Sorry it’s been so long since my last update. While life is always hectic, things have been especially so over the last few months. I’ll give you the short version, but let me start with some mental_floss linkage…

5 Alternative World Cup Tournaments: This was posted the Monday after the 2010 World Cup ended. My editor and I both thought it might be good timing as a sort of exhale from World Cup fever. Apparently we were way off base, because the story was probably my worst flop yet. It registered a whopping two comments, one of which was “You forgot about…”. I think the most frustrating part was that I remember staying up until the crack of dawn that Monday morning to make sure I got it done on time to still be relevant. However, when it hit, I found out just how irrelevant it really was.

12 Essential Facts About the Folks Who Race Horses: This was a reprint on Neatorama from my last mental_floss Magazine article. It’s always nice to be reprinted by the fine folks over there.

The Ultimate Superfans: Tribute Bands That Really Rock: This was such a fun one to write. And it wound up being a fairly nice hit, garnering plenty of good comments from readers. I even sort of became friends with some of the guys from Rad Bromance, an all-male Lady Gaga cover band, as I was the first “big” media outlet to cover them. They’re a cool group and I wish them the best in the years to come.

7 Bits of Movie Magic That Disappeared: Much to my surprise, a story I wrote back in June wound up on CNN.com on August 8. I didn’t even know it was on the radar until my editor sent me the notification that it was online. I remember it was a nice way to end the weekend.

Public Transportation is for the Birds (And Dogs and Goats): Now this was a fun one to write! It was inspired by an article on the stray dogs that use the subways of Moscow to get around the city, but it just expanded from there to some really fun stories of animals riding buses, subway cars, and trains. It didn’t take the internet by storm, but it was such a fun one for me to work on that I’m ok with that.

The Stories Behind 8 Back-to-School Essentials: I remember when I was researching this story, I dug through mentalfloss.com for at least 30 minutes to make sure it hadn’t been done before. I just couldn’t believe someone hadn’t thought of it already. Admittedly, my initial thought was to do office supplies (Post-It Notes, fax machines, etc.), but it was my editor who finely-tuned it to school supplies to fit in with the week most students were coming back from summer vacation. The narrowing down was a good thing, because the story has been very popular, reaching #2 on mentalfloss.com for the week. I’m still getting the occasional comment notification almost a week later.

That about wraps up my mental_floss news for now. Some exciting stories, a few flops, and a few “meh”. But that’s the way it goes online. That’s something I have to often remind myself of, but it is such a valuable thing to learn if you’re going to stay in this business.

As for the rest of my life, well, frankly, it’s a wet, soggy mess. Since late July, we have been battling a water leak coming from the condo upstairs. This leak has been an occasional problem since we bought the condo back in 2006, but it always went away after a day or two, would stay dry for a few weeks, and then rear its ugly head again for a day or two, then go away again. So it was really hard to nail down to any particular cause. Back then it wasn’t really creating any major problems – we’d put a bucket under the leak in the basement to catch what little dripped out and we’d be fine.

But Summer 2010 has been different. It’s been so stinking hot here in lovely Missouri that our upstairs neighbors have had their air conditioning running constantly. This has helped us pinpoint the source of the leak, but it’s also meant a steady of stream of water droplets cascading down the inside of our bedroom closet and into our basement. Now, instead of a day or two here and there, it’s been more and more water every hour of every day, going on since July.

For potentially legal reasons, I don’t want to describe, in my unprofessional opinion, what type of damage we’re looking at here, but know that it is severe. When repairs are finally done, there’s a very good chance we’ll be moving out of our condo during that time since it will be quite uninhabitable. We’re not looking forward to the massive inconvenience this will be, but we’ll do what we have to do to get the problem fixed and our condo repaired. Still, just the prospect of packing things up, moving them to storage, and then living either in a hotel or at a relative’s house for a few weeks or a month, is not a fun one by any means. It has been causing a lot of stress on my wife and me and we haven’t even started doing the actual packing yet. I can’t even imagine what life will be like during that time, though I hope to blog about it throughout to give you some idea of the hell our lives will become.

