Saturday 26 March 2011

Next Blog

Yesterday, Tom had been out all day helping his pig farmer friend put up a new pig fence half a mile long, so was knackered and went to bed at 8pm last night. I have given up wine for lent, there was nothing on TV (which is quite a statement coming from me), and I had no one to talk to. I decided to start a new stripy jelly creation, but as each layer takes over an hour to set I felt there must be more exciting ways to spend a Friday night.  Our house was freezing because the sun had been out and I had mistaken this for Summer, so I had turned off all our heating.  So through boredom and coldness I too went to bed, half an hour behind Tom.

In bed, Tom was in a heavy sleep, but I was not in the least bit tired.  So I sat up in the dark and turned on my laptop.  I began typing out a blog post, but in amongst his thunderous snoring, Tom somehow woke up and told me off for making too much noise.  Trying to think of things I could do that didn't involve actual typing, I cast my eye to the top of my blog page and saw the 'Next Blog' option.  I figured a bit of silent mouse control and the odd mouse click would not be detected by Tom. 

I spent the next two hours engrossed in the world of 'Next Blogs'.  I think I must have looked at around 100  blogs, and I made myself give each and every one a chance (unless they were written in a language I didn't understand ie. not English).

I was surprised to find that the majority of the blogs I came across were Mom blogs, and most had very similar styles: a photo of an immaculate Mom and Dad and their two kids, all smiling big perfect-teeth smiles in some idyllic looking setting as the blog header; lots of swirling colorful fonts, and lots and lots of photos of their kids' trips to butterfly farms or play centers. 

Every so often I would come across some fascinating reads: a blog that described a woman's lifelong obsession with women's pants, another woman's journey of adopting an Ethiopian girl, and a man writing about how he walks backwards everywhere and documents people's reactions. 

When I eventually turned off my laptop and lay down to sleep, my head was buzzing with the information from all these different peoples lives.  Annoyingly I didn't save any of the blogs to my favourites list, so they have disappeared into the big black blog hole, and so I will never find out how the walking-backwards-man got on during his upcoming trip to Snowdonia, for example.

6 comments:

Polgara said...

I have done that so many times and you will find when you do it again you will eventually come across the same ones, is definately entertaining though!

mum in meltdown said...

I long for a Laptop to use in times of non sleeping ( which is most nights) which is probably why my husband is in no rush as he know's I won't get up in the middle of the night to log on!!!! Next blog though I haven't done that one......That will be me at 3am then!!!!! LOL

Iota said...

Doesn't the laptop have some kind of clever history that will keep the information for you?

Helen@baby shoes said...

Giving up wine for lent seems like a step too far to me!

Metropolitan Mum said...

I sued to do that quite a lot, and I never came across any blogs twice. Also, most of the blogs I ended up on were from some American kids, using lots of abbreviations I didn't understand. A whole different language indeed...

Cam - Bibs and Baubles said...

i have done that before. it's so interesting the things you find! i wanna know more about the backwards walking man.