Why I Oughta...

I received this note from Google Local Guides telling me that one of my photos on Google Maps has hit 6M views.  It is of this pet store in Naperville that I posted back in 2016.   I've been chronicling my Google Local Guides experience over time here on the blog .  The last time I looked at the stats was back in May of 2018 when I had 4M OVERALL photo views .   Before that, in February of 2017, I was at 2.5M views . So, this one photo has 6M views alone.  And, when I went to look at my overall views, I'm now at 15M photo views.  That's 4X growth in 32 months.

I've posted about my participation in the Google Local Guides program where you provide reviews, ratings and photos of local businesses and places.  I've been doing it for a couple of years and have hit a few milestones along the way.  This week, Google emailed me this note you see above:  my photos have been viewed 4M times.  Yeah...four million.  That's crazy, but with Google's scale, I guess it shouldn't be surprising. In February of 2017, I shared the previous milestone:  2.5M photo views .  So, it took me 14 months or so to get the next 1.5M views.  In March of 2016, I hit "Level 4" on the platform .  Today, I'm a "Level 7".  And guess what?  This email made me go back into the system and add a few more photos and engage even more.  Nurturing at it's best, right? 

Earlier this fall, we went to MOD Pizza right on St. Charles Road in Elmhurst as it was the first of the 'fast' pizza places that had opened around here.   I posted about the experience here on the blog .  I really liked it and would recommend trying both the pizzas and the salads.  Right across the street - and I mean *RIGHT.ACROSS.THE.STREET* is another of the pizza joints called Pie Five Pizza Co. Earlier this week, after a bit of Christmas shopping, we took the kids to try Pie Five.  The girls ordered kids pizzas (one had pepperoni and the other had bacon), while Nat had one of their pre-made combos (a Tuscan-something with sun-dried tomatoes) and I created my own (sausage/pepperoni/peppers).  I also ordered a salad.  But, unlike MOD Pizza, the salad selections are pre-made.  Meaning, you get either a garden salad (with pre-set ingredients) or an Italian (with pre-set ingredients) or a Caesar (with the normal Caesar stuff). The place is HUGE...