The clock has struck midnight on our 10th annual Buck-a-Hit Day -- actually, we slept through the final bell -- and once again we broke our record for this charity event. As of the close of the day, we amassed $12,093 for our six charities, bettering last year's mark of $10,410 by more than 16%. That's pretty darned good.

Seventy-nine readers clicked on our donation buttons, with gifts ranging from $5 to $1,000, and the six members of our "inner circle" of sponsors primed the pump with contributions as high as $2,000. The $5,890 of reader money that came in during the day was by far a record; last year, the number was $4,762.

We fell a little short on traffic, however, clocking only about 4,600 unique visits for the