Let me start by saying w00t!

The Girls Night In podcast has had it’s biggest month ever for downloads here in July. So far we’re ahead of our record downloads by 250 and there are still 2 days left to the month. We’re getting right around 1,000 downloads per week now. Our subscriber base fluctuates between 600-700 and we’re gaining between 40-60 new listeners every month. We’ve also been a featured podcast in iTunes since September, 2007.

Thank you for spreading the word about the podcast. Most stalkers tend to keep the objects of their obsession to themselves, but you all rawk! And just for that, I’ve made you a handy-dandy little stalker badge that you can wear as your avatar, internet icon or as a mask on Halloween.

Let’s hear it for female personalities playing loudly in the podcast waters!

-Kim

So I’m in the process of editing last night’s show titled When Nature Attacks. It all seems to be taking a bit longer than usual. Reason one is that the show went much longer than it would normally! All of you had some fantastic stories to share and I simply can not wait for our listeners to hear them.

Reason number two is that I’ve been sick this week. At the end of last week I started feeling a bit “sinusy”. I have allergies so it didn’t really phase me. Over the weekend though I started getting worse. By Tuesday I was absolutely miserable. I asked my good friend Kim to drive me to a local clinic. You may recall from an earlier episode that I get car sick when other people drive. I had to have been feeling pretty darn awful to have her drive me. I was in and out of the clinic within a 15-minute time period. Diagnosis: sinus infection, bronchitis and double ear infections. Yesterday I was feeling about 200 times better than I was on Tuesday. I attribute that to prayers and adrenaline. I had a lot to do: meetings during the day and the show during the evening. I accomplished everything I’d set out to do, except for editing the show.

Last night as we were doing the show I thought of many more stories that I could share about when nature attacked me. Since we had a limit on the number of stories, I thought I would start blogging some of them. Before you think, “but Kim, you just said that the editing is taking longer than expected and now you’re going to blog?” Files are processing in the background, there is no wasting of time here!

Years ago I had a cat named Sam. I loved him and he loved me. We were like best buds. He’d sleep outside my door at night or on the foot of my bed if I let him in. When I’d nap on the couch he’d curl up against my chest when I laid on my side, just so that I could put my arm around him. He was like a child to me.

Sam’s only drawback was that he got temperamental when we would brush him. Certain measures had to be taken when brushing him: watch the way he wagged his tail, watch his breathing, listen to his purring, watch his eyes. There were certain cues that needed to be taken into account to consider when Sam had had enough. Apparently, I missed a few of them.

I was brushing and talking to him, losing myself in the softness of his fur when out of nowhere he jumped at me. He didn’t have any claws so his method of “defense” was to use his teeth. His mouth opened and came at my face. It was like slow-motion that I just couldn’t stop. His mouth closed down right on my nose. The two longest teeth on the top sunk into the top of my nose while the two longest teeth on the bottom went into my nostrils.

Thanks Sam, I guess we’re done now. Back to editing.

My parents had four children. Three boys and then there was me, the only girl. One lovely fall day day my oldest brother came running in the house carrying a harmless garter snake. My mother, a hair dresser (this will become relevant soon, I promise), freaked the heck out but like in the case of Y from Joy Unexpected, my father allowed him to put it in our fish tank that prior to this day housed nothing but air. A boy needs a manly pet, right? Right!

Two days later, while we were all at school, my mother entered my brothers room with an aerosol can of hairspray. That woman did some major hair renovation on that lil garter snake that he just wasn’t the same after that. Dead would be a good descriptor. It wasn’t until a few years later that we found out the reason for poor Gartie’s death. Mom is still proud of that hairdo.

Got a story like this? Think you could even top it? Share it for our next show When Nature Attacks on Wednesday April 16 at 9pm ET.

(there’s more here if you click this link…)

Don’t forget, we’ve rescheduled this week’s review of The Princess Bride to April 2 and are launching GNI: Unplugged instead.

I received word from the Brute Squad today that my co-hosts were confused as to the nature of my first What If question for the next show.

If you had one natural talent that would make you “special” under certain circumstances (such as being ambidextrous), what would it be?

Let me ’splain. [pause] No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

Here’s a YouTube link to the scene where I derived this question from: http://youtube.com/watch?v=X3gfFVmw0kA

Inigo Montoya and The Man in Black are both ambidextrous. They can sword fight equally well with both hands.

It can be a talent that you have or a talent that you wish you had. The question is left open to interpretation for that reason. Answer with whichever appeals to you most.

Ok so I’m at a loss for what movie to choose to review for our next show. I have to announce it on Wednesday and I need some help. Here’s a poll for you to rate some of the movies that I would consider. Choose your top 4 movies. Feel free to leave comments here on the post as well.

