I'm changing my name to Jane...or Charlemagne

This morning I was reading about making money blogging, because Chris says it's time to start making some money with my writing. And as much as Chris likes to think that we're gonna be able to live off the income from my blog (dooce, anyone?) I just don't see it happening, but I figured I'd give it a shot. So I'm looking for handy tips and tricks, when I come across this great site, Absolutely Bananas. She's a mommy blogger/blog tip-giver (that's the actual term you know). Anyway, I was reading about essentials for any blog, and I'm discovering I've taken none of the suggested steps, and I actually suck more than I initially thought. I was reading one suggestion about protecting your privacy and it totally freaked me out. There's this site, called whois that enables you to see all the personal information about the person who has registered the website. Now you'd think since I've had a blog for like a year, I would've known that. I totally didn't. I was like, well, let's test this theory, I'm SURE it's not that easy. Yeah, it's really that easy. I put in my website and it brought back my name and street address. So here I am blogging away, completely oblivious to the fact that my personal information is right out there for the whole world to see.

Then I read this story about a blogger who had posted her baby's pictures and stuff on her blog, and someone stole them and passed them off as her own and just acted like all around wack job. So now I'm totally freaked out. I've always made fun of people who didn't use their kids' names on their blog, like calling them Brussel Sprout and Flowerpot (which is totally what I'm calling my kids from now on), but now I'm thinking maybe I've done the wrong thing. The likelihood of getting a stalker is pretty slim (since I have like 8 daily readers), but I'm freaked out anyway. So I go to godaddy and upgrade my account so that now I'm not listed on this horrible website, and then had this conversation via text messages with Chris, who was beside himself with concern.

Me: That's freakin scary. It doesn't say my address, but it still says my name.

Chris: Well, your name is Merritt, that's gonna be hard to hide.

Me: True...

Chris: I mean, if you search Google for just that, you'll probably find you...

Me: Probably :/ I'm changing my name to Jane.

Chris: Jane Doe?

Me: No, just Jane.

Chris: Oh. Jane is a weird name. Go with one of those fancy names like Charlemagne.

Me: And you think that would help people not identify me because Charlemagne is so much more common than Merritt?

Chris: No, but at least it's cooler than Jane. How about Rambo? I'd totally name my kid Rambo.

Me: You're retarded.

Chris: I know, isn't it wonderful?

Clearly he's overwrought with concern. And on a side note, this is why we're not having more kids. Rambo? So not happening