This is not a post for the weak of heart - or stomach! - I am going to say terrible and disgusting things!

You have been warned.

I like to eat. I’m not overweight, or a food snob, nor do I have a particular palate, but I do like food. That being said, I very nearly became a vegetarian today.

I was rooting through the cupboards looking for something more healthy than microwave popcorn for lunch when I decided on salmon. I’m a cretin, I used the tinned stuff in sandwiches because in addition to being a cretin, I am also lazy. Joe has taught me to leave in the little bit of skin and the bones that come in it as they are, respectively, a valuable source of grossness and calcium.

So there I am, mashing up salmon and skin and bone and glopping on the mayo when it hits me: I am mixing up a bowl of flesh and bone with mayo. Actual FLESH! and BONE!! with MAYO!!! I cannot find words for how disgusting this mix became to me. I looked at it, I wrinkled my nose at it and thought “What kind of barbarian eats mashed up fish flesh and bone? What sort of Neanderthal puts mayonnaise in that mix and calls it edible? What in the name of all that is good and delicious am I doing?”

Keep in mind that I have routinely disgusted roommates and boyfriends alike with my propensity for eating food while watching surgeries on TV: open heart surgeries, bowel resections, people having yard waste removed from their perforated intestines, live births (both caesarian and natural), liposuction, reconstructive plastic surgeries, autopsies etc.

I have also volunteered in the emergency room of a fairly large hospital where I saw actual things that would make other people throw up (and I saw a fair bit of throwing up too!) and I have a paramedic for a father.

I am no stranger to gross things.

Yet - today the thought of eating that salmon made me queasy. Me - of all people!

Of course, I am a practical person in many ways - I ate the sandwich anyway. No point in being wasteful after all, but I still feel a little sick. There is whole wheat bread and squashed up fish and mayo sliding around my insides.

It’s days like this where I’m glad I know how to make home-made ipecac.

As if I needed further proof that I am a total geek - I have just checked my stats for the third time today (and usually it’s more like six or seven times).

I’m not sure why I check them more than once a week. I think that some part of me expects that the readership of this site has somehow gone through the roof and also figures that the book offers should start rolling in any minute. So far, that hasn’t happened.

I have noticed though that my stats have dropped off a little. What should I do to raise them?

I could put in any number of keywords that have been popular searches on Google today - and most of those seem to be about the latest Bachelorette. Someone named DeAnna is going to pick her perfect man (Jeremy? Jesse? I have no idea, I don’t have cable).

I could write something just to get people riled up - even if I don’t believe it - and fill it full of expletives and random George Bush quotes.

I probably should be reading and commenting on more blogs than are on my blogroll list. I know people read other people’s comments and depending on how interesting that comment is, they’ll go look at the blog. After all, that’s how I got most of the people listed on my blogroll. I blog-hopped from one I knew to one I didn’t and I’ve found some absolute gems.

Perhaps I shouldn’t care at all about how many people come, but who comes to read. So far I’ve been lucky and there are a few regular readers who comment, who seem genuinely interested in what I have to say here. Those regulars are people on my blogroll generally - and I comment on their posts regularly because I find them interesting and if not for pesky geography we might all like hanging out and talking about the same stuff in person.

So, here it is, 9:30 p.m., the day before a statutory holiday (Happy Birthday Canada!) and instead of painting the town red, I watched Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium with Joe while eating grilled lamb and then wrote in my blog about my stats. This is the other reason I know I must be a geek (or I’m getting old faster than I thought) - I had a lot more fun watching the movie with Joe and rambling about my stats than getting into the liquor and random shenanigans.

The sneaky part is, I can now legitimately put in tags regarding things like The Bachelorette and George Bush because I did mention them (however briefly) - but I won’t. That somehow feels like cheating and it will annoy some poor reader really desperate to know who DeAnna chooses.

P.S.: I Googled The Bachelorette - and I say go for Jeremy. I have no idea what he’s like as a person, but he’s pretty nice to look at.