there's a blog candy in this one...you just gotta dig deep for it

Hello. How are you? As I type this, if you are an American, you are likely asleep. It is 12:50 in the morning and I can not sleep.

3 hours ago, I was asleep, in my car, on my trip back from viewing the lovely LDS temple lights for the Christmas season. It is important to state at this time that I was not driving. ;) We love doing that a couple of times each holiday season--bundling all up and heading to the temple, walking around the grounds and taking pics of beautiful Christmas lights. And 3 hours ago, I was comfy and warm and rocked to sleep in my Honda Odyssey.

And then we got home, got the kids ready for bed, read scripture and said prayer (24 days straight towards our latest goal of 60 straight days, yay!), read some email, got ready for some catch up on Grey's Anatomy from Thursday night (holy cow, did you watch?? Did anyone else scream at the end?? And to be continued in two weeks are you kidding me?) and here is my big blunder: I made some homemade cocoa--a lot of it. And not only did I down my 2 servings, but I had one of Danny's. So there I lay with a pulse near 90 for the past 2 hours, tossing, turning, thinking, and tossing some more as I feel my pulse pound thru my body. I'm experiencing what can only be known as a cocoa/caffeine buzz from too much chocolate. This must be what coffee drinkers feel like in the morning. As the night goes on, I'm actually feeling quite nauseous and regretting my decision, but what's done is done and all we can do is learn and move on.

And I find myself blogging in my head. Anyone else do that? Yeah...it's a blogger's curse. Especially during NaBloPoMo which I have found that I'm increasingly ever so annoyed that I missed day 1 making this entire thing fruitless and pointless and altogether disappointing. No, that's not true. I'm still enjoying it. And forcing you all to enjoy it with me as well.

OK, so anyway, the point of my post this fine early Sunday morning is to mention/ask three things.

1) I have made this current template and html page from scratch...sorta. It is not a fill-in-the-blank page. I entered all the code. And on my machine, on my browser, it looks perfect. A bit simple and plain, but it works. But I know it looks a little different on Internet Explorer and could possibly look much different-er on another browser. So if you wouldn't mind, would you comment and mention to me if this layout looks ok, do all the lines match, is it proportioned correctly, etc? Do you get what I'm asking here? Does it look like a four year old put it together or does it work fer ya?

2) Have you noticed my Top 50 Scrapbooking Blogs Record!? (down on the bottom left of my page) I just made the bottom 100! 99 in fact as of this moment! For you unaware, there is a site you can join that keeps track of your visits and compares them to others in certain categories. The more hits you get, the closer your number moves to the #1 spot in comparison to others. I have fun lookin' at that number every day...it appears to be steadily dropping. Now to be fair, there are only something like 375 people enrolled. So I'm sure many of you out there, scrappers and the like, could soar over/under me if you just entered your info on your site. Try it, it's kinda fun.

and number 3 for the night) almost 20,000 hits?? Are you kidding me? I started this blog just over a year ago in Oct 06. How fun that I've made friends from all over the country and world. In the last 24 hours I've gotten hits from: Melborne, Ipswitch, Sweden, Sydney, India, and Puerto Rico. So neat to see hits from so many countries, and so many from the US that I see regularly popping up and still have no idea who you are! (Boise, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Texas, introduce yourselves!) Lovin' it.

So, I think I need to do some blog candy! (told ya it was in here...I'm a rambler. Just like Kenny Rogers. No wait--that's gambler...anyway...) It's several days from now, but when I hit 20,000 I'll do a random draw from all the comments to this post and the winner will receive a $20 gift certificate to my favorite restaurant Red Robin. I don't know if these are international, and if they're not and you as the winner are not from the US of A, you can pick a store or chain that works better for you. OK? So ready set, go! Good luck and thanks for all the comments, visits, and newly made friendships. Keep visiting!