A Sunday Box of Rocks:

As indicated by the title, this post will be literally all-over-the-map.

You ever wonder about blogging?

How about this:

Over 12 million American adults currently maintain a blog.
More than 147 million Americans use the Internet.
Over 57 million Americans read blogs.

1.7 million American adults list making money as one of the reasons they blog.
89% of companies surveyed say they think blogs will be more important in the next five years.
9% of internet users say they have created blogs .
6% of the entire US adult population has created a blog .
Technorati is currently tracking over 70 million blogs .
over 120 thousand blogs are created every day .
There are over 1.4 million new blog posts every day .
22 of the 100 most popular websites in the world are blogs .
37% of blog readers began reading blogs in 2005 or 2006 .
51% of blog readers shop online .
Blog readers average 23 hours online each week .

Do NOT minimize the major blogs you frequent. You never know who just might be a very influential and subtle powerhouse.

And Fall is here.

The leaves are beginning to drop. The sap is beginning to pool on my car. The snap-cones are littering my deck. Right now, as I write this at midnight, storm clouds are literally gathering in the darkness and the winds make the pines bend and hiss. I'm expecting rain. Blessed rain.

People in my mountains have said: this will be a wet winter. It will be a colder winter. Wetter or colder, I'll take whatever it gives.

I still have to hoist the wood from my outer deck and onto my inside stack. Unlike other counties in Fornicalia I can still burn wood in an open stove. No pellets. No bullshit. No restrictions. Because, after all, we leave our cars running when we get mail at the post office or groceries at the store. We kill horse thieves. Steal a car? You're a horse thief.

I can remember a couple of years ago: I stopped at the post office and left my car running. I was heeled. I came out and this guy, in the summer -- clearly a Flatlander -- observed that I must be "stupid" to leave the keys there. With the motor engaged. I pulled my shirt aside to reveal my personal Sig. "No big deal," I said. "We shoot thieves here." I paused. "You a thief?"

I hate summer. Fall and winter are, quite frankly, my favorite months. Spring isn't so bad -- but for me it heralds the scorching months to come.

Aaaah, fall. For me it means football, the cessation of DST, cooler nights, higher winds, stacking my wood, turning leaves, the purchase of new personal knives, handgun qualification, shotgun qualification, a new blanket on the bed and, perhaps more pointedly, the exchange of my thin summer bedsheet for a quilted poofy comforter.

It also means some new local beers to sample.

An addendum: I signed my wife and I up for a year's contract with Massage Envy. I figured that we could use the relaxation, the additional sessions. ME is remarkably flexible. If you have an ability to pay. That seems to be a priority now, with me and my wife. Some people are "ucky" with other persons touching them. Good for you. More massages for me.

Today sucked. I work in Custody now. If we can't even perform the Basics we are doomed to failure. And I posit that failure isn't more than "just around the corner."

I still count my blessings:

I have a wife who adores me, and I adore her;

I am proud of the ring on my finger;

We have figured out how to argue, disagree, then make up. Consistently. And to vent.

I live in the most powerful, the most outrageous, the most blessed, the most overbearing, the most civil, the most arrogant nation in the world.

And I wouldn't want it any other way.

You want to live in Haiti or the Third or Fourth or Fifth World?

You go ahead. Be my damned guest.

BZ