Procrastination. And a Tale of Conflict Mitigation.

I have a final paper due on Tuesday so I’ve been procrastinating a lot lately.  One thing I stumbled on during my endless surfing of the Internet is the “stats” for this very blog.  As a reader of this blog, I thought you might be interested in these statistics so as a way to further procrastinate I will outline a couple of the more interesting numbers.

• 1,723: Total pageviews.  This number is probably skewed, however, because I just found out how to not track my own pageviews.  So the total should probably be halved.
• 639: Pageviews during my busiest month, August.  It only went down slightly to 617 in September, but then plummeted to 384 in October.
• 44: Number of referrals I have gotten from Edacious Eatings.  "Have gotten" must be terrible English.
• 26: Number of pageviews from South Korea, the most of any country besides Australia and the United States.  Russia is catching up, though, with 13 in the last month (24 all time).
• 104: Views of my most clicked-on post, “My First Blog Post. Ever.”  In second with 63 views is my first post about Australian Rules Football.  Looks like I peaked early.

Alright I should get back to writing.  My parents arrive in Melbourne on Tuesday, so I have to get a lot of work done before they get here.  I just signed up for Google Ads too, so when those go online feel free to click on a couple.  But don’t tell anyone I said that.

The story of the Gravy Fiasco is after the jump...

But I might as well tell a quick story here.  Last week a fellow American exchange student’s twin sister arrived here to visit her sibling.  At dinner the day she arrived I was sitting next to her but then I got up for seconds.  When I came back with my plate of chicken potpie there was someone sitting in my seat.  While I stood behind the seat deliberating where to sit, I unknowingly tipped my plate forward.  This action was regrettable because 1. The chicken potpie was particularly runny that week and 2. I had a plate and not a bowl.  Yep, I dribbled chicken potpie gravy all over the back of the twin’s sweater.  Not just in one place, but pretty evenly all over her back.

When I realized this had happened naturally I just stared at it for a few long seconds.  But then I had to make a split-second decision: to tell or not to tell.  I kept my mouth shut and quickly took a seat on the other side of the table.  I figured it would have created a scene if I had grabbed a bunch of napkins and started to rub down her back, and neither she nor I would have wanted that.  Too much of a shock for her first few hours in Australia.  There was also an outside chance that the gravy would dry up and no one would notice.  That turned out to be wishful thinking.

About ten minutes after dinner I got the text “Jared! Why didn’t you say anything? You spilled gravy. Gr.”  To which I quickly replied, “It was Kai” (an Australian friend of ours).  It turned out to be okay, though, because before the incident the twin and I had connected over our appreciation for alternative music.  One of the first things she asked me was if I knew the group Matt & Kim.  She was delighted that I did know them.  Actually, I had just started listening to them after watching this commercial that aired during a football game earlier in the week.  Thank you Mars Bar.  Because of you I am still friends with Abby and her twin sister, Becky.

New Mars Bar Ad featuring Matt & Kim's "Daylight" from POPFRENZY HQ on Vimeo.