It’s the end of the month!

Do you know what that means?

That means that this is officially the last stupid post you will read this month!

Yay!

That means, for the rest of the month (which is the next 45 minutes), you won’t have to read another meaningless, nonsensical, something something something post after this one.

So, go ahead and jump up from your chair and shout “Yay!”

Go ahead. Do it. It’ll be funny. C’mon. You know you want to. Just jump up, smile broadly and shout “YAY!” at the top of your lungs. Go on. Do it. DO IT. DOOOOO IIIIIIIITTTTTTTT.

Mind you, if your neighbors complain and you get kicked out of your apartment or condo or some other bad thing befalls you, don’t blame me. You should know better.

If you choose to believe Wikipedia, toodles is a more casual form of “toodle-oo” which is the Anglicized version of the French à tout à l’heure which means goodbye. Among other meanings too.

I’m thinking I prefer to think of a toodle as a cross between a toad and a poodle.

It’s like a furry dog that jumps a lot.

Which isn’t completely unlike the regular kind of furry dog which also likes to jump a lot even though it doesn’t have toad DNA.

But, hopping poodles sounds like fun.

Just so long as they are not in your yard because, if a toodle the size of a normal poodle can hop the proportionate amount as compared to a toad for its weight and size, then those hopping poodles could be leaving gifts virtually anywhere. You really don’t want to be walking outside your front door when your toodle is up on the roof, answering the call of Mother Nature.

Yes, it’s another exciting day where I’ve got nothin’!

Actually, I had a strange dream last night, but no one really cares about hearing stuff like that, so I won’t bother.

Okay, maybe just a little bit because I’ve got nothin’…

First, the odd thing about the dream is that it had absolutely nothing to do with anything that’s happened in real life or on TV lately. Nothing. The people in the dream were either people I did not know or people I haven’t seen lately either. Sometimes, you’ll see something on TV or something in real life happens, and you’ll have a dream that’s related to one or the other or maybe it’s a weird stepchild of both, but this was none of those things. Just thought I’d explain that first.

Anyway, so there was this guy who had apparently been mean to this other guy in school. And, I guess this girl (who was a celebrity but I don’t know if she was herself or if she was a character) was trying to get the guy to make up for it. But then this guy drags the other guy up on stage in front of a crowd of people (stage performance? high school reunion? no idea) and embarrasses the other guy–the one he had been mean to–royally. So, that guy takes off, upset, probably suicidal and the girl is lying on the floor. She’s either passed out or in shock or something.

Meanwhile this guy (the mean guy, or maybe another guy entirely) had apparently had an affair with a teacher when he was in school. He had been overweight in school and his teacher was apparently hot or something, and they hooked up anyway. Well, now he was all fit and looking forward to seeing his teacher, but now she was obese, and he was very upset at that.

So, anyway, that led to this other scene where some other guy and girl were deciding to go out together in spite of appearances or something, but that scene didn’t last long.

And that led to this other scene where another celebrity actress (herself) was in my backyard doing something. She had papers all over the ground and was treating the ground like a desk or something. And there was this guy(?) bothering her on the telephone. I think he was trying to sell her something. Finally, she got rid of the guy by telling him her husband handles that, whatever that was.

Well, then I was talking to her, and she had a rubber stamp and it was missing a handle. Since I make rubber stamps, I could fix that for her. She thought that was great because she loved rubber stamps. So then I was going to give her my business card, but I was looking for the good business card because, she being a celebrity, I wanted her to have the classier card. (Although I only have one in real life, except for a non-stamp related business where I really do have two different types.)

Anyway, so then I was trying to fix her stamp by attaching a handle, but I drilled the hole in the base of the stamp too large for the handle’s peg, but I figured I could fix it.

But then I woke up.

So much for the upswing in traffic.

The giant whooooooshing sound you here is my blog’s traffic going down the toilet.

And I thought the Klondike bar post was rather inspired.

