I Have No Life

Not only am I now blogging (I once thought this was a euphemism for not really writing), but I also have a MySpace page (something I signed up for after several martinis a year or so ago, and rediscovered this year after trying to sign up again while clear-headed only to discover my name and usual passwords were already being used). Yes, I am technically challenged enough that I momentarily suspected identity theft rather than an online blackout.


I've met (virtually) some fine people through blogging, responded to writing prompts and produced good work, and the much maligned MySpace has worked as it should. My MySpace profile has generated over four thousand hits on the site I created to promote my as yet unpublished first novel, The Sandoval Sisters .

Lately, I've been absorbed in signing up for endless blog promotion --- too many passwords, so little time --- and reading other blogs.

That's my excuse for writing today in response to Mo Rocca's blog, I'm Breaking Up With My Cleaning Lady.

My advice to him was to act quickly and decisively. As with el amor, it may all boil down to the same vacuum of loss, except that with your cleaning lady it's a vacuum of non-vacuuming.

Being the dumpee is never great.

Nothing worse than thinking about breaking up with your cleaning lady, getting more and more annoyed, noticing dust in places you've ignored for years, honing your passive-aggressive talents by leaving your towel on the bathroom floor, returning home to find it folded neatly on the towel bar and sniffing it to determine if she laundered it, sniffing it again and again . . . and then she dumps you!!!

Writing Tip: This is an example of creative nonfiction since I don't sniff towels, and I did get dumped

Damn you google images ---- I think

Spent untold hours today exploring the more obscure workings of Blogger, Myspace, and my very own website, www.sramosobriant.com. My host is godaddy.com, which I highly recommend for impatient and frugal users. The technical support people all sound like cheerful, all-American types (I think they're in Arizona).

I clicked on a button labeled user statistics and was whisked to a heretofore unexplored world of graphs and URL's indicating yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, and, yes, hourly hits on my website!
136,000 in a little over a year. How is this possible?

Turns out Google Images has indexed the photos on my site. If you type in moon and clouds, my photo comes up first. Over 3000 hits on that alone from the U.S. But there's also Google Images, UK and Spain and Denmark, and the whole rest of the world, including google in languages that look impossible to pronounce.

Furthermore, some of the URL's for specific websites are listed. For some reason, they came back to my site untold times to copy my images. I sent them messages asking them to credit me, but not sure I want links to vampirefreaks (they have a job board which was comforting, but I'd have to join to read it). Egyptian Goddess might be okay. Tikki used my picture as the background for his homepage on Myspace. He's nineteen and into hard rock, but he also wants to be a graphic designer. I sent him a friend request. He has 73. I only have 7.