Bloggers are a vain lot. They watch their hit counters regularly to see how many readers they're drawing in. They usually announce when the odometer turns over at some milestone or another.

Try as I might to resist such vanity, I can't help but note here that visitor no. 10,000 to this blog made the scene at 11:21:15 p.m. West Coast time this evening. It was an AOL user from the East Coast.

What brought them here? A three-word search:

But to have 10,000 visits in less than 10 months is a big kick for me. It works out to 34 visits a day on average. Blogging superstars like Tony Pierce and Howard Bashman pick up 34 visits in 10 minutes on a good day. But for me, it's an honor to have that big a readership in a day.

Actually, it took a while to ramp up, and these days the hit count is around twice that. But who's counting?