P. D. and J. want to hear from you!

Dear European and Canadian Blog Readers,

In an effort to better understand what attracts you to our blog, we invite you to comment on this post. There are over 100 hits to our blog between you. Do you find our quaint stories of American Life(tm) exotic and strange (believe it or not, not a single one of the blog's authors drives an SUV, and we don't eat at McDonald's! Well, I guess I can't speak for J, but I presume if she knows what's good for her she doesn't! And get this! We don't own or carry guns, either! And we have health insurance! Don't let that fool you, though. True to form, we don't save nearly enough money, we carry balances on our credit cards [except P, who just paid his cards off {jerk}], and we are definitely as materialistic as they come. In fact, let's go shopping!)? Or is it just fascinating that we don't end all of our words in "e's" and call chips "french fries"?

I should point out that we DO have our similarities. I love hockey, for example, and can sing the entire Canadian national anthem. And my experience with people from Quebec is that they are annoying. (If you are from Quebec and are reading this... oh who am I kidding? By now, since you've realized this site isn't in french, you've given up.) And your blog authors are all of European stock, so we understand what it's like to be pasty and burn, even when it doesn't seem like there was enough sun to cause any sort of problem (except P, who is Italian and does not burn, ever [jerk]). And P and J have been to Europe.

In any event, please... comment. Let us know what you like, what you don't understand, and what we can do to make this a more pleasant experience for you.

Pip pip for now! Cheers! Eh? You get the picture.

P. D. and J.

Shameless Plug, Take 3

I am currently downloading the nearly 500 pictures from our trip to Colombia to my computer. Expect the first Colombia post shortly! In the meantime, P. D. & J. now has had visitors from all of the continents (save Antarctica)!

United States (US) 158
Colombia (CO) 13
United Kingdom (GB) 7
Canada (CA) 5
Germany (DE) 3
Italy (IT) 2
Russian Federation (RU) 1
Netherlands (NL) 1
Norway (NO) 1
Finland (FI) 1
Costa Rica (CR) 1
Belgium (BE) 1
Bulgaria (BG) 1
Australia (AU) 1
Thailand (TH) 1
Egypt (EG) 1

!

LOOK at all those dots of people who have visited our blog from four different continents! Totals by country are as follows:

United States (US) 83
Colombia (CO) 7
United Kingdom (GB) 6
Canada (CA) 3
Germany (DE) 2
Netherlands (NL) 1
Italy (IT) 1
Australia (AU) 1
Belgium (BE) 1

Best addition to blog ever. Our official followers total still only includes the blog authors, which is a bit disappointing. *loud clearing of throat*

TEST: South Africa.  Madagascar.  India.  Ukraine. :)

We're Huge in Europe...

...apparently. A couple of days ago, I added a map to the blog (see left column). It automatically tracks who visits our blog. Two things surprised me. First, Steve and Laura show as being at their home when they are currently in Colombia. That was sad because I wanted it to look like we were very popular there. But then my eyes wandered to Europe, and low and behold! There are two tiny dots at two different locations! I have no idea who they might be (I assume they inadvertently stumbled across our blog because a keyword came up on google, and plan never to return), but I'm terribly excited about it.

J and I just had a gmail chat conversation about it, and decided they probably can't understand anything we're saying. They are expecting more "e's" on the ends of words and want to know why all our adjectives come before the nouns.

But, in any event... welcome, strange foreigners, with your tiny cars and even tinier apartments! We drink our soft drinks and beer cold and have turkey for dinner! Feel free to make comments about your strange and exotic customs. And we can send you some Levi jeans, if you're nice!