I have a confession to make. I check this blog’s stats almost as often as a published author checks their Amazon ranking. I like numbers, I like seeing trends, and I really like bar graphs that make everything super-easy to see. And the last few days? I have had some record-breaking individual visitor stats–and I really don’t know why.

Are new Dyson vacuum cleaners and massive amount of popcorn so interesting? I really don’t know! But I’m flattered, and I hope I can keep doing whatever it is that’s drawing people in. Because, you know, it’s all about the blog stats. They are like internet popularity crack.

In random news, I’m preaching again this Sunday (Palm Sunday! It’s late on Thursday night and I haven’t actually written anything yet! Panic!) and I got my last two packages today!

This translates more or less to me squeeing with glee over all my new kitchen gadgets, and it also means that everyone who ordered things from my recent Pampered Chef party will be getting those things delivered soon–most likely on Sunday, since I actually think I’ll see everyone by then. Hmmmmm.

Tomorrow? Writing a sermon, lot of laundry, washing the new kitchen gadgets (and the kitchen they now belong to), and maybe a few other semi-top-secret things. Which mostly means I’m too lazy to go into details here, not that anything all that exciting is happening.

Also? I have been thoroughly enjoying Assassin’s Creed 2, and I sincerely hope to kill more people tomorrow. And loot more treasure chests. Really, people are begging to be robbed when they put chests full of money out in the garden or on their completely unguarded balconies. But hey, it works for me!

With any luck, I will still be sane by Sunday afternoon–which would be good, since Matt and I get to tell our life stories at small group that night.

Time for bed! Sweet dreams, all.

I didn’t particularly think about it a few days ago when I posted last, but last week I managed to spend money ordering several things.

You might ask, “What did you order, Betsy? Clothes?”

To which I would laugh and laugh and laugh, because I learned a long time ago that mail-ordered clothing rarely fits me well. I have rather freakishly long limbs, you see, at least compared to my other relevant dimensions, so it’s rather hit-and-miss… with more misses than hits.

So, if not clothes, then what? Okay, so it’s not much of a mystery to those of you who follow my twitter feed or are my facebook friends. Work with me, people!

At any rate, what does someone like me order online and then follow the tracking info incessantly??

1) A vacuum cleaner! Huzzah! Yes, I am excited about a household cleaning device. It has SUCTION, oh yes it does. It pulled dirt from our “clean” carpet–a lot of dirt. And it empties about a hundred times easier than our old one. Matt was walking around in his bare feet after I did the living room today and he said the floor actually felt cleaner under his toes. And he’s right! I’m not even making it up! It’s also accented with super-electric blue, which nobody can be sad about.

Yes indeed, we have a Dyson DC17 “Asthma and Allergy” model, which is apparently just the same as the “Animal” model except you get different attachments in the package and it costs $50 less. No, we didn’t pay the extra $150 for the roller-ball model. Yeah, I’m a little sad, too, but there are better places to spend that money. But really. You should come to my house and put in some time on this vacuum. It’s wonderful.

With such excitement to start out, what else could I possibly have ordered? What can stand up to the Dyson DC-17???

This Christmas one of the gifts I gave Matt was a multi-pack of gourmet popcorns. Three different varieties. One of them in particular was so good that we realized we’d be perfectly happy eating it all the time instead of the popcorn we get from the grocery store–and having looked it up on their website, we realized it wasn’t really more expensive than said generic kernels. We waffled a bit about the very real possibility that we are becoming popcorn snobs, but then we caved to the snobbery and decided to order.

Then life exploded and we forgot. Until last week. When we were out of popcorn. Well, out of good popcorn. So I hopped online to order more of our favorite variety. Matt, upon learning that the company had a number of types of popcorn that we hadn’t tried yet, asked me to see if there was a variety pack of some kind to try a few more. And since we already knew that we loved the one type, I also ordered the biggest container they offer of it–after all, if we’re mail ordering, I’d rather do it less often.

It wasn’t until I’d all but placed the order (deciding shipping options) that I realized that ordering 31 pounds of popcorn kernels might have been a bit much, but I wasn’t about to back down then!

So, along with the vacuum cleaner, our popcorn arrived today. What does 31 pounds of popcorn look like, you ask? Like this!

And just in case you’re shaky on how much that is, here’s a standard paperback (and one you all should read, fwiw) to give you perspective. Also, the lid of the 15lb. tub is open because that is a stinking LOT of popcorn.

So that’s what came on the UPS truck today. Later this week I’ll get three boxes from FedEx full of kitchen gadgets and gizmos for me and my friends. Maybe you’ll get to see pictures of those, too!

So there you have it. This week in the Whitt house: packages galore.

Some have noted my recent extended silences. I maintain that I have not been doing much worth talking about, and when I have been busy I haven’t had time to write about it. Crazy catch-22 there, eh?

We’ll see if I can’t balance it out a bit more in the coming months.

Shiloh’s training stuff has been in effect for about a week, and she seems to be making progress. Or maybe we are the ones making progress. Hard to tell.

I went to California for about a week to visit a very good friend–we had a lovely time, including activities like hanging out at her place in the middle of a big desert, getting evacuated because of a gas leak a half a block away, going to Disneyland, a day at the San Diego Zoo, and various and sundry other visity-ish things.

While I was gone, several rather major things happened with Matt’s job. I’m not particularly inclined to go into details, but the end result is that at least temporarily, he’s doing his job and his former supervisor’s job. The details of what will be happening long-term haven’t been finalized yet, but it’s thrown rather a large rock into our little pond. It’s a good rock–he’s excited about things that are happening, and enjoying moving forward with things–but there’s a lot to juggle and balance, especially for the next two months until this school semester ends.

Matt was sick when I got home, and then passed his dastardly head cold to me, so I was sick over last weekend. It took more time and energy to recover than I would have liked, but I think things are looking up on that front.

The past few days have been lovely outside, and I’ve been able to do some reading out on the porch. Wonderful. Too bad there’s snow in the forecast again day after tomorrow, but that’s classic spring in Colorado.

To alleviate the general boringness of this update, I’ll end with a Shiloh anecdote. A few nights ago, I was watching Dirty Jobs on Netflix when Matt got home–I paused the tv show so I could talk to him. A few seconds later, Shiloh drew our attention by sniffing cautiously at the tv cabinet. There hadn’t been anything yummy-smelling up there all day, so we couldn’t figure out what she’d be interested in. Just then, she took a step back, her hackles came up a bit, and she started a growl–and we realized that when I paused the show, it caught a frame where Mike Rowe was addressing the camera, and on the new tv his torso was almost life-sized. Shiloh was growling at the strange man (who she couldn’t smell) in her living room.

Yeah, not very momentous, really, but we found it immensely amusing. Poor dog, thinking someone got into the house without her noticing.