"Where is Lady Lake?", I asked myself.

Yesterday evening my sitemeter showed a visit from someone in Lady Lake, Florida. Since I spent much of my childhood and youth in the Sunshine State, I'm pretty familiar with the geography. Still, because of the tremendous amount of development that has happened there since I left at the end of the 1960s, I will often see the name of a place that is unfamiliar. So it was with Lady Lake.

Then I checked this morning's news, and learned that Lady Lake is a community in Lake County, roughly west of Daytona Beach.

Whoever you are, my reader in Lady Lake, I hope you're well and your house is still standing.

To Fray friends.

Demos called me the night before last with the news about Isonomist's son. I sent Iso an e-mail yesterday; as usual, words couldn't convey anything sufficient.

If you haven't gotten the news, Iso's nineteen year old son, who has been struggling with leukemia, suffered a massive brain hemorrhage. He is now in a "medically induced" coma. His odds of survival are rated low; even if he does live, he is considered certain to have incurred massive cerebral damage.

If you believe in prayer, pray for him. If not, do what you can.

Addendum: If you haven't already, please read TenaciousK's eloquent post.

Meet my maker, Maddy Martini.

As I suspect is true of most mediocre bloggers , I've installed a site meter that keeps track of the visits to my blog, and, in some instances, can tell me from what other site the visitor was referred to mine (some non-mediocre bloggers have these as well; what gives my game up is that I obsessively check mine). A couple of days ago, I followed one of these links back to a site that hosts a fantasy stock market on which one may trade "shares" in blogs using virtual play money, and was amazed to find this blog listed twelfth on a "top 100" roster of best buys. It also showed no one having bought any shares in my blog.

Today, I checked it again and discovered that someone called Maddy Martini had bought 1,250 shares, making up 25% of the equity in Self-Absorbed Boomer (see here, and scroll down to "Shares Owners"). Presumably, the remainder of the shares lie in some limbo for the unsold.

Maddy's purchase, by driving the price per share up to a stunning 46 play cents, seems to have caused SAB to fall off of the top 100 list. What's worrying to me, though, is what Maddy may intend to do with this investment. Will she (I'm assuming Maddy is female) threaten to dump her shares unless I stop posting about ships or college football? Will she demand to know why my output is so much less than that of PiercePenniless, both on quantitative and qualitative bases?

Of course, I could register myself on the fantasy market and buy the remainder of the available shares, thereby assuring myself of outvoting Maddy at the next shareholders' meeting (Good God! Do I have to hold those, now?). But I'm inclined just to lie back and see what happens. If other people want to back my blog, even with play money, I guess I shouldn't complain.

Uh-oh! Maddy now owns fifty percent. How high would you like me to jump?

Good news: share value has almost doubled, to 88 play pennies.

Update: Maddy has increased her holding to 75%, but the noble Homer Fink, of Brooklyn Heights Blog, has bought five per cent, and, in doing so, has driven the share price up to an astronomical $4.13.

Homer, if I make your investment pay off, will you teach me how to play bocce?

Rant of the day.

I'm getting sick unto death of the word "edgy".

Goodbye, Molly.

I recently had occasion to quote from an article by Molly Ivins. Today, she lost her fight with breast cancer.

Texas has now lost two great women in the space of six months.