Monday 15 August 2011

Playing catch up........

Despite the fact that the sun is shining fit to bust this morning I have a distinct 'end of summer' feeling.  This is augmented by having the first Christmas charity catalogue drop though our letter box, not to mention the shops being full of 'back to school' stuff and spotting the first falling leaf yesterday.

Ho hum.
 
In addition, despite having had some of our summer holiday (more of which anon) I feel tired out physically, mentally and emotionally.  Not what I would expect after time away in our lovely little caravan.

However, we decided to cut short our holiday and come back 4 days early, because of an unfolding family crisis at home.  So rather than staying away, feeling worried, stressed out and useless, we packed up and headed back on Thursday.  Since then we've been on the go non-stop and I'm definitely feeling the effects, culminating in a marathon 12 hour sleep last night which has gone only some way to restoring my equilibrium after several days of being in energy deficit.

Therefore, today I will be easing gently back into the saddle, tackling a mountain of dirty laundry, a medium-sized hillock of post/emails, a small mound of orders and assorted other stuff all clamouring for my attention.

So, while I play catch-up, here's something to keep you occupied, should you feel inclined.

For a bit of relaxing displacement activity during a lull yesterday, I was looking through my ClustrMaps stats and decided to check from which American states I'd had blog readers.  If you click on the map it will take you to the stats, and on the right of your screen you'll find the countries listed, along with the number of visitors from each state/region/county for each country.

I have had had visits from people in 51 out of the 52 states.

Which state is missing?

No prizes for getting it right, just kudos aplenty.  I spent a good 15 minutes trying to work out the renegade state without success.  

Yes I know I could simply have Googled the answer but that would have been cheating, and completely outwith my ethos of displacement activity yesterday.
EDIT - I stand corrected!  That will teach me not to not Google.  I  had idly counted all the names in the ClustrMaps state list (leaving out the US forces overseas) and got 51 and from somewhere in the dim recesses of my memory dredged up the other 'missing' state as I was fairly sure there was an even number.  However there are still 51 names in the list so I'll change the challenge from find the missing one to which one is masquerading.


I'm off to stand in the corner for the rest of the evening wearing a humongous dunce's hat....

6 comments:

Tabitha Corsica said...

lovely chuckle...I can assume your joking, right? (I know our current POTUS seems to think there are 52 states but...) ANd I am afraid the map needs a bit of updating...I no longer consider our "in-state tuition" affordable.

Sandra Morris said...

Tabitha....

And here was me thinking that my Stateside chums would thank me for a bit of positive feedback.

Actually, it was one of very few reasonably positive 'map of sorts' I could find... almost all the rest concentrated on the less attractive aspects of the various states. I have no idea either how old the map is so it could be years and years out of date.

Seriously though, aren't there 52 states?

From my admittedly poor geographical grasp of your huge country, I assume I'm correct that you live in Florida?

Sx

Tabitha Corsica said...

hahaha... last I looked, our Flag had only 50 stars. Someone recently raised this issue of statehood for Puerto Rico but they seem to like their status just the way it is.

Sandra Morris said...

Thanks for putting me right Tabitha.

I'll put my dazzling lack of geographical insight down to being downright stoopid.

Sx

Richard said...

that's why 'the 51st state' is used to describe a candidate territory.

Tabitha Corsica said...

I only count 50 "titles" on the map pictured. Sometimes, the District of Columbia is considered separate from the rest of the states. That's Washington, DC...our capital. But it isn't a state. And as far as not knowing the number of our states, don't feel bad. Plenty of our citizens don't either. And I am quite sure I have abysmal knowledge of the UK.