Gee, It's Been a While Since I've Bored You With...

...statistics!
Yay! Woohoo!

Okay, I'll calm down now.

One of the reasons I wanted to share this with you was that as I get more into this whole blogging thing, I'm trying to figure out what my audience is like.

Just like my some of my posts, my audience is literally all over the map. At first glance, it seems to be primarily an English-speaking audience, from English-speaking countries.

But then there's Russia, Germany, France, the Philippines, Brazil and Indonesia. I know there are a lot of folks in those lands who are bilingual, if not multi-lingual (is that even a real word?) In my travels I have met many who speak English, and speak it quite well they do.

I have to admit, I am somewhat giddy over my popularity in the Родина. (That's the Rodina or the Motherland for you non-Russian speakers.) Not sure why. Back in my salad days they were the Bad Guys. You know, the Big Bad Bear. But quite frankly, back in those days we had a healthy respect for the Russians. Not the commissars and Party boys, no, no indeed. But the common Russian soldier, sailor, airman and marine.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Naviguesser had the opportunity (on one of his Midshipman cruises) to be on a ship which had a sailor, who had been a sailor before. Yes, he was now an American sailor. A few years before, he had been a Russian sailor. But my son got a huge laugh one day when he and his fellow midshipmen were talking with Boatswain's Mate Second Class (BM2) Ivan Ivanovich (not his real name, of course.)

Seems the end of the summer cruise was approaching and BM2 Ivanovich asked the mids, "So when are you boys headed back to Soviet Union?" (Spoken in a thick Russian accent, of course.)

Silence, then a chuckle. Seems Ivan had been in the Soviet Navy and was still steeped in that tradition. Needless to say, the mids got a huge chuckle over it and spent the rest of the cruise addressing each other as "comrade" and speaking in faux Russian accents. I'm sure that ship was glad to put those kids ashore at the end of their cruise.

So yes, Russia, I seem to be quite popular there. With the UK being a close second (I'm guessing Hogday hits my blog 5 times a day, just to keep the numbers up. God Save the Queen. Pip pip, cheerio.)

Now much to my surprise, Uncle Smitty's Hamsters has dropped out of the top spot. (I still can't figure out why that is so popular. I'm sure Tuna has an idea, or at least a theory). Even more surprising to me, it was surpassed by one of my serious posts.

Lately I have been a little more, shall we say, "political" in some of my posts. Occasionally I do like to go "all serious" don't you know? But only if I can string together some relatively coherent thoughts. I have written lots of serious posts which never saw the light of day. Sometimes I just get riled up and all coherent, rational thought goes out the window. Not to mention causing a severe degradation in my typing skills. Which aren't that great to begin with.

So there it is. My latest stats, sort of a progress report to my "legions" of fans. So much for that.

Carry on...