Blog and Thanksgiving break analysis

I had to post some recent photos of Will and me at Vanderbilt football games. He loves the Dores like I do, hard as it can be sometimes. VU finished the season 5-7 with several near misses, including a 25-24 headscratching loss to UT last week.

So my friend Paige Clancy told me about Google Analytics last month, which slices and dices blog visitor activity in many ways. It's geeky, techy stuff, not my forte, but here's what I learned about my blog since I started tracking visitor activity Oct. 30:

- The blog has had 622 visits and 826 pageviews from 210 unique visitors in the first 27 days.
- Average time spent on the blog is one minute, two seconds.
- Traffic comes direct (52%), from referring sites like CaringBridge.org (33%) and search engines (15%).
- The peak number of visits occurred on Wednesday, Nov. 21 (79); the nadir was on Saturday, Nov. 10 (7).
- "Sunday's homily" was the No. 1 viewed post (109 visits so far), besides the main page.
- 44% of visits are from cable subscribers, 22% from DSL and 17% from T1. The rest are unknown or ISDN.
- Most of you browse with Internet Explorer (82%); Firefox (14%) and Safari (4%) are second and third.

Like I said, geeky. Useless? Sure. Fun? Yea, pretty much. That's Paige, my fun friend whose neighborhood blog is under Blogger Friends.

I also have linked the blog of Tammy Hart, who Dori met recently. A friend of a friend, Tammy is getting her bone marrow transplant very soon. She's a very good writer who has been through a lot this year. She seems to have the same kind of powerful attitude as Dori, and thankfully, the same kind of support group we have. You are in our prayers, Tammy. The kids and I prayed for you tonight.

What else do I know these days? I know stuffing still makes you sleepy and is a strong adherent. I know my itchy throat and watery eyes are automatic prompts for sleeping on the couch and getting reacquainted with the dog. I know watching Vanderbilt play football is more enjoyable when you bring your kids and their friends and focus on the hot chocolate and funnel cake, not the actual play on the field. Seriously, the Dores were down 31-3 in the third quarter and I was having a blast. Amazing what your wife's AML experience and happy kids will do for perspective. During the game, I actually turned around to a fellow VU fan, who started yelling angrily at a player who was having difficulty tackling. I said, simply, "He's hurt, you know." "Yea, I know," the guy acknowledged. Later, we learned about the young boy from Julia Green who died before the game in a tragic accident (he was hit by a taxicab). That's the ultimate perspective.

Dori will be at the clinic twice this week, on Monday and Thursday. She'll reach the halfway mark to Day 100 on Thursday. Christmas will be here soon, this year with our first artificial tree. Never a fan of the fake tree, we'll enjoy this year's version like the best real tree we ever had.