Maryland Scramble was born on March 21, so as of midnight last night it’s 285 days old. In that just over nine month period, the squalling, colicky infant made an awful lot of noise:

And the month of December was by far the best month yet. Here’s the monthly trends in terms of page views.

  
December exceeded the best prior month (October) by almost 12%. It would have been much higher but for the holiday drop off the past 10 days or so.
But it was in unique visitors that we broke the bank in December. The prior high (again from October) was 5,160. In December, buoyed by the unusual letter writing stylings of Senate President Mike Miller and Comptroller Peter Franchot, Maryland Scramble saw 7,918 unique visitors, exceeding the old record by a whopping 53%.

  
 What’s next? Well, the sky’s the limit. Each month brings new readers and new stories and new sources. I want to expand the use of guest posts: if you have something to share with the class, let me know. If you agree (or even better, disagree) with something I wrote, write it up yourself. If you think I’m spending too little time on an issue, speak up.

I’ll have a top 25 posts of 2015 up later today, so you can reminisce on your favorite pieces or maybe catch up on ones you missed. In the meantime, thank you for being part of this half-accidental, always exciting, never boring, slightly out of control thrill ride. Here’s hoping that we can make 2016 even more fun than last year.