puerto Rico (PR) 18
Netherlands (NL) 18
Italy (IT) 18
Spain (ES) 16
Mexico (MX) 16
Sweden (SE) 15
Belgium (BE) 14
Ireland (IE) 13
Denmark (DK) 12
Finland (FI) 10
Russian Federation (RU) 9
Romania (RO) 9
Japan (JP) 8
Israel (IL) 8
Argentina (AR) 8
Portugal (PT) 7
Europe (EU) 7
Singapore (SG) 7
Turkey (TR) 7
India (IN) 7
Chile (CL) 6
Switzerland (CH) 6
Colombia (CO) 6
Norway (NO) 6
Korea, Republic of (KR) 6
Philippines (PH) 6
Peru (PE) 5
Serbia (RS) 5
Indonesia (ID) 4
China (CN) 4
Czech Republic (CZ) 4
Thailand (TH) 4
Austria (AT) 4
Vietnam (VN) 4
Costa Rica (CR) 3
Greece (GR) 3
Slovakia (SK) 2
Malaysia (MY) 2
South Africa (ZA) 2
New Zealand (NZ) 2
Venezuela (VE) 2
El Salvador (SV) 2
Ukraine (UA) 2
Iceland (IS) 1
Paraguay (PY) 1
Uruguay (UY) 1
Lithuania (LT) 1
Latvia (LV) 1
Mauritius (MU) 1
Jamaica (JM) 1
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BA) 1
Egypt (EG) 1
Iran, Islamic Republic of (IR) 1
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (LY) 1
Pakistan (PK) 1
Kuwait (KW) 1
Hong Kong (HK) 1
United Arab Emirates (AE) 1
Malta (MT) 1
Dominican Republic (DO) 1
Netherlands Antilles (AN) 1
Slovenia (SI) 1
Sri Lanka (LK) 1
Honduras (HN) 1
Panama (PA) 1
Bulgaria (BG) 1
Mongolia (MN) 1

There are several things I enjoy about these stats, but I think the lone fellow from Mongolia takes the cake.

I also admit I had to look up where Malta and Mauritius was and didn’t know anything about them.

For anyone who wants to know, I got some info from Wikipedia and I will share the juicy bits with you.

The Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation off the coast of Africa east of Madagascar. One of the coolest things I read about it is that there is a plan for Mauritius to become the first nation to have coast-to-coast wireless internet access. The wireless hot spot currently covers about 60% of the island and is accessible by about 70% of its population. Also, Mauritius was the only known habitat of the extinct Dodo bird.

Republic of Malta is an archipelago of seven islands off the coast of Italy in the Mediterranean Sea. All education is free there (which is always an obsession to us in the USA who start life off with debt to be educated) and Malta was ranked number 5 in the World Health Organization’s ranking of the world’s health systems (also an obsession to those of us in the USA who have periods in life with no health insurance). The official language of Malta is Maltese which I didn’t even know was a language.

I hope this has been educational for everyone. Thank you all for stopping by!

Stranger than Fiction

This morning, on my way to do ‘the mail run’ before work, I almost hit a bird in the road. The thing that was odd about this was not that it was an animal in the wrong place at the wrong time, or that it was me in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The weird thing was the location: East Hartford Ave. Uxbridge, MA

Matched with the type of bird: peacock.

I knew it was the beginning to another odd day. I knew this not because I am a reader of omens and portents. I knew this because life has become an interesting and unexpected thing.

By now I should expect the unexpected. I have a job where just when you think there is some sort of routine, something new and different that you’ve never seen comes across your plate and stares at you with beady little eyes. Add this to the rest of my life. I have weird, vivid, often horrifying dreams. Coincidences and dejavu are constant. Is it more strange to feel like whats happening has happened before, or that both Ezra and I met after not seeing each other since February (and years before that meeting) both wearing Metallica shirts and admitting we weren’t ‘really big Metallica fans or anything’.

I wonder about writing fiction sometimes and the length people go to make it seem realistic. With the odd occurrences that happen on a day to day it occurs to me that we wouldn’t know what realism was anyways. Reality often feels surreal, and truth really is stranger than fiction.

Last night I dreamt about telling someone at work that I just had a dream about them, since in the dream I dreamt having that dream.

I also dreamt I was a super-long pole arm bearer for some feudal post-apocalyptic oriental army. I was captured by the enemy feudal lord when he tricked me into thinking I was close to defeating him. It was simply a ruse to get me away from the rest of the army and capture me. When I tried to escape, no matter how far and fast I went, there was a large-as-a-house warrior waiting to bring me back to my prison. There was nothing to do at this prison but sleep and play strange card games I was bad at.

I can only spend so much time on the epic stores my subconscious undertakes. Life is constantly weaving a strange tale of its own. Instead, I spend my time dodging peacocks.