Sometime this afternoon, the hit meter here on my blog passed 1,000. It's that little green number over underneath the Archives links. You can click on it for details of who's been on my site.

You'll notice, of course, that at this time last week, the site meter read around 450. It's increased because of a link from my friend Jeremy, who has a big readership on his blog and kindly sent them my way.

Up until Jeremy's link last week, the only people who really knew about this blog were my family and friends, and I'm grateful for those who have decided to take advantage of what I'm doing to keep in touch with me. Because those people know me, they're probably more likely to be interested in whatever it is that I have to say. But I hope that now that my site has been visited by people whom I have never met, some of you will keep coming back (and, if you all have blogs of your own, that you will link to me). I hope I can write stuff that is interesting and insightful enough to draw people who have no personal connection to me.

I don't intend to change the content of my blog at all--that is, I'm not going to focus on any one of the many topics I write about. I'm not going to become an anonymous blog like so many out there. Some of the things I write about--especially the Mormon things I write about--need some kind of background information to be understood, and I won't always be motivated enough to provide that background information. I hope that's OK with you guys. If you don't understand or don't like one particular post, just skip it and come back later to read whatever else I write on a different topic.

This has been a fun experience for me, and I hope to be able to keep it going, to increase my readership among people I do and don't know, develop my own writing and thinking skills, and have a lot of fun in the process.

(Gosh, can you tell I just barely finished listening to Bush's victory speech? It sounds like I'm the one who just won an election!)