Thursday, February 01, 2007

 

Today's Forecast: light snow falling, with a chance of customers

February. Here it is. Yippee. Ah, the romance and glamour of running your own business! I need to vacuum tracked-in road salt off the hardwood floors, I've been putting it off all week and it's looking decidedly grungy in here. I've had an unexpected rush of customers this morning. Perhaps they came by with a flush of hopeful enthusiasm for the beginning of the month when the zero temperatures depart for good around here. And they all bought books, it was quite wonderful. I hope they come again, and bring their friends. A few items from The Reader's Encyclopedia, today:

Yorick. The King of Denmark's deceased jester, "a fellow of infinite jest and most excellent fancy," whose skull is apostrophized by Hamlet (Act v. I). In Tristram Shandy, Sterne introduces a clergyman of that name, said to be meant for himself. (p.1234)

Youwarkee. In Patlock's romance Peter Wilkins (1750), the name of the gawrey, or flying woman, that Peter Wilkins marries. She introduces the seaman to Nosmnbdsgrsutt, the land of flying men and women. (p.1236) (Who? Where? What???)

Yum-Yum. The heroine of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera The Mikado. (p.1236) (I have The Mikdado on vinyl. "For he's going to marry Yum-Yum, yum-yum...")

A couple of longer entries of note: Yankee, yellow (The Yellow Book, Yellow Jack, etc.), and many interesting Youngs. Nothing much going on today, I'm shuffling papers this afternoon. Exciting stuff, so I'll get back to it. Thanks for reading, those who are.

But before I go, one quick note about those who are reading - I put an invisible stat counter on my blog back in early January, and it's showing around thirty or forty regular visitors every day (Hi! You know who you are!), around a hundred casual visitors (or regulars with no cookies enabled) a day, and overall for the month a few thousand page loads. I can also take a look at return paths for visitors, and it's cool to see how people end up here - their Google key-word searches, boomarks, other bookish blogs' sidebars, and the like. The coolest thing, though, is the world map I can pull up, with little flags all over it representing readers. I do like the visuals. Anyway, however you all ended up here, my thanks, again.

One more thing - jeez, I've got to get to work - a new article by Mark Helprin. About books and authors, without naming names (well, a few). His flag is always flying, and this one is snapping in a strong gale. Read to the end of the article, do not abandon it midstream, please - it gets a bit rough, but he comes back around to hope, as he usually does.

Comments:
Just to let you know that I read you every day too, but I probably don't show up in your stats because I read you straight from your RSS feed in my Bloglines account.
 
Hi Lesley, thanks for reading! I have no idea if the RSS feed shows up. I just like all the pretty colors on the graphs and maps.

:O)
 
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