BARRY, STAPLERS AND EAR HORNS...OH, MY!

Home Stretch visitors are an interesting lot.

They mostly hail from the United States, are stuck in the 70s musically, hate their jobs and are hard of hearing.

That's how I'm interpreting my blog stats, anyway.

Yes, as The Home Stretch approaches its sixth birthday next week (July 15), I thought it might be fun to take a close look at just where my 26,730 (at post time) visitors have come from, what search engine sent them here, and what they were actually searching for when they arrived.

I mean, as much as I'd love to believe that The Home Stretch has become a household word among blog readers around the world over the past six years, I am cyber savvy enough to realize that, save for my closest friends and family members who regularly read my stuff either because they choose to or because I brow beat them into it, most folks wind up here purely by accident.

And by accident, I mean, for example, the poor schlep (and poor speller, I might add) who a few years back apparently typed "how far does the vergina streetch" into his search engine bar, and wound up (sorely disappointed, I imagine) at my blog post about my love of dancing titled "Waltzing Virginia".

Yup. Search keywords pretty much serve as the serendipitous finger of fate in deciding who ends up at one's blog front door. And it's the number of pageviews, they say, that determines a blog post's popularity.

Hence, a quick lookie loo at my blog stats show the top three search keywords for The Home Stretch since July 15, 2006 are as follows:

Barry Manilow (646)

Office Space stapler (305)

ear horn (227) Ergo, my earlier conclusion that Home Stretch visitors are stuck in the 70s musically (Barry), hate their jobs (Office Space, the hilarious 1999 comedy film satirizing work life at a software company, including one very disgruntled, albeit meek and  fixated collator who constantly mumbles to himself mainly about his co-workers borrowing his fave red Swingline stapler), and are hearing impaired (ear horn, the antique hearing aid). Which would explain why the following three posts, of the 420 published, are included in the Top 10 pageviews (out of a total of 33,485) since I started this cyber penning gig: WILL SING FOR BARRY MANILOW TICKETS   2,405 pageviews Apr 4, 2012 WHO MOVED MY STAPLER?   1,601 pageviews Feb 19, 2011 NOW IS THE WINTER OF OUR DISCOTHEQUE  521 pageviews Jan 31, 2009 Curious aside:  Not a week has passed since I wrote about winning those Barry Manilow tickets that someone, or a couple of someones, from the USA or abroad, doesn't end up at The Homestretch  by searching for "what to wear to a Barry Manilow concert". Apparently I wasn't the only Fanilow (diehard Manilow fan) who was concerned about making the correct fashion statement when swooning to Weekend In New England. Who knew? Some others included in the Top 10: SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY      333 pageviews Feb 23, 2011 DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DID    279 pageviews Jan 23, 2011 WHO LET THE WORMS OUT? UH UH OH   (written by John, actually) 269 pageviews Mar 23, 2012 But the most fascinating aspect of this whole blogging pastime is that people from all over the United States and the rest of the world have stopped by The Home Stretch, based here in little Coon Rapids, IA. And the top 10 countries for pageviews are:  United States  21,024 United Kingdom 2,356 Canada 1,298 Spain 811 Australia 796 Netherlands 445 Germany 398 India 314 Russia 250 Brazil  211 Well, it's getting late, and if I don't want a bad case of blogger eye Sunday morning, I better go to sleep. But before I close, just want to offer my heartfelt thanks to all those who have shared my blogging journey at some point during the past six years. No matter how or why you arrived at The Home Stretch, or how long you stayed, just so glad you came by. Hugs, Annie