Day: December 28, 2019

Under the Knife

Fandango54 Comments

10A3A3A9-2E71-41EA-81E5-D150CB66CBE4It’s been about two months since I was last able to hear properly out of my left ear. I have some sort of growth, called a cholesteatoma — fortunately noncancerous — in my middle ear and I’m having surgery on Monday to remove the growth, which should, if successful, restore my hearing.

But I have to tell you that I’m having mixed feelings about undergoing the surgery. It’s supposed to be microsurgery, where the surgeon goes in through my ear canal, cuts a flap in my eardrum, and then removes the growth that is behind the eardrum. Two hours, easy peasy, right?

Well, theoretically, yes. But if, for some reason, he can’t get to and remove the growth completely, then he’s going to have to drill into my skull, and get to the growth through my inner ear, which could take hours longer and is a much more complex surgical procedure with significantly higher risks.

I’m fully registered with the surgical center and I’m looking forward to having the surgery done. But, at the same time, I’m worried about the possibility that something might go haywire. I completed my advance directive and have updated my will, just in case the wheels come off the bus.

I will probably be taking a bit of a hiatus from my blog after tomorrow. I have scheduled my FOWC with Fandango one-word prompts through a week from Sunday. But I won’t be able to read and respond to your comments after tomorrow or to read your posts probably until the end of next week.

So I’m about to go on a challenging journey, and I hope that shortly after the first of the new year, I’ll be back here singing the same, old song.

See you when I get back!

Written for these daily prompts: Ragtag Daily Prompt (mixed feelings), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (theoretical), The Daily Spur (register), word of the Day Challenge (hiatus), Your Daily Word Prompt (journey), and Daily Addictions (song).

SoCS — The Year in Review

Fandango17 Comments

B6DE1368-B4DA-43CC-9E2C-752AF907A35ALinda G. Hill gave us the word “year” for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt. Even though, including today, there are still four days left to this year, I decided to take this opportunity to offer up my top 10 posts of 2019. I’m doing this now because I’ve got surgery scheduled for Monday, December 30th and I don’t know, assuming I survive the surgery, when I’ll be recuperated enough to get back to my blog.

But, surgery aside, this list is not a qualitative one. It’s strictly quantitative, listing my 10 posts that received the most views in 2019, exclusive of any of my prompt posts (e.g., FOWC with Fandango). So here we go with the top 10:

#1. Remember last summer when a website called Tygpress was harvesting our posts and, without our permission, was publishing them on its own site? Well, my post, Tygpress.com, garnered 669 views this year.

#2. I guess a lot of people wanted to know more about Fandango because my Who Am I page got 566 views.

#3. When I created a badge for people to put on their posts so it would show up on posts harvested by Tygpress, my Feel Free to Use This Badge post was viewed 547 times.

#4. My post, Thoughts and Prayers My Ass, was a screed about mass shootings in the U.S. and how having politicians sending out their thoughts and prayers while refusing to enact common sense gun laws is totally useless. That post received 333 views.

#5. Another post related to mass shootings was Do People Really Believe This Shit? This post was about a state senator in Ohio who blamed the breakdown of the traditional American family, recreational marijuana, homosexual marriage, drag queen advocates, violent video games, open borders, kneeling athletes, and ignoring the importance of God and the church for gun violence in America. 244 people read it.

#6. Donald Trump, in a tweet, accused two freshman U.S. congressional representatives, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, of hating Israel and all Jewish people. 239 people read my post They Hate All Jews.

#7. This post, We Did It! — Maybe, was yet another post about Tygpress, but this was one to announce that our efforts to stop that site from harvesting the posts of WordPress bloggers had paid off when Tygpress shut down its site. Yay! The post received 196 views.

#8. Remember when WordPress used to have its daily word prompts? Well, my post, Snidely Whiplash, which was originally posted in 2018 but got more views (187) this year than in 2018, was written in response to the prompt word “cur.”

#9. A few of the on-air personalities at Fox News reported that liberals “want to change the name Thanksgiving. They don’t want to use the term Thanksgiving.” So of course when Donald Trump, who always watches Fox News, saw the story, he started tweeting about this bogus assertion. 166 people wanted to learn more about this so-called War on Thanksgiving.

#10. In my post WTF Blogger? I complained (or some might say whined) about the fact that I was unable to “like” the posts of Blogger bloggers who read, liked, and/or commented on my posts on WordPress. I also pointed out how difficult, if not impossible, it was for a non-Blogger blogger (i.e., a WordPress blogger), to leave a comment on a Blogger blogger’s posts. This post received 160 views.

There you have it: Fandango’s 10 most viewed posts in 2019 through midnight last night.

How about all of you? I’d love to learn about your 10 most popular posts for this year. Publish your own top 10 list and link back to this post.

FOWC with Fandango — Theoretical

Fandango21 Comments

FOWCWelcome to December 28, 2019 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.

I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (US).

Today’s word is “theoretical.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. You will marvel at their creativity.