Halloween Past
During our Halloween show, I talked about one of my favorite traditions. That tradition is dressing up with my son to take him trick-or-treating. This year we went as Supergirl and Spiderman. We had a blast. Two years ago we did super heroes as well (Dash and Edna [not a super hero, I know] from the Incredibles movie) which I included the mini-poster of in the pictures below.

Please click on the thumbnail image to view the photo in it’s entirety.

Little Shop of Horrors
If you have listened to episode 11 where we reviewed the movie-musical Little Shop of Horrors, you would know that I got to go and see the stage version a couple of days later. After the show, my son and I were allowed to go up on the stage to check out the set and the final version of Audrey II. I’m so glad that I brought my camera with because I got pictures.

The funniest part of that whole scenario was that my son was suddenly very scared of the plant. You see, the stage and the movie versions are different. On stage the plant wins and everyone dies. That’s not exactly how things work out in the movie. My son was more than a little surprised and scared of Audrey II when we got up on stage. I had to drag him close enough to this monstrosity and show him how it was simply a giant, stuffed animal. Finally he got close enough with me to have someone snap a picture. He loved the musical and even got to meet some of the actors afterwards. The boy was so awe-struck that he couldn’t say anything or even look them in the face. When we got out to the car he asked me how come I didn’t get their autographs for him. I guess I should have known!

Please click on the thumbnail image to view the photo in it’s entirety.

In an effort to resurrect all of our past mistakes and remember some of the hilarity from the past seven shows, I’ve been listening to the previous episodes again. Why would I be doing that? Well, sometimes a girl needs a to laugh. Sometimes, a girl needs to hold the other girls (and herself) accountable for their actions.

Laughter
So far I’ve listened, once again, to episodes 1-4 of GNI. I seriously heart my co-hosts. They’re way fun. I was listening yesterday while at the office and my boss came in to check on me about 3 or 4 different times because I was laughing so hard. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I’m the only one who gets the “funny” that we share in these podcasts, but then I read Twitter and find that many others are laughing right along with us. It is highly possible that they’re laughing at us though. Either way, ya’ll are laughing, and that makes Kim happy.

Cheating
Since we always seem to be harping on each other for cheating at one thing or another, I figure it’s time to start keeping count. Darren Blake of the Flick-a-Brac podcast had started keeping cheater counts for us, which inspired me to fine tune my listening skills as well. Once I can get current with the counts for all of the past episodes I’ll either post the cheater count here, talk about it on the podcast or both. Who do you think is winning the cheater war so far? As in, who’s The Biggest Cheater?

Quotes
While I was listening I found myself laughing hardest at some of the one-liners that have been spoken, be it in good taste or not. I then decided that I needed to start making a “quotable” list. I’ve done that and have posted a couple of the quotes on our Twitter Account. If you don’t follow us, I would recommend it. We post to that account when we have something fun to say, an announcement to make (new blog post, when we’re about to record, when a new episode is posted to the feed) and most recently, a new quote. These aren’t only things that four of us girls say. I’ve found a line or two from our listeners that I found absolutely hysterical.

Here are the two quotes I’ve posted at Twitter so far:
“Like Kim, I would also be a man.” -Rachel
“Thanks to Girls Night In, I cheat all year.” -Donut

Being that I’m the one listening and marking down “quotable” things, I am finding many more funny things from the mouths of the other girls than from my own. So, if I’ve said something quotable in the past, might you share it with me?

What have you heard on the podcast that should make the “quotable” list? Might you remember the episode it was from? Leave a comment to share your favorites!

The Purpose
I wanted to talk about something in our last show. Then I realized that, crap, I talk too much as it is. So instead I’m going to write. Hopefully you won’t hear my voice in your head. If you do, seek help now.

The Intent (is that the same as purpose?)
In checking our web statistics these days, I found some pretty interesting things. One, our numbers are through the roof. This is good, isn’t it? Yep yep. Two, we have listeners from all over the world. Three, the search terms that people have found us by are just plain funny.

Statistics
As of August 30, 2007 we have had 13,164 hits to our site. That totally rocks. On average, we’ll have 18 hits per hour. We had 415 listens to our podcast via the play button in our show notes. Monday, August 13 was the biggest day for website traffic this month: 1,148 hits. That was the Monday following our August 8 recording, coincidentally following some pretty huge podcasters plugging us.

Where Are You?
Yes, I realize that when a podcast exists, it opens us up to a potentially worldwide audience. I’m still amazed at the locations that some of you listen to us from. Maybe I’m just a naive American, which is highly likely. I don’t know why, but some of the countries on the list below just made me giggle. Maybe I should be the one seeking help? Ok, so here’s where some of you are listening from:
United States (some through .gov addresses!)
Canada
Australia
Netherlands
United Kingdom
Lebanon
Belgium
New Zealand
Micronesia
India
Seychelles
Mexico
Ireland
Japan
Pakistan
Sweden
Switzerland
China
France
Russian Federation
Brazil
Spain

Funny Search Terms
This was the most interesting thing I’ve found in our stats. It’s how people find us via search engines like Google. Jaime can’t visit this website while she’s at work. Apparently it’s flagged as if it’s porn. I say it’s because it has the words “girls” and “night” in the title and much of our text here. I think they’re discriminating against girls at night, but that’s just me. Girl haters they are.

