picture from japan

LOTR updated




Parki's here! Haven't seen him yet, though...he arrived around midnight, I think, and I had to crash before then. From the dishes by the sink, I assume that he and Jeff were up late talking. I'm hoping to get him to post a Guest Blathering while he's here.


In case any of you missed the update to my Blatherings yesterday, be sure to check out the husband-wife blogs of my friends Reid and Luisa. Luisa's is brand new -- it's highly enlightening to get her perspective of a particular event compared to Reid's report on the same. I'm hoping their sons Ronnie and Michael eventually start up their own weblogs, too... :-)





Did more experimenting with our new camping oven yesterday...whole wheat biscuits. Hey, and they actually turned out okay! I fiddled a bit with the recipe, and gave the earlier attempts to Randall The Seagull. Actually, I've discovered that Randall is actually more than one seagull; I've just been assuming that the seagull that occasionally hangs around our cottage looking for a handout is always the same seagull. By the end of my baking experiment this afternoon, there were SIX seagulls out on the lake near our dock. Hm.


I wanted to experiment with my chicken goulash recipe (all from dry ingredients, including dehydrated chicken), but the blackflies were starting to come out for their late afternoon snack.





Jeff and I were looking at stats of electricpenguin.com recently, both through his stats program (Summary?) and the one provided by Samurai Consulting. For those interested, electricpenguin.com currently gets an average of about 12,500 visits/month, 65,000 downloaded pages/month. Most popular usage time: 10-5 pm EST (a lot of surfing from work, I see :-)). Most popular entry pages (in decreasing order): these Blatherings, my LOTR report, the message boards, the main Electric Penguin page, The Dandelion Report, Blatherchat, Harp Resource, OVFF Web site, and my comic strip. Most popular search strings this month so far: "dandelion", "monster mash lyrics", "the key of R filk", "debbiecam", "harp clipart", "pegasus", "school photo" (oh dear, that reminds me that I forgot to put up my Geeky School Photo page...must do that eventually), "Anabukin-chan", "blatherings debbie glasses", "debbie", "goatee", "harp teachers", "fragile sticker", "hockey monkey", "sushi magnets", "Dorsai", "Kim Holzer Leeds'", "Sherly Temple", "albert faille" and "anabukin-chan". Top 22 of 58 countries of users accessing electricpenguin.com these days are: U.S., Canada, Germany, Australia, UK, Singapore, Sweden, New Zealand, Netherlands, Austria, Finland, Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, Norway, Italy, Russian Federation, Switzerland, Chile, South Africa, Japan, Israel and Ireland.


The Internet is so cool. I mean, how else could I be sitting up here at the cottage accessible only by boat, and still be able to exchange news daily with my Dad in Japan, browse postings by friends around the globe, collaborating with writers I've never met, all for the cost of a local phonecall? Despite all the stress and heartache I went through with the sale and eventual demise of Inkspot, I still love the 'Net. :-)


Today's Blatherpics:


- My dad has been teaching in Japan for the past couple of weeks. He e-mailed a photo of the class (Grade 3-4, I think); yesterday was his last day there.


- My whole wheat biscuit experiment.


- Jeff doing some prep for our hiking trip.


Today's Poll:

Are you reading this at work?