GrumpysMonkey

Well, Cook Local is finally profitable. It’s not much, but by the end of the month we should have actually made some money. A whole $5 or so.

Our hits are steadily climbing, and it’s rare that we have a day under 100 hits now. Take a look at our hit chart for the past 12 months. It’s kind of hard to read but that last column is over 3,000 hits.

Next milestone: 5,000 hits.

I work at home once a week (most weeks anyway). I use that day to go for a run as well as work. Luckily I can do almost everything I need to do for my job at home.

This morning though, Binky wanted to help.

Binky wants to help

Just testing a few things for eventual use on Cook Local. Don’t mind the mess.

And more…

I heard the other day that Trattoria Mitchelli, a local Pioneer Square restaurant will be closing any day now. In this economy, a restaurant closing isn’t a huge deal and the last time we ate at Mitchelli’s, they had definitely gone downhill.

However, this still saddens me just a bit. You see, it was at this restaurant, years ago, that John and I had our first actual meal together. Long before there were any romantic feelings between us, we sat across from each other at an MVP Summit dinner and had our first non-software related conversations. It’s a simple thing, and in the years between that conversation and our falling in love, I rarely gave that meal a second thought. Lately though, I’ve thought of it regularly.

The meal was fantastic. Cheesy lasagna, Randy’s homemade wine, and a shared caramel dessert thing that was so sweet that neither of us could finish it. After dinner, the MVPs (and John and at least one other softie) all walked back to whatever hotel we (the MVPs) were at and everyone said good night. The evening was one of those amazingly perfect nights where nothing overly special happens, but everyone has a good time and everything just happens the right way and everyone goes home happy. 

So even though I had no plans to return to Mitchelli’s any time soon (or at all), I still kind of liked the thought that it was still there.

I guess this is one of those things that they talk about women feeling guilty when they shouldn’t. Maybe.

I was supposed to go to Vegas this weekend with a good friend. We were going to run a half marathon, and just have a girls weekend. We haven’t had that in a long time. I’ve missed her and missed having just some girl time. There would have been spa time and good food. It would have been expensive, but it’s one of those things that you plan for and just do once in a while.

But yesterday, I felt awful. Truly awful. Even the thought of packing or doing laundry had me in tears. I have not been this tired in years. I slept about 5 hours or so during the day, slept until 9:30 am that morning, was in bed and asleep by 11 that night. So… figure about 15 hours. I didn’t pack, didn’t do anything.

The thought of going to Vegas was overwhelming. No matter how much we planned on relaxing, there was a half marathon, and walking, and drinking, and hotel beds and hotel pillows, and flights and dry air… I just couldn’t do it.

So I bailed. On one of my closest friends. After she had a bad week. I suck.

I’m home on the couch, and she’s in Vegas.

I think the answer is that I should feel guilty and I shouldn’t at the same time. Obviously I did something that my body needed. Obviously I didn’t do something my friend needed. I always prefer to put my friends before myself. I hope I do that most of the time. I guess I just can’t do it all of the time.

I don’t feel anywhere near as bad today. My throat is a bit scratchy and my head is stuffy. I have a headache. No fever.

I know that I’m fighting sick, but I am fighting. I’m able to get up, do dishes, I might even clean something today. So I feel guilty that I’m not there. At the same time, the idea of being away from home this weekend still seems daunting. Plus, I’d hate it if I went to Vegas and got sicker or got her sick. So I’m home. I’m going to relax, knit, clean, read, and work on the blog. Hopefully after this weekend I’ll be back to my normal super-woman self. We need to start training for our marathon in June.

I need to find a weekend to go down and see my friend. At least Southwest refunded my money. So I can go see her sometime soon.

This past weekend, we headed out to dinner with some friends. We were going to meet their friends. But the place we planned to meet was very crowded and doesn’t take reservations. It’s basically a ‘each group for themselves’ scenario and if you see a table open up, you grab it.

So while we were waiting for the other couple, I went outside to call another restaurant we knew to see how busy they were as a backup. They have an automated menu that went something like this.

For information on our hours, press 1.

For information on our location, press 2.

For information on our beers, press 3.

To speak to someone in the restaurant, press 17.

…

Just think about that for a minute.

17.

1… 7

That was one of the most creative ways I’ve found to basically say “you can’t speak to a live person”.

(Oh, and I did call back the next day to make sure that there wasn’t a 7 option off of the option to hear about their hours).

Not much interesting going on in this post. We’ve got a few ideas for Cook Local that we’re kicking around and since my blog uses the same publishing engine and hosting company as Cook Local, this is a good place to try things out.

Together in the window

So that you have something interesting to read, here’s a random life update.

• Cats: Doing well. Cute, loving, mostly well behaved. They are bonding. Binky will groom Barnacle here and there and they play together. Barnacle figured out how to jump up into the window the other day, but then he apparently forgot how (or fell or something) because now he just looks up at the window and sees Binky up there and whines.
• House: Making progress. The living room is pretty much done other than hanging pictures. We still need picture hangers for that. We do need to move the new couch a bit, but other than that, it looks nice.
• Running: Not much news there. We really need to start running regularly again if we have any hope of doing the marathon in June. Hopefully March will be the month for that.
• Work: It’s just work. It’s not too smart to talk about your job on your blog, so neither of us really mention much. But we’re doing fine. Work is work. Parts good, parts not so
  

  Playing and grooming

  good, but having a job in this climate = very good and we’re both very happy about that.

Ok, enough of an update to test things.

So this past week I finally moved Cook Local to a new hosting company. The previous hosting company, which shall remain nameless at this point, kept having unexplained downtime. Some days, Cook Local was down for 15 minutes. Other days, it was down for an hour, and two weeks ago, it was down for over 5 hours. When you’re trying to grow a site, it helps if people can actually access said site.

So I moved to Lunar Pages. Another food blogger I know recommended them, and so far they have been great. I have gotten one report of a downtime incident that lasted a couple of minutes, but our hit counts have been skyrocketing since we commented on a very popular blog the other day. In fact, we’ve gone from an all time high of about 50 hits in a single day to over 300 within the space of a couple of days. I don’t expect the hits to stay that high regularly yet, but even one or two days a month with high hit count days are good.

Currently we’re debating what little rewards we’ll give ourselves when we hit certain milestones.

Last month we got a little over 1,000 hits. I think when we get over 3,000 hits in a month, we’ll open a bottle of expensive beer. When we get 5,000 hits in a month, maybe the champagne or one of the nice bottles of wine we’re saving. If we have a month where we get 10,000 hits… maybe dinner out at Le Gourmand (a really nice restaurant we’ve been yearning to go to that would probably be well over $200 for a meal).