An Approaching Blog Milestone
I've mentioned this over the last couple of monthly "greatest hits" segments in the miscellany posts, the blog is closing on 200,000 pageviews; keep in mind that Google's statistics have only been available since 2010, so the early couple of years or so are not available, and it's likely I've already reached the target. But as I write, the blog is just under 800 pageviews shy. More recently daily pageviews have ranged from a few dozen to over 100, so it's difficult to estimate when the blog will reach the goal: possibly before the end of the month and likely by a month from now. I'll note it in a relevant miscellany post. The next big target is post #5000, most likely in 2021.
Mother's Day and Mom's Cooking
I don't republish all my tweets in my popular social media edition posts; most of my republished tweets are political in nature; others involving, say, hashtag games or are more personal in nature. What are my heuristics for a successful tweet (from an impression perspective). It should outnumber my followers (at 60+) so I normally round up to 100. Now I've had in the past multiple tweets that gained over 1000 impressions but more recently a few hundred impressions are the best I hope for. My most recent popular tweet was a reply tweet bashing Hillary Clinton. You never can tell. I had no idea that the Hillary-bashing tweet would attract more than maybe a couple dozen views. In a similar way, I never would have guessed the above tweet would have attracted over 170 impressions at last count.She learned everything she knows about cooking from her own mother. #FakeMomFacts— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) May 12, 2019
It was true of my Mom. She grew up in a small family of 4. For whatever reason, I don't think my grandmother encouraged my mom to help in cooking meals. My grandfather had a grocery store. I don't know much about their menu (maybe a roasted chicken for Sunday dinner), and I think Mom picked up her recipe for cretons (a spiced ground pork spread, still my most favorite food to eat). The folks had a large family (mostly my Mom's preference); I'm the oldest of 7.
I loved almost every meal my Mom prepared, remarkable since my Dad didn't make a lot as an Air Force NCO (I do recall I qualified for the free lunch program from eighth grade through high school. There were certain meals on a regular schedule, like fried chicken or saffron rice chicken, pasta (spaghetti, lasagna or shellaroni), stuffed green peppers, steak on occasion, pork chops, etc. A number of baked goods for dessert (like cookies, cake or pie), but I do recall soft drinks and ice cream were for special occasions. We only ate fast food or restaurants infrequently, and mostly so Dad would give Mom a break from cooking.
So how did Mom, who married at 18, pick up cooking skills for a growing family? I learned during a recent holiday visit when she offered to give me a copy of the Betty Crocker cookbook to take back home.
Wrestling Update
Well, an interesting booking angle in last night's Raw where returning annoying heel, Sami Zayn, the recently returned from injury wrestler and target of deceptively quick massive strongman Braun Strowman, who has a gimmick of bowling down wrestlers around the ring, challenged Strowman for his slot in this coming weekend's Money in the Bank PPV, which gives the winner a guaranteed shot for a championship match at any time, including against a knocked-out champion. Basically a no-rules, falls-count-anywhere match. It's not clear why Strowman would agree to the match other than an opportunity to finish off Zayn once and for all.Anyone who has played chess can figure out what happened next. Other heels booked into the Money in the Bank match had a vested interest in screwing their key rival out of a championship shot and saw Zayn as a much easier opponent. So they intervened to enable a Zayn victory.
It seems Rousey ceded her title at Wrestlemania for time out to start a family. Becky Lynch thus inherited two belts. I thought the objective was to unify the women's titles, but it seems that WWE is booking her into two championship belt defenses. I suspect that she'll be booked to lose at least one title Sunday, probably the Raw title.
It seems that Sasha Banks was not happy she was booked into jobbing the women's tag team title at Wrestlemania to the Iconics, and the WWE has responded by taking her off TV. We finally saw the rationale for Asuka dropping the Smackdown title before Wrestlemania: she's half of a new Asian woman tag team. I don't see the Iconics holding onto their belts long; they've been booked into weak performances in the interim.
Big E of the New Day trio suffered a recent knee injury, opening up an angle for heel Kevin Owens to replace him as "Big O". If you recall, Owens was originally slated to take Kofi Kingston's championship slot against then champion Daniel Bryan. So Owens' heel turn against new champion Kingston was rather predictable. It seems unlikely that WWE will book Owens over Kingston this soon. I do think they will have Owens continue the feud with New Day long enough to feud with Big E on his return.
I didn't know how the WWE would book Daniel Bryan after his rematch loss to Kingston, except he and his muscle Erick Rowan were booked into Smackdown tag team champions.
By far, the most interesting match is in booking Universal champ Seth Rollins against former WWE champ AJ Styles, a rare clash of babyfaces. Again, I don't expect the WWE to book Rollins into a short title reign.
