Behind the Scenes at “Less Dana”

Laughing is my favorite thing to do.  Amazingly I would rather laugh than eat and it is really hard to laugh and eat at the same time.  My college dog Beau, (Yes, I mean a real dog and not my beau in college who was a dog) Beau was a really smart mutt I got from the pound.  He was eternally grateful for being rescued and never forgot the feeling that he might not get another meal.

Beau used go and sit beside the person at the dinner table who was laughing the most in hopes of getting food that would fall out of their mouth while they were laughing…True Story.  I am not admitting here to having food fall out of my mouth while laughing, but in college it could have happened one or two times.

I guess I really should admit that making people laugh is my favorite thing to do.  If I could start over again I would try and be a stand up comic.  By the time I realized that I had too big a mortgage so I just tell stories at dinner parties instead.

Writing a blog is a frustrating form of comedy for me because I really like a live audience.  There is one form of feedback I get from this blog that brings me endless pleasure and now that I have completed 100 posts I thought I would share some of the funny stats with you.

Everyday I see how many times people have viewed the blog and exactly which posts they are reading.  I can tell when a new person has stumbled upon it because something like 30-40 different posts are read that day and not just the new one that I posted.  I take that as a good sign that they are laughing because they keep reading.

I also can see which countries people are in when they are reading the blog.  I have actual friends in America, Canada and the UK so those places are a given for readers, but here is a partial list of some of the other countries logging in: Australia, India, Italy, Spain, United Arab Emirates, Ireland, Pakistan, New Zealand, Cyprus, Turkey, France, South Africa, Latvia, Indonesia, Estonia, Bahrain, Israel, Egypt, and 22 others so far.

One might ask how in the world any of these random people find my little known blog?  Oh, the beauty of the Internet and the wonders of search terms.  I get a list each day of what search terms people have entered into Google or Yahoo that led them to my blog which they amazingly then clicked on.  Of course there are many variations on the words “Less” and “Dana” and “More” and “Good” – those searches were looking for me. My favorite of that variation was “Less Good, More Dana.”

But I am certain that all the people who typed into Google any of the following: “Underwear sizes 5 6 7”, “Ok to wear a padded bra TSA”, “If I wear a size 16 pants then what size underwear”, or “Panties less in street” were not looking to read my blog “The problem with underpants” or “Advice for dieting travelers” (both funny ones you might have missed.)

Then there are days when I see the search term “What you want independence from” and one of the countries listed that day was Bahrain or Pakistan.  I am feeling like the State Department might come after me for causing some international incident because my humor does not translate well.  In the case of these searches I am almost certain that those people who have been misdirected to my blog actually read it because I get the stats that show that someone in Bahrain viewed 9 or 10 different pages that day.

Here is my plea.  When reading this blog think of laughing first.  Please don’t be offended by anything you read here.  It is light hearted except for the information I give you every once in a while about the hungry people who need to be fed not just here in North Carolina, but all around the world.  Even though I always go for the joke, please don’t ever think I am glib about how much your reading my posts eventually will help raise money for the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina.

So to keep the theme of this blog going here is my diet tip for the day:  Laugh loud and often – you can’t eat while doing it.