Back when I first started this blog thing, I signed up for some blog directories hoping to drive some traffic my way.

One that I enrolled with was BlogBurst. With this one, a blogger makes a post available to a network of publishers like Reuters, USA Today and Gannett. If your blog is picked up, the post is run in its entirety and then linked back to your homepage. Needless to say, I didn't hold out much hope of any of these publishing powerhouses picking up anything I mine.

Well.... I just happened to visit my account, after ignoring it for months, and found that I had a post picked up by the Chicago Sun Times back in February. Seems that the editors found my post about how much rain we were getting in the Sunshine state amusing.

The funny thing to me was that the day the post was picked up, the weather in Chicago was 28 degrees and listed as "heat wave."

Then, yesterday I was looking at my blog stats, checking out my incoming links and found The Issue had picked up my post "Paradigm shift." From the About section, The Issue "is a non-partisan blog newspaper that provides a window to an emerging world of diverse and informed opinions."

That even impresses me. Whoot!

Though by far the best thing I've done since beginning my blog was to join cre8Buzz, a social network for bloggers. The people there are fabulous and the community is very supportive and friendly. I couldn't have done any of this without all my Buzz buddies. Thanks guys!