Status Update: Cold Friday

By comparison with the Big Freeze earlier this month it's not a particularly cold Friday. As I stepped off the porch below the outside thermometer, the thermometer was reading 30 degrees Fahrenheit (-1 Celsius). I walked briskly into town. Of course, because the springlike weather had coaxed flower buds out of the ornamental Prunus and even full blooms on some tulips and daffodils, earlier in the week, most people were huddled indoors, complaining about how co-o-old it was.

The wind was gusty all day. I caught a lift with a neighbor who was willing to haul me into the Friday Market, but his truck was wet, and of course the ground was also wet, so I couldn't even bring out anything that needed to be kept dry. I went into the market and stood behind a row of bottled drinks and one bag of small knitted pieces for about an hour, and since I was no longer walking, even though the sun was shining I began to feel chilled. And of course, although it was a sunny day and some people who don't always come to market had brought in wonderful displays of useful things, not many people came in at all. In a little over an hour I'd earned $4--enough for one meal and coffee. Not much of an income to last all week. Friday Market usually slows down every hour; I didn't see enough prospects of sales later in the morning to stay out in the chill. So I came in.

You, Gentle Readers, need to support this web site. This week's good news has been that Paypal is now making that easy. The new payment buttons no longer use "i-frames," so although setting them up is time-consuming, they should work. They may automatically add something you've not added to your own "virtual shopping cart." When I tested the system (without actually authorizing a payment) Paypal did add an extra book to each mock order, but removed it with one click.

What this web site now needs is a "Store" section with an index to every product for which a Paypal button has been set up...I'll be working on that, too, along with adding Paypal buttons to all the book reviews from all the years when Paypal buttons didn't work for this site at all.