"Where has the time all gone to...

...haven't done half the things we want to.  Ah, well, we'll catch up some other time."  (thanks, Bernstein/Comden/Green)

That song has been running through my head lately.  I love it and time is going by so quickly.  My nephew celebrated his fifteenth birthday last week!  I turned 51!  And I've been blogging for four years.  Wow.

Some days want to sort of blur together, with special diamond days popping up now and again.  Time to make more diamond days for myself, I think. 

I still check my blog stats obsessively, which is goofy, but I do.  Whenever a new country pops up into my feed, I go wild.  Moldova was an especial favorite lately.  Recently, I've twice had a 200+ hit day!  I don't know why those huge bumps happened, but they made me happy!  Over four years, I've posted 472 posts that have been looked at over 24, 600 times.  That's pretty heavy stuff in my mind.  Of course, I realize that REAL blogs get that many hits per milisecond, but I take my tiny victories where I can get them.  My top ten most popular posts list is pretty familiar, with just a few changes at the top:

• ABT - Sleeping Beauty, 7/7/11, 342 views
• Review - The Rascals, 5/1/13, 275 views
• ABT Fall Season - GUEST BLOGGER ALERT, 11/13/13, 262 views
• Post-Italy-trip-report thoughts, 5/12/12, 178 views
• ABT - Onegin plus a lovely curtain raiser, 6/5/12, 150 views
• Review - Ragtime concert, 2/20/13, 149 views
• Review - The Disappearance of Tom Durnin, 6/27/13, 141 views
• ABT - The Nutcracker, 12/20/13, 139 views
• Reviews - Golden Child and The Anarchist, 11/24/12, 138 views
• (tie) Review - Charlie Victor Romeo, 10/14/12, 125 views
• (tie) Reviews - Christmas Carol and Twelfth Night, 12/6/13, 125 views

What does any of that mean?  Who knows?  My ballet posts are still the most popular, so good thing I love going to ballet anytime anywhere!  There are some posts I thought might be more popular but aren't.  I was also looking at the posts with very few hits.  I have a few posts that only two or three people have ever looked at.  That's kinda sad.  I mean, I don't understand why my review of Queen of the Mist isnt' getting any love!  :)

There are topics I think about tackling, like the anti-vaccination movement or Common Core or breast cancer research issues, or the Man Who Ruined My Life.  I generally stop myself from posting about more provocative topics because I don't really want crazy mean people making comments all over my page.  I received a hateful Twitter message and it depressed me for days - why do people hide under a cloak of anonymity to be so mean to each other?  I don't get it.  So I guess I'll just stay in the small-stat-numbers racket and post about fairly innocuous stuff.  I prefer a quiet blog.  But more people reading my quiet blog wouldn't hurt...

"There's so much more embracing
Still to be done, but time is racing.
Oh well, we'll catch up
Some other time."