Birthday

Since we last spoke (makes more sense than read/wrote,) it has been a busy and eventful couple of weeks. Firstly my house flooded. Imagine my surprise to come home from a very enjoyable evening with my old Meteor colleagues, to discover my hall and stairway covered with water. My bemusement was increased when I discovered a never before seen hacksaw lying on my landing floor.

When I contacted my landlord, at a drunken one a.m., he informed me that he had to check something out in the attic earlier in the day and he ‘must have knocked a pipe’ or something. What exactly he had to check I’m not sure. As a qualified plumber, I’m sure he knew. Although I’d have thought that would provide him with enough expertise to not ‘knock a pipe.’

A slightly lingering damp odour aside, it has all been rectified. I stayed in a hotel for night or two and he compensated me for any damage. I’m not sure how much damage my relationship with him has suffered. I’ve lived in this house longer than anywhere else other than my parents, so I don’t really want to move but it’s fair to say I was unimpressed with the situation.

It was made all the worse by the fact that it occurred over the weekend that I was celebrating my birthday.

I turned 35 and celebrated in style. Drinks, food, new outfit, nice presents, the seventh annual Jayhaitch Invitational pool tournament. And as ‘Birthday’ fitted into my new alphabetically sequential blogging scheme, I was planning on writing all about it. Then this happened.

Shiny Blogging Nonsense is one of my favourite blogs to read. The author is a lovely person and back when I got started with this whole blogging thing she was one of the first people to give me encouragement despite her being more a friend of a friend than someone who I was well acquainted with. So when she wrote a piece about birthdays I couldn’t really do the same.

Not only did she ‘steal’ my idea before I had it, she wrote about it in a far superior manner. Reading her blog is like being around in an old friends toasty flat, for a cup of tea and a chat. She’d probably bake cookies too. Mine is more like going to the hospital for a check up before discovering the doctor is actually an absconded patient from the psych ward.

That is both the beauty and the problem of blogging. Different styles, topics and opinions. You just have to find the ones you like. That can be harder than it sounds but if you do discover something you like, you’ll go back again and again...hint hint.

I have been blogging for almost a year and half and I still feel like I’m a novice who hasn’t discovered how to use something properly. I look at people with thousands of posts and comments and I feel like I’m playing serious catch up.

Not that I have any complaints. Looking at my Blogger stats is fascinating (for me anyway.) This post has been viewed more than twice as many times as any other article of mine. In the last month my blog has been viewed 197 times in the United States. To put that into perspective, in the same time it was viewed 103 times in Ireland, where I and the majority of my friends and family live.

On a single day in April it was viewed 60 times, half of those from Russia. Other than one friend, who lives in Ireland, I don’t know any Russian. Today I got a new follower, called Niall. Hi Niall.

Of course, you can prove anything with statistics. I’m not sure what these prove other than I’m a worldwide phenomenon like GLEE, U2 or political corruption. So I guess what I’m trying to say is Thanks for reading. I really appreciate it.

If I could ask one favour of you it would be to leave more comments on the blog. All feedback is greatly appreciated and good or bad it’s nice to know what you think.

If I could ask two things it would be to read Shiny Blogging Nonsense. It’s a jolly good read by a really nice person. And I still have a book I borrowed off her ages ago so the plug might go some way to gaining a reprieve on that.