WordPress Stats Plugin

I am self-hosted at Bluehost, using the “WordPress.com Stats” plugin. Until this morning all I had to do was click the “Site Stats” link on the left side my dashboard and the stats, while slow in loading, eventually came up. But this morning it asked me for my “WordPress.com” password, which has happened once or twice over the past two years or so, but it then pulled up my stats. This morning after I logged in to stats it took me to my old free WordPress.com dashboard. There I have to select my self-hosted site from the options and click “Change”. The stats come up and appear as a bar graph, different from the bullet graph on my self-hosted site, which is ok, but something has changed. In addition, the header section of my self-hosted dashboard changes after the page has fully loaded, either from login or when I click “Dashboard” from another dashboard location. My linked name of my web site appears only briefly, and then it goes away and is replaced with a large WP logo with “WordPress.com” beside it, which “drops down” lower into the header. As it turns out, the link to my web site is still in “WordPress.com”, as when I click on it, my site comes up. Even more weird is this only happens when I am on my “Dashboard” link. From the other dashboard links, such as “Widgets” or “Updates”, etc. the header of the dashboard is normal. I can deactivate my “WordPress.com Stats” plugin, and the header returns to normal.

I am currently using version 3.0.1, and I have no other update notices. I keep all my updates current. Everything was working fine last night when I was last logged in, and I made no updates yesterday or since then. I have run a check with Bluehost, using the “Health Check” plugin, and everything is up to date. Any ideas? Thanks in advance for replies.

PS: I might add that sometimes within the past 12 to 15 months, immediately after one of the WordPress version updates (I don’t recall which), the site stats begin to load very, very slow, and most times I have to click on the “Site Stats” link several times before it will load. Never have figured that one out.