I guess with Jaime’s situation in mind, I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was to see the following terms used to find us (I’m going to leave out the common search terms that people were genuinely trying to find our podcast through.):
girls night
night girls
girls night movies
hot american girls
night dirls in ipod
10 year high school reunion
american hot girls (w00t! for us!)
american hot girls
american hot night
cartoon girls night out (say what?)
chris schonberger (who’s this and when did we talk about him here?)
christopher meloni
christopher meloni in porn (don’t even go there)
fondle my sweaters meaning (hahahaha)
girls cracks (girls on crack? or they talkin bout bootay or boobays?)
girls humping other girls (none of that happening here)
girls night in dvd (um, no)

So that’s all I have for now. Keep your eyes peeled for a super-short podcast from yours truly sometime before next Wednesday’s show.

Happy Friday,
Kim

Hello everyone. It’s late, or if you’re reading the time of this post it’s technically early. I need to be awake in less than 4 hours to take my little man to school and begin my work. Why am I up? Well, because I’ve been working non-stop. My files are uploading to a server now so I figured I’d share with you a bit of what I’ve been doing lately.

One of my hopes in having started this podcast was that I would get back into my movie watching again on a more regular basis (once upon a time!). I love movies. What a big “duh” moment, hmm? Anyways, it seems to be happening. The movies are taking their rightful place within my life.

Saturday alone, I watched five movies. Yes, I have a life. Yes, I was doing some other things while I watched. Here’s the run down of what I’ve watched in the past two weeks: Wallace and Grommit Curse of the Were-Rabbit (as if you didn’t know), Flubber, Breach, The Parent Trap (1998), Disturbia, The Haunted Boat, The Bridge to Terabithia and Blair Witch Project.

Flubber stars Robin Williams. I absolutely heart this man. He’s so funny and engaging. I rented this because my son saw the little green blob on the cover of the DVD. I’d seen it before and obviously he hadn’t. He loved it, particularly the part at the end where the flubber bursts from one of the bad guy’s behind. It was truly enjoyable to see this movie again.

Breach was a good watch. It was a little slow at times I’ll give you that. I found myself rather engaged in this movie probably more so than some. You see, my lifelong dream was always to have a career in some form of law enforcement (funny thing is that I became an artist). You could characterize me as hyper vigilant or paranoid, you decide. So basically this movie was right up my alley in trying to figure out how much of a spy the bad guy was. I wanted to know what he knew or if he knew that the clerk was there to watch him or not. For me, it was fun. I may not ever watch it again, but I did enjoy the viewing.

The Parent Trap was not the original version, but rather the remake from 1998, all modernized and stuff. I still like the original of this the best, however this one wasn’t half bad. Again, this was a rental for my son and one of his friends.

I watched Disturbia last week. I even gave a mini-review of this movie this past weekend on Darren Blake’s podcast, Flick-a-Brac: Episode 005. The first hour of this movie was pretty slow. Its intent was to build the characters and form relationships, none of which was necessary. It wasn’t disturbing or suspenseful at all. I laughed through much of it. I guess you could say that I’m a hard person to scare. The last 30-40 minutes is where things started to actually get good. There was a lot of suspense, a lot of questions raised and I was even creeped out through the last bit. I liked it. I would have loved it had there not been so much of the first hour.

The Haunted Boat was a movie that I rented because I really wanted to find a movie that was going to scare me. The description on the back of the box seemed like it may have fit the bill and the artwork on the DVD cover was pretty nifty as well. I’ll say one thing, don’t judge a movie by it’s DVD cover. This was the worst film I’ve ever seen in my entire life. The film looked like it had been shot with hand held cam corders. The audio was splotchy in places and the acting was horendous. I think some 13 year old must have written, directed, produced and asked all of his older cousins to do the acting. I laughed through most of this movie and any attempt at creepy was missed by a long shot. So, if you’re up for a really horrible movie, go see this!

The Bridge to Terabithia I wasn’t looking forward to watching at all. We rented this last month (and then again this weekend) because my son had remembered seeing all the trailers on TV and even made up a few stories of his own based on the word Terabithia. We sat down together and watched from beginning to end. This movie rocked my socks off. It was fun, sweet, heart-warming and it even made me cry. They did a fantastic job of getting me emotionally involved in the characters and what they were all about. If you can evoke emotion from me through a movie, you’ve done a fantastic job. If you haven’t seen this movie, I think you should get right out and watch it.

