Did you know that WordPress lets you write a blog entry and then schedule it to publish later? That is what we did with this one. We are somewhere in the UK, having too much fun to blog.  So it is really just filler. But don’t let that turn you off – there is a lot of really great information in it, and probably a couple of good laughs. (And WK, we kept it under 900 words just for you; we know you have a hard time focusing on one thing for more than a few minutes – haha; oops, now at 911… I mean 915… crap!).

What gives us most pleasure from the blog?

For Lisa it is knowing that people hear about what we are doing. She likes to keep in touch with people. For Dan it is knowing that random people see pictures of feet with extra toes. See below…not for the toe pictures, because if you are reading this, you have probably already seen them, but an explanation of Dan’s glee.

What is the worst part of blogging?

For Dan it is having people read details of his life; he’s a bit more private than Lisa. He was, for example, a late joiner of Facebook and still has a hidden profile. For Lisa, it is knowing that some poor people inadvertently saw that photo of the Rocky Mountain House feet. Things that have been seen can never be unseen.

Do we know who is reading the blog?

You. Whoever you are. Many are family, friends, colleagues.  An average post gets 25-45 hits….hard to really know because WordPress gets a lot of wacky paid redirects, probably people actually looking for porn… But we can tell from the site stats that many readers come from Facebook. But then there are ones who inadvertently find it from Google. Some searches that have sent people to various pages are:

forestfires fortmac
what language is spoken in Wagga Wagga
was Barry Humphries born in Wagga Wagga
speak Australian
mountains Alberta
slow food advantage
lisa dan waga
lisa given wagga wagga
lisa given charles sturt

We assume that the last 3 were actually people looking for the blog, not just random hits. Dan gets great pleasure in knowing that that the ‘forestfires fortmac’ and the ‘mountains Alberta’ hits would have taken some poor web-surfer directly to a screen that showed way too many toes for one normal person.

The search term we find most odd is ‘waggaadventure’. It has come up a couple of times. We hope that it is someone who knows what they are looking for, but just Google it anyway, in the same way that people Google ‘Google’ and ‘Facebook’.

Recently though, we got hits from  “common spiders in Ontario” (1 hit) and “black house spiders Ontario” (2 hits!). We’re not sure what that is about; is there some sort of spider infestation in Ontario right now, something like the mouse takeover of the Riverina? And we’re curious to know what page those people got sent to.

Many people have asked who writes it. And many have also commented that they like certain parts obviously written by Dan, and other parts obviously written by Lisa (many love that she called him an asshole on the web!). So, who writes it?

We don’t actually remember; or, if we do… we won’t tell you. The binge and purge post only hinted at the amount of wine and whisky we had to drink, and it seems that each post coincides with a day when we decide to get rid of an extraordinary amount of booze. We do know that both herding cats posts were written by Ellie, but we’re not sure if she wrote others or not. Final vetting is done by Lisa before hitting the Publish button…it’s her name on the visa, after all. Maybe when we get to Wagga, one of us will try to learn Html to do a fancy two column version, so Dan can write one side and Lisa the other, sort of a “he said, she corrected” format.

What do the titles mean? And the category headings? Some of them don’t make sense.

Usually variations on common phrases, or pop culture references, some that make sense to a variety of people, some that only we get (Lisa edit: some only Dan gets, and I want to change but he whines too much). Herding cats, for instance, refers to a Superbowl commercial from a few years ago. Binge and purge… no, not about anorexia, but WK, KM, people who work with Dan will get it. The Alberta Advantage posts are from a provincial marketing slogan; there’s an Alberta disadvantage one in draft stage… There are some other obscure references: See ya later, buenos noches, good bye is a line from the Cheap Trick song Auf Wiedersehen.  Among my souvenirs is an old country song (Lisa edit: obviously Dan titled both of those). The categories assigned to each post are there to help people find them, and as many references to hairy panic as possible are needed (putting this in means we can use Hairy Panic as a category this time).  Ellie wants us to mention the cats in every post because she thinks she gets royalties. And the more obscure the categories, the better chance someone sees the multi-toed foot.

Who takes the photos? Some of them are good, but others are horrible.

Many of them we just steal off the web. Copyright is an outdated concept (Lisa edit: I abide by copyright rules; I take no responsibility for Dan’s illegal activities). Any photos of cats were probably taken by Lester. Dan has a Nikon D5000 with a remote, and a little Gorillapod tripod that puts the camera at cat level. Lester knows where Dan keeps these. We think the good photos were ones he composed and focused with his right eye; his left eye is a bit runny most days, so this results in some bad pics. We found a few of those to illustrate this post.

And sorry W…we’re now over words.

And sorry, we couldn’t think of any good photos for this post.