While prepping guest blogs for publishing during an upcoming trip, I was startled to notice that in addition to many points across the US, several are written by elders resident in Canada, Greece, Australia, Japan and the U.K.

If you have been using the internet for any reasonable length of time, you probably have friends now in faraway places you've never been and may never visit. We become accustomed to all this internationalism, although the time lag can be amusing.

When I'm perusing email with my morning coffee, it is time for Peter Tibbles' dinner in Melbourne - not to mention that his seasons are the reverse of North America's. I never could figure out what day or time it was there when I corresponded with a scientist who was working in Antarctica for a year. And no matter what time it is here in Portland, Maine, it is almost always tomorrow in Japan where Bob Brady (Pure Land Mountain) lives.

I've been thinking about Bob more than usual recently due to squirrels digging in my deck farm. His garden thieves are monkeys. Monkeys! The most exotic animal I've ever seen around my home is a moose who sauntered down my street during the first year I was here. But monkeys - it's like having your own zoo.

I might never have known there are places in the world where monkeys are yard pests if I hadn't started blogging.

Most Time Goes By readers live in the U.S., but some are scattered around the globe too. So I think it would be fun (and a good bit of relief) to ignore, for a day, Republican sniping at one another; what Nancy Pelosi knew about waterboarding and when she knew it; along with whether Republicans will lose what little Latino vote they have if they try to block the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

Instead, let's give it all a rest and do an informal poll of where we live. There is no special survey page. Just post your city, state or province, and country in the comments. I will then tabulate the responses and have an ordered list with the number of people in each place for us on Friday.

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Leah Aronoff: And It's Only April.