The Blair Witch Project is my all time favorite scary movie. At some point in the future, I may want to review this in the podcast so I won’t share too much about it. Let’s just say that I’ve seen this flick at least 15 times now. It still scares the crap out of me. Saturday I had someone watching with me who, I’ll admit I should not have said how much this movie creeped me out, thought it funny to use their scary voice at the most inopportune times. Thou shalt not intensify the scariness for Kim! Argh. Go see this.

Well my lovelies, I’m done with sharing my thoughts on the most recent movies that have made their way to my DVD player. My files have completed uploading. I do believe it is time that I make my way between the sheets. Are there any movies that you think I should see? Let me know!

-Kim

So here’s the obligatory first sentence that says something about this being my first blog posting here. Hi! I’ve been meaning to come here and share a few thoughts with you fine people. Now that some time has opened up, here I go.

There have been some really cool things happening around the world of Girls Night In. We love you people and are utterly flattered when we see you guys twitter, blog or hear you talk about us. So, I want to talk about each of you now. If I missed someone, I apologize. Please berate me until I straighten out.

PodShow’s PodFinder
The coolest plug that we received actually happened just last night. The Pod Father, Adam Curry included us in the most recent episode of Podshow’s PodFinder. PodFinder is a podcast that talks about some of the most interesting podcasts out there. It’s for those people who don’t know where to start when they run out of podcasts to listen to. Apparently, Adam wants to watch movies with the four of us. C’mon Adam we’ll patch ya in via Skype! Many thanks to the production team over there and to Adam Curry for thinking so much of us to include us in your show.

2GuysTalking
Brian and Amy from 2GuysTalking24 gave us a fun shout out in podcast #9 of the Harry Potter Book Report (Chapters 26-30). Yes, 2GuysTalking is supposed to be two guys, but Amy has to put up with the testosterone and since she’s married to Brian, she gets to be involved. They were entirely amusing when they explained what spiked Brian’s curiousity in the promo: our mention of boobies. They’re not quite sure if we’re explicit or not. I don’t think so, but maybe a little parental control should be exercised in regards to our podcast. Anyways, check out 2GuysTalking as they have a whole bunch of different podcasts over at their website. http://www.2guystalking.com/

GSPN
Cliff and Stephanie of www.gspn.tv have really been talking lately. But when can we find them not talking with the multitude of podcasts that are produced each week? These are two very cool and talkative people who I have actually met in person. It was truly a treat to have met them. GSPN has plugged our a show a number of times on a few different podcasts, so I can’t link you over to just those. I’m going to link you up to all of the podcasts. Check these two out, I’m sure you’re bound to find a personal interest in at least one of the podcasts produced there. Thanks Cliff and Steph! http://www.gspn.tv

We’re Both Right
A comedy duo who we talked about in Episode 005 of our own podcast, played our promo at the end of their episode 47. Check out Rob and Erik at http://www.bothright.com

MetroBuzz
John and Colleen of the MetroBuzz are two really cool cats that have a podcast about news, entertainment & all of pop-culture. They gave plugged us a bit in episode 1.22 “The One With All the Estrogen”. Check them out, but exercise that parental control again because there are some episodes where that explicit tag is attached. http://metrobuzz.blogspot.com/

Cranky Fanatic
Big thanks (and apologies) go out to BigO of the Cranky Fanatic Podcasts for plugging us and playing our promo on a number of different podcasts of his. He currently does a tech podcast called Techno Fodder, a Heroes podcast and a Lost podcast. Please go and check out the podcasts that BigO produces. Most of them are recorded live on Talkshoe (like ours) and he has a pretty cool following. http://www.crankyfanatic.com

Flick-a-Brac
Darren Blake hosts a podcast that focuses mainly on movies and often times specific genres. He hosts his podcast on TalkShoe as well and does a great job of including everyone in his show. We highly encourage you to check out his podcast. He’s also the kind sir who helped us record a couple of male lines in our newly produced bumpers. Darren rocks! Seriously, enjoy it and participate live on Saturdays. http://flickabrac.blogspot.com/

Accident Hash
This is one really rockin’ podcast. CC Chapman is the host of Accident Hash and brings us new podsafe music as often as he can. He finds the music out there that is among the best in unsigned artists and plays it for the world. CC and his podcast Accident Hash is how I found two of my favorite artists Matthew Ebel and Kevin Reeves. Check out this podcast. If you don’t like the music, I guarantee you’ll like the host. http://www.accidenthash.com

Once again, thank you to everyone out there who’s so graciously either plugged us on another podcast or just talked about us out there in the mysterious interweb! We love you and feel free to hate me if I missed someone who may have plugged us. Why not tell me because HECK, we’d love to hear it and then talk about you right in front of you.

Love to you all,
Kim