January 1, 2007 Archives

Helaine has headed to bed. Steffie's upstairs, watching TV by herself. New Year's Eve has ended at the Fox house.

We were together at the stroke of midnight. Helaine and I kissed. She always gets choked up at New Year's. It's actually very sweet.

The three of us sat together and grazed the TV dial as the new year approached. Everyone station seems to be doing something special tonight.

Tony Orlando was performing in Atlantic City and it was live on Fox News Channel. Good lord - he's the size of two houses! He and the band looked like poster children for 'going through the motions.'

In his defense, how many times could you sing "Tie a Yellow Ribbon," before going postal?

On NBC, Carson Daly was holding down the fort. Years ago, he was very nice to Steffie. I, in turn, will be nice to Carson. He's very thin and I'm jealous.

MTV looked like a community access channel, albeit with good lighting. I have no idea who their acts were. I have less idea who their hosts were, except Steffie pointed to one and said, "That's Perez Hilton."

Oh, that's what he looks like.

On ABC, Dick Clark was supported by Ryan Seacrest. You can see Dick's mind is sharp, and he looks good, but it's still painful to hear him speak.

Approaching midnight, he had trouble keeping up with the countdown to the ball drop. He actually dropped a number to get back in sync.

He has to have worked hard to get back to where he is. The problem is with me. I need to be more understanding. This is my weakness.

New Year's Eve is a bittersweet night for Helaine and me. Most years we stayed at home, quietly spending the time together. One year, just after arriving in Connecticut, we went to a party and a former co-worker began to hit on my wife!

Our first New Year's Eve together, back in Buffalo, we went to a party at our friend Phil's apartment. Who knows why, but we had a fight. Neither of us remember the specifics. It was twenty four years ago tonight, and it was the closest we ever came to splitting up.

I like New Year's Eve at home better.

I'm a day late and a dollar short... but in case you haven't seen this yet, here's what happened in 2006 courtesy of the guys at Jib Jab!

Thank you so much for visiting my website in 2006. I would have forgotten to write this had Helaine not reminded me.

I enjoy writing. The blog helped me discover that. It has also made me a better writer and re-writer. Rewriting has been my biggest surprise, because that's when the entries really come together.

Still, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying quantifying your presence.

Here are some 'back of the envelope' calculations (really - I used an envelope). It looks like my daily traffic is up approximately 30% over last year. I must have posted a lot more multimedia files, because at the same time I'm using 40% more bandwidth.

In 2006 this site served over 118 gigabytes of stuff. That's ridiculous. It's more than you could fit on a couple dozen DVDs!

For a simple blog, this site does well. That people have found it is somewhat organic. As far as I know, it's only been mentioned once on TV, and that by an fill-in anchor who didn't realize she really shouldn't.

Some of my traffic comes from new readers of my home page. People come and go all the time.

Some traffic also comes simply because there is so much more indexed by the search engines. There are at least 500 pages on this site that weren't here a year ago and each has been seen by Google, Yahoo!, MSN and their brethern.

My home page has a Google page rank of 5. WTNH.com has a 6. The New Haven Register has a 4. Sorry Register.

I keep saying I'm going to move the blog from its current host, but the process seems so daunting, I just leave it where it is. It's also running out-of-date software.

Maybe this year? Probably not. I am very good at procrastination.

Thanks also to those of you who left comments. Often they are thought provoking. I never know whether to respond or not. If I've left you hanging, I apologize.

Geez - look at the time. Even I need to get to bed at some point.