Official End of Year Report: It's Required...

I think it is a Blog-Law that you are supposed to write an end of year message, just so you can wrap things up into a nice package and people will feel like they have finished a chapter and tomorrow begins a new one. Who knows? Or maybe I'm supposed to wait until the 1st and provide a mission statement for what I expect will happen in the new year.

Regardless, if you are one of the handful (really, there can't be more than two or three of you who visit daily) that made up the 65,000 hits on this blog, I hope you found the restaurant reviews useful, the pictures of strange things we saw, strange, and my occasional meeting notes from the Homeowners Association meetings informative.

I confess, I have no real format for what content ends up here, though I'm pretty sure there are at least a few cardiologists and fitness experts sending patients to the blog for an example on how not to live.  In my defense, you really only see the unhealthy stuff; we actually eat 12 grain bread and lots of fruit and in spite of my girth, I seem to come up with pretty good blood work for the doctors.  Better living through chemistry, I suppose.

At the end of the day, we see about 120-150 hits on the blog, and close to 200 page views everyday.  Seriously, you people should get lives.  Of course, it is always fun to see what search words bring people from Google to SilverCreek78250, so I'll leave you with a few of those.

Everyone wants to know about Jennifer Broomes' boobs.  She is the petite weather lady on News 4 WOAI.  Well, they also want to know about Karen Grace' boobs.  She is the reporter and weekend anchor from KENS 5 TV.  They also like Kim Fischer from WOAI-TV but they don't ask about her boobs.

Lots of people come here for the first time because they share my view that the ending of the movie "No Country for Old Men" really sucked.  I'm still getting the occasional e-mail from people trying to make me understand!

This December, we saw a lot of people looking for Christmas Lights, though I confess, they were more interested in Windcrest lights, not so much Silver Creek lights.

And of course, people still can't get enough of the Texas A&M Aggie fan caught eating boogers on live TV at the Alamo Bowl.

And finally, many people stumble upon the page because they are hungry and want to know where to get some catfish, a good burger or some proper BBQ.

If you would like to see all the pictures of food (and who wouldn't?) that don't make it to the page when I talk about a particular restaurant, you are welcome to visit the official Flickr page here. Your mouth may just water.

Whatever it is that made you visit in 2008, Eva and I appreciate the time you took to gawk at our adventures and our lunches, and we hope that you have a wonderful and healthy 2009.  As always, I have a running list of small towns, good restaurants and strange places that we need to visit and tell others about.  I enjoy the many suggestions we get and hope you will tell me your suggestions.

And the Counter goes over 50,000...

Wow! 50,0000 hits on this goofy little Blog. Who would have thought a guy writing about lunch and neighborhood association meetings could draw such interest?

Oh I know, famous folks get 50,000 visitors in a day or a week. I'm just pleased that a small percentage of you seem to come back for more even after you know what it is I write about.

Thanks for visiting.

The Ads are Gone...

I'm not sure how many days ago it was - maybe last Friday - when I saw that goofy little feature on the Blogger Site suggesting that I put some advertisements on Silver Creek 78250.

Let me tell you, from the word go I've never written a word of this or gone through the process of resizing pictures of hamburgers and cars with holes cut into the hoods to make a buck. But I did think that if it wasn't costing me anything to have a few links at the top of the page, why not rake in a few thousand extra dollars a month, right?

The other day, I logged into the account out of curiosity. I looked at it and said, "Damn! I made 17 cents today!" But when I made the decision to pull the plug a few minutes ago, I went into the account to remove the code and looked closer at the numbers. Yea, that decimal will get you every time.

This less than a week worth of Internet entrepreneurship made me a whole one penny! That's right, $0.01.

And now I'll probably have to pay taxes on that.

Cell Phone Update: Chocolate Still Sucks...

You may recall me yammering on obnoxiously about my crappy cell phone, a Chocolate made by the fine people at LG. Well, I have an update to the situation.

One my many complaints was that the phone has a mind of its own and actually calls people randomly. Yes Mom, that call at 11:45PM from the 210 number, it was not me, but it was my phone. Sorry.

Anywhoo... My wife suggested that we zip by the Verizon store this afternoon so I could just get a new phone or maybe purchase a refurbished one. I had no intention of going in there and doing one of these deals where you get some sort of special deal and they sign you up for another decade.

I don't know about you, but I have the same mindset in a cell phone store that I do a car dealership; I'm not happy about being there and I know the end result is that I will be ripped off, even if I feel good about the whole transaction. And this time, things started off pretty much the same. The guy took my phone, handed me a receipt for it and said to come back in an hour because the technician was at lunch. So I stepped it up a bit and asked him to look up my account to see if maybe it was time for a new phone. He said no. Then I asked him if he sold refurbished phones. He said no.

So, I walk over to the display and while I start looking for a cheap flip phone, my wife continues to talk to the sales associate. I picked up a phone that looked cheap, rugged and lacking in any parts that would allow it to make calls on its own and said, "I'll just buy this one." And that's when my wife said, "He says your phone is under warranty."

Well then. I guess waiting an hour wouldn't be such a bad thing after all!

When we returned 45 minutes later the technician looked up from his workbench and said he was just going to replace my phone. I asked him if I could get a different model but he said that was a no-go. While he transferred all my crap from my over functioning Chocolate to a newly refurbished apparently still working Chocolate, I played around with a few of the other phones on display.

Oh, and in case you were wondering what SilverCreek78250 looks like on a fancy internet ready cell phone, here ya go.I was sure to add the page to as many as I could during the visit.