Well, I really don’t have much more to say at the moment. I’m getting pretty tired from a full week of mental_floss, my day job, and stressing out about the leak, that I should probably hit the sack pretty soon. Maybe dreaming for a few hours will help me adequately escape reality for long enough to temporarily forget.

Until next time, folks, thanks for reading!

Whew! It’s been a while…

Honestly, not much has been going on, other than a few more mental_floss posts to share. So let’s get to it!

Hollywood Lost & Found: 7 Stolen Movie Props was a nice little hit on the site and a really fun one to write. It received a ton of comments and wound up ranking #1 on mentalfloss.com’s Top 10 stories of the week. It didn’t get picked up by any major sites or anything, but I was still happy to see it bring in some hits for mental_floss.

The Amazing Stories of 6 Sudden Savants was another solid hit for me, ranking #5 on the Top 10 for the week.

You’ll probably also notice on that last link that I barely scratched the Top 10 with Road Trip! 6 Incredible Cross-Country Journeys. I was really disappointed with this one’s performance. It was a lot of fun to research and write and I thought it was just quirky enough for people to retweet or send in an email to their officemates. However, it ran late in the day before the big July 4th weekend. I hoped it would have legs to last through the holiday, but, alas, it died on the vine. It received the lowest number of comments I’ve received yet, I think, and most of them were “You should have mentioned this…” So, disappointing, but, what’re ya gonna do?

I just found out moments ago that I have two stories in the Top 12 of 2010 (so far). I just hope the second part of 2010 is as good to me as the first. We’ll find out…

This week I had another mental_floss story get posted to the web – And They Walked Away: The Stories of 5 Strange Injuries – featuring stories of a woman who sneezed and couldn’t walk for two years, a man who drilled through his head, a guy who almost bit off more than he could chew, an old lumberjack who just about decapitated himself with his own chainsaw, and a baseball player who couldn’t put down the video game controller.

It was a mild success, receiving about 1,200 clicks on the bit.ly shortened URL that was tweeted out earlier in the week by my editor on the mental_floss Twitter account.

But then, last night, that tweet from earlier in the week got retweeted by none other than 80s heartthrob and first crush of many a young man of Generation X, Alyssa Milano, who is a major fan of mental_floss.

She often sends out links to our stories and, with her nearly-900,000 followers, it’s a huge push for the site. So it was a pretty big deal when she sent out the link to my story.

Within an hour of her tweet, the clicks on the bit.ly link were doubled. By this morning, they were almost tripled. It’s settled down now, but it was a gaint boost for the story.

I sent out my own tweet once I noticed she had linked to the story:

And she replied with:

It was very cool of her to give the story a shot in the arm and be so happy about making some poor writer’s day.

I’m anxious to see now just how well the story did this week by the time the dust settles. Her endorsement is a big deal, so I’m hoping it did well.

But now, on to next week. Will I get another retweet from an influential Twitter celeb? Only one way to find out…

This week was twice as nice for me over at mentalfloss.com.

I had a story published on Tuesday on missing time capsules and then had another one on Friday about expensive Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars. Like I said, quite a week! I’m hoping the Hot Wheels one will get a few more hits next week since it was put up pretty late on Friday afternoon, but it has gotten quite a few clicks from Twitter already.

I’m doing research for my next story right now, so look for updates as they happen.

My latest mental_floss article is online – How to Tweet Your Way Out of a Job – and it’s been a pretty nice hit for me.

The story is all about people who got fired after sending out a tweet or two that got them in trouble with their boss. I have to say, reading through these stories made me think about some of the things I’ve tweeted in the past. While I haven’t done anything as dumb as some of these people, I have sent out a few thoughts that could be construed as less-than-appreciative of my job. I definitely learned a lesson doing the research for this one.

As I said, it’s been a nice, solid hit for me on the site. It’s been retweeted like crazy (Irony?) and has been linked to on some nice sites. I haven’t heard anything from any of the really big boys yet, but we’ll see what happens.

Thanks for reading and keep checking back for more!