Bloggers who want it, can get access to all sorts of data about their readers. I know what time you prefer to read my blogs (prime time is 7-10 AM), what device you typically use when you read them (54% desktop, 43% mobile device and 3% tablet) and where you live (primarily the United States and Canada).
At least most of you.
Overwhelmingly my readers are in the United States and Canada. Statistically, the two countries on either side of the longest unguarded border in the world make up 100% of my readership. But each time I check, there are outliers: readers from far-away lands.
A recent blog post I published got a read from Brisbane.
As in Australia! Over 10,000 miles from my patio in Stamford, CT where I likely wrote the blog!
I've discovered paint geeks in the outback! Call National Geographic!
To the lone reader, my single “fan” in Brisbane, Australia: thank you! Whether you’re a dealer of Oceanic coatings, a rep for Wattyl or drug dealer from the Bronx using a VPN to hide your identity from the feds, I am really grateful that you found me and brought me at least digitally, to Brisbane.
It doesn’t look like I’ll be getting there any other way anytime soon!
Normally, inspection and contract management jobs tend to be low-drama affairs. Repair wood, paint wood, pick-up drop clothes, collect check. This summer though my inspection job has had as much drama as an episode General Hospital!
Managing a wood repair budget for a complex of 200 cedar homes can be a bit like Thanksgiving dinner: Sometimes you’re the pig. Other times, you’re the ham!
This has not been my year.
Budget constraints, concealed damage, a “complicated” board situation and a painting contractor struggling to meet some standards have all conspired and forced me to spend many more hours on this job than I normally would: a consultant’s nightmare!
For all of this year’s troubles I should still have the job wrapped by September 30th. But since this is 2020, that statement is strictly aspirational and I’m prepared for the worst.
The nearly hour-long drive to get to the job site from Stamford is not helping my mood any. When I took this job for the first time six-years ago, I lived 15-minutes away!
I even wonder if the job really is a struggle this year or is it just that the long commute is souring the spoiled brat who has gotten used to commuting from the bedroom to the kitchen?
At home, our pandemic-long episode of the Brady Bunch are starting to wind down. Having had enough of their respective parents, both Chris and Buck Wheat are leaving the house this week. And they’re both doing it in style, with some new wheels from their respective suckers.
I mean, parents!
When Chris moves into his new digs in rural eastern Connecticut on Saturday, he’s taking Guy’s car with him! A New York City resident since graduating college, Chris never had need for a car, creating this opportunity to steal his mother’s!
Before Chris can grab the car keys and a batch of his mother’s meatballs from the freezer, Buck will beat him to the door!
On Thursday she leaves for Austin, TX.
In the new car I leased myself to get me to my job in Montvale, after I sold my stores in October.
We had one car too many for a modern pandemic family and so ditching two cars definitely clears the driveway. But it left Guy a car short and so today my amazing fiancé bought me, I mean…the family… a new car.
And she’s got really nice taste in cars!
In my life I have had the experience of buying an expensive German car and giving to a significant other. And now I have had the experience of having my significant other buy one for me.
When it comes to German cars, it’s definitely better to receive!
I’ll have a new podcast for y’all on Thursday, though I have not decided which episode I’ll post yet. I have a few good ones “in the can” and hope to make two more episodes this week.
They’ll be my last ones in the kitchen!
When Chris finally gets the fuuu…..I mean….leaves on Saturday, his room becomes my office again, and I am planning some quick upgrades! I am getting rid of the bed, adding a couch which does not pull out into a sleeper and also adding a podcasting “studio.”
Think he’ll get the message?