Where was I? I stepped away in another tab and left a comment on JD’s blog. Thankfully, she dumped Disqus so it’s easier to leave a comment on her blog, unlike some other people that still live in the Dark Ages of Blogging with that dreaded pain in the royal neck.

But I digress…

And I’ve run out of things to say, so I’ll just stop now.

Can’t answer that question because no one’s offering me a Klondike bar.

If someone was, this post might actually be interesting.

Why aren’t Klondike bars shaped like bears? Then you could have a Klondike bear bar. Of course, the bear would be naked, so it could be the Klondike bare bear bar.

And, if Bayer bought Klondike, you could have a Bayer bare bear bar.

But that probably wouldn’t happen.

But maybe Klondike could team up with Baer Paint to have a special line of Klondike bars. They could use white chocolate and color them to simulate different Baer Paint colors, then you could have a Klondike Baer bare bear bar. How fun would that be?

It’s fun to say, no?

What would you do for a Klondike Baer bare bear bar?

Probably won’t happen though. What are the odds of a paint company teaming up with a food company? People would worry about whether their bare bear bars were colored with food coloring or paint.

At any rate, they could still do the Klondike bare bear bar. Maybe make a big deal out of it. The Klondike BBB. Bigger, better, bearer.

They could do a beer flavored bar: The Klondike bare bear beer bar. Probably wouldn’t go over well with parents, but adults can have a treat too, no? Why not an adults-only Klondike bare bear beer bar? The grocery stores can check IDs.

Anyway, that’ll probably never happen anyway.

But, I can still hope for a Klondike bare bear bar. How about you?

What would you do for a Klondike bare bear bar?

No ideas. Nothing.

So, how about this be another one of those posts where the impetus is on you to imagine that this is a great post?

Start by LOL’ing right now, especially if there are other people nearby who would hear you. That would go a long way toward building the illusion that this post is actually entertaining.

Now, pause for a moment and giggle.

Giggle again.

Good. You’re really getting the hang of this.

Now, get off your chair and start ROTFLYAO. That will really sell it.

Just don’t let them read this post. That’ll ruin the whole thing you’ve just set up. It’ll be better this way. That way, they know you just read something great, but they’ll never be able to disprove it. If you let them see this post, well, the whole thing’s off.

And that’s no fun.

Of course, if you’re home alone, you can still do all the above. Just make sure you’re near a window so your neighbors can see you. They’ll just know you’ve read something great, and their curiosity will be aroused, yet you won’t need to worry about closing your browser so they won’t see this post. Makes things easier on you.

On the other hand, they may just think you’re nuts. But, if you’re the type of person who does the kind of stuff above already, well, I hate to break it to you, but your neighbors watching you through the window already believe you’re nuts. It’s why they don’t invite you to the block parties. Or they do but they all snicker behind your back.

In any event, if you do the above, no harm, no foul. Just don’t hurt yourself. I accept no liability if doing any of the above causes you any harm or problems.

You should know better.

Well, June’s traffic numbers have finally beat last June’s traffic numbers. So, the rest of the month will just be gravy. Not liking the curve, though. Last June, traffic picked up towards the end of the month and led to a July that just slightly beat out June’s traffic. This June, traffic appears to be sliding towards the end of the month, so things aren’t looking optimistic for July if that trend continues.

I almost feel like I’m making stock predictions here… In which case, buy low, sell high.

Anyway, I’ll have to keep not posting pictures, as, while traffic for the month is still down overall, traffic has been slowly but steadily increasing since I last posted a picture last week. So, maybe if I hold off on posting any pictures, traffic will reach high levels again.

Could be coincidence, of course, but it’d be a really weird coincidence. The two days I posted images last week experienced noticeable drops in traffic from the day before.

I call that a weird coincidence.

A really weird coincidence.

What? So soon? I just did one yesterday, you say?

Too bad.

Anyway, on the site relaunch I’ve mentioned, I think I am done with all the design and graphics work. At least, I have crossed off everything on the list of things to do. I can’t think of anything else at the moment, so I am tentatively finished.

Next, I have to work on content before I can get going with the relaunch. As I think I mentioned, I have two “core” pages to rewrite. One is going to be rewritten now and rewritten again later, as not all the features I am planning will be available upon the relaunch. They will be added later, and the page will need to be rewritten to reflect that. So, that’s one page I won’t entirely be able to scratch off the list for a while.

On the upside, I will be able to post photos. So, you’ll get to see pretty pictures again. Not that boosts traffic, of course. But, it makes it look all purty and stuff.

So, there you go. And now it’s time for me to go to bed so I can start fresh tomorrow…

Remember when I used to do progress updates? Well, I haven’t done one in a really, really long time. The last numbered progress update was “Progress Update XII“.

There have been some unnumbered updates since then, but I don’t feel like trying to make heads or tails of them and counting them up, so we’ll just call this one #13.

I’d update things, but I don’t have any idea where I left off and the three things mentioned in Progress Update XII don’t seem to match with the things mentioned in “Progress Update XI.”

According to Progress Update XI, I had three goals to complete:

1. Put the photo on the eCommerce site.
2. Setup printer/scanner.
3. Do some work on the redesign for my flagship website.

Let’s assume I did #1 because I don’t remember what photo I was blogging about. I know I’ve added photos to the eCommerce site since then, so it’s a safe assumption that I did upload whatever photo I was talking about. I do have another photo to put on the site, but that was taken long after that blog post, so it cannot be the one to which I was referring.

As for #2, I know I did that because the scanner is to my left. The printer doesn’t work that well anymore. I used it so infrequently, I guess the ink dried in the wrong places and, no matter how much I run it through a cleaning cycle, it just does not print well. At any rate, it is setup.

As for #3, hey, I finally finished it. That’s what I mentioned in yesterday’s post. It has been a long time coming, but, as you may recall, I decided to take things one step at a time. First, I finished my eBook, which took a lot longer than expected. Then, I finished (mostly) my SciFi site. Still have odds and ends to do on that. After that, I’ve been tackling my flagship site.

Yesterday, I wrapped up the graphics work on it. Technically, the design part is finished. Still, I have this nagging feeling that I am forgetting something.

I still have the update to do for my eCommerce site. Yeah, that’s been a long time too. The thing is, however, I used code from the flagship site on the eCommerce site, for which I also used code on the SciFi site. From the SciFi site, I made changes to the code on the flagship site. From there, I will make changes to the eCommerce site. There’s a fair amount of sharing among the sites. Initially, all three of them shared a common look and feel and, once finished, they will once again. So, it’s a nice symmetry.

Plus, along the way, I’ve figured out different (and often better) ways of doing different things, as well as added additional features, so I keep spreading things around. And, that just reminded me of something I needed to implement on the current site I’m working on… This might be that thing I was feeling I was forgetting…

Anyway, moving on to Progress Update XII…

The first item… Well, as you know, I took down Retroyears a while back. So, I guess I kind of undid that item… But, Michelle need not celebrate much longer…

The second item… I have no idea what I was working on there.

The third item… Again, no idea what website that was.

So, there you go. Another boring update. Maybe I’ll wait another two years before doing the next one…

Well, I didn’t make it.

On Thursday, I mentioned that I will probably match or overtake last June’s traffic numbers in another three days.

Well, those three days have passed, and I’m just under 200 short of matching last June’s traffic.

Must be the pictures.

Oh well. Unless the bottom really falls out, this June should still beat out last June’s traffic numbers.

Anyway…

In between working on projects for clients, I have been working on one of my own websites. I am revamping and relaunching one of my “flagship” websites, which I have neglected for far too long.

As far as the design goes, I am essentially down to odds and ends. I have assorted images to finish, and then the design and graphics work will be done.

As far as content goes, well, I have odds and ends there too. Plus, I need to rewrite two “core” pages. After that, I will have to prepare a whole bunch of new content for the site.

Once that site is ready to go, I have two blogs that I will shut down and redirect to the site. I also have a website that will be shut down and redirected to the site as well. I may do the same with another website, but I haven’t decided on that one yet.

So, anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to.