Happy New Year… and some metrics

So 2011 is here and has been for a little over two hours, so here’s a happy, healthy and successful new year to my readers (all two or three of you).

I did the party thing for a few years in my late teens and twenties, but it was never really my thing. So this year for New Year’s Eve, I watched the traditional Dinner For One sketch and even had Mulligatawny soup, first of the four courses of Miss Sophie’s birthday dinner for lunch. Alas, no drunken butler impersonating dead people.

If anyone has never seen Dinner For One, here is the original video and here is an article from Slate about the phenomenon that gladly manages to be largely free of the condescension that dripped from their report about the Swedish love for a Disney Christmas special.

Afterwards, I headed out for dinner with some family members to a local Italian restaurant. I even managed to get there safely, though I stepped into a pile of muddy thawing snow, while exiting my car.

We shared a big antipasto platter, then I had spaghetti with grilled scampi and garlic and for dessert a panne cotta and finally a latte macchiato. We arrived at the restaurant at half past eight, had to wait for ten minutes or so for the people before us to vacate the table. But then we managed to dawdle until twenty to twelve and had to rush home. Luckily, the drive is only seven minutes or so.

I spent the actual start of the new year with an empty glass in hand (because the cork had broken off in the champagne bottle and took longer than expected to extract) waiting for the TV tuner on my laptop to start up. Saw maybe 30 seconds of the Brandenburg Gate fireworks on TV, before going out to have our own fireworks. I had bought a set of mixed fireworks (rockets, volcanoes, a few crackers) at the supermarket for approx. 15 Euros and it provided more than enough bang for my bucks. One firecracker and one rocket failed to ignite. I picked them up and discarded them, so kids won’t take them (a lot of kids roam the streets for firecrackers that failed to ignite) and get hurt.

Some of my students at school go completely fireworks crazy and have their parents (since kids under 18 are not allowed to buy fireworks) buy them a hundred firecrackers or more. I pity the poor neighbours.

Finally, have some blog metrics under the cut:

Most popular posts of 2010:

1. Literary versus Genre Fiction, Round 315
2. Links – mainly TV-related
3. So bad you can’t say it on TV
4. Just some links
5. Reflections on Urban Fantasy
6. Christmas Eve
7. Winter Wonderland
8. Links and Miscellany
9. Urban Fantasy and Fandom Hate
10. Backlashery

And here are the ten most common search terms:

cora buhlert
medieval pictures
medieval
disney poems
medieval romance
pictures medieval
images of medival times
edward docx genre
docx crime larsson
edgar wallace

The medieval and Disney stuff are searches related to content that was on the old site. I may put it back one day, since it still seems to be in demand. Nothing really offbeat or out there, though I had two people searching for “halal schmalzkuchen”. Sorry, I can’t help you there.

This site had 617 visitors since I started blogging again on October 25th, 2010 (I’m disregarding the old site for now). The busiest day was December 30th with 53 visitors.