Thank You, Readers!

As I have mentioned before, this little blog is not like the big boys. I don't get hundreds of thousands of visitors each day. I have gotten nearly 500,000- spread out over almost 6 years. You are currently reading a proverbial little fish in the blog pond! And yet somehow the number of readers we do attract here continues to surprise me. July has been a good great PHENOMENAL month so far. Over the years my most read posts have occasionally drawn 500 visits in a 48 hours period, an event which in my mind qualifies a post as Certified Gold. In the very best of times there have been two or three of those in a month. The normal visitor count is more like 275. In June we had a record month and there were 11 that hit 500, including 6 in one week. So far in July, fueled by my popular (and often commented on) countdown of songs from The Beach Boys...well, let's allow the posts and the numbers to speak for themselves. Here are the 48 hour totals for my July top 7...and it's only the 18th. Links are included in case you missed any of them.

1. 10 Things I DON'T Miss About Youth Ministry (593 views)
2. Do We Really Believe in Grace? (572)
3. Celebrating THE Great American Band (559)
4. My Beach Boys Countdown: 55-45 (547)
5. My Beach Boys Countdown: 44-34 (521)
6. Saturday Shout Outs! (506)
7. Fun With Flags (504)

#1 and #3 have both passed the 1000 view landmark at this point, with THE Great American Band becoming top 5 all-time. Several others have approached the magical 500 plateau, making this already one of my best months ever, and I am pumped!!! The analytics on my blog allow to me to see from which states and countries people visit, and what link they clicked (Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.) to find us here. What they cannot tell me is WHO is stopping by! I know there are new people reading the Beach Boys posts, because they are leaving comments. I sometimes know when Facebook friends are reading because they comment there or *like* the links we post. Ditto for Twitter, just with *favorites* and retweets. This modest effort of a blog began in 2009 in the hopes that old friends and former youth might enjoy hearing some of my old stories. It has become much more than that, especially to me, and I confess I do love to discover who my readers are. It is my mission now to inspire, entertain and occasionally even educate through my writing here. This month has revitalized me, and I look forward with great anticipation to what lies ahead.

Why do I say all of this today? It's my typically long-winded way of saying "THANK YOU!" to every person who has taken time to read one of my posts. You have blessed me in ways you cannot know. Enjoy you weekend, and live life with passion and gusto. Love you guys!

"Enjoy Every Sandwich"