When I was trying to fall asleep last night a strange thought crossed my mind. I started wondering where in the world all my blog readers are from! I know, thanks to my stat counter flag thingee, that the vast majority of you are from the US, then NZ (and most of THESE people are probably people I know!), then the UK, then Canada, which is pretty much what I expected, but then I started wondering, if, by any chance, I have readers from every single state in the US!

So…leave me a comment (even if you’re a lurker, I want to know about you too, I don’t bite – promise!) and let me know where you’re from! If you’re in the US I’ll add you to the table below, if you’re not, I’ll add where you are from!

Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas: Ty
California: Cristina, Corbyjane
Colorado
Connecticut
Washington DC: Ashley
Delaware
Florida
Georgia: Ashley, Doria
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas: Alex
Kentucky: Whitney
Louisiana: Megan
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts: Sue
Michigan
Minnesota: Scott
Mississippi
Missouri: Patrice
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey: Lissy
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina: Jaime, Jenn L.
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma: Courtney
Oregon: Trisha
Pennsylvania: Melanie, Brittany
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee: Lauren
Texas: Mere
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington: Katie H.
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

And for those lovely people outside of the US..

UK: Rebecca
Canada: Clem
Australia: Kaylia
New Zealand: Chickie Little
Singapore: Leane
Germany: Nadine
Malta: Afef
South Africa: Janet

*PS: Yes, I am well aware that "Where in the world is YOU!?" is not in fact a grammatically correct sentence. I was making a terribly lame attempt to be clever. FAIL.

On Sunday morning I am heading off on the Tranz Alpine train to visit Brooke in Franz Josef. At some point on Monday, a good friend of mine from TColl is also arriving. She, however, doesn’t know that I will be there. 

Yep. I have taken a leaf of this cat’s book and am attempting to be a sneaky ninja. Several months ago, when she was planning her trip around NZ, she asked for suggestions for where she should go. I told her to go to the West Coast and climb up the glacier in Franz. I told her she should do it because then she would also be able to meet one of my lovely friends from high school and uni (who she may or may have already heard stories about!). She told me I should go too, since I had a friend there anyway who I hadn’t seen in awhile, but, for a whole bunch of reasons, I didn’t want to commit to doing that so far in advance.

In the last few weeks, I decided that this was actually as good a time as any to go, and that it would be pretty darn funny to arrange a trip at the same time as my friend, but not tell her about it, so I could surprise her.

But. The question now arises.

Exactly how do I go about doing this?

For the record, this friend is extremely outgoing, not easily embarrassed and has a very similar sense of humour to me (read: SILLY!). I’m not so much worried about embarrassing her as I am about botching up my carefully laid plan at the last minute. I don’t exactly have a great track record at keeping surprises.

So…suggestions please, what cunning plan can I come up with to inflict upon this poor, unsuspecting¹ woman? Mwahahah!

P.S: For those people reading this who are wondering what I will be giving away when I hit my 100th follower, I haven’t decided yet, but I’ll post a photo of it when I have something Super Awesome. :)

1. So long as she doesn’t suddenly decide she’s a reader of this blog, which I think is highly unlikely, since she’s currently traveling around NZ with infrequent internet access! [↩]

Pastures green, poppy fields,
graves for soldiers fallen.
A wooden cross marks a resting place,
a thousand miles from loved ones.

Rusted wire, silent guns,
trenches torn and broken.
A helmet rests on a rifle butt,
the tools of war unspoken.

Anzac Days, colours blaze,
their battle honours borne on.
Old men march and a bugle plays,
in memory of the fallen.

Mike Subritzkey, 1965
Source

For international readers who are not sure what this is about, today is Anzac Day. I posted about this in a bit more detail last year, if you want to read about what it means.