777

With very little thought I hit the publish button on that last post.  Then the posts total refreshed and was highlighted on the side of my screen.  It came up "777".

I don't typically pay attention to that-but this one seemed significant.  OK-first of all, seriously, 777 posts?  That seems nuts.  A friend recently pointed out that I must not have enough to do since my posts keep popping up on Facebook.  That may be true.  Fact is, I ramped up my posts over the last two months by pulling short essays out of my book in the making "Life Inventory".  That was the case for the last post, which honestly seemed pretty lack-luster given its number of high perfection.

I love numbers, but I hate math.  I don't know if that's anything like the former youtube sensation "Why I love Jesus, but hate the church".  It may be close.  I suppose this is fed by my business background and the interest I have in social and cultural data.  I love statistics.  I was absolutely fascinated by many of the stats in a book entitled "Unchristian", which dealt with how people outside the church view the church.  Very revealing.

I love to crunch numbers.  I actually enjoy doing my taxes.  When I hear about other communities in the state my mind immediately goes to research that I conducted on a number of different topics that compared how River City stacked up to our neighbors of equal size for employment, police force, income, rental vs. home ownership rates, emergency warning systems, and population make-up.

So naturally, when I stumbled on the stats data for this blog I began to check on most popular posts, audience distribution, and page view numbers.  Page views began a significant climb in September from an average of 1,000 or less page views each month to almost 2,000.  That then doubled in October to over 4,000....which became my "blogger cliff".  The number has fallen back off to about 2,500 in December.  I have no idea why the numbers have shot up, though one story posted in late summer has now become the most viewed post "UFO-unidentified flying owl"; it took away the position of number one from "The Creeper".  Strangely, both are about birds.  The all-time number of page views since I started in July of 2007 is over 46,000.  That's amazing to me, but obviously small potatoes to most die-hard bloggers.

Another milestone involving a 7 that I fell into recently was discovered when I was adding to the inventory of National Register nominations that I have written.  On New Year's Day I was working through that inventory and the total reached 69.  A few days ago I was hired to do my 70th nomination.....and it will be the first one outside the borders of Indiana.  I'll write more on that later, but in that line of work....it's a heck of a big number.

I enjoy writing, regardless of the numbers.  But sometimes it's good to take an inventory to realize how far you've come, particularly in the beginning of a New Year.  I'm not sure why I didn't highlight the 666th post though.  That could have been interesting.

Speaking of 7's........I predict Notre Dame by a touchdown tonight.  A seven point win on 1-7.  Perfect.  Go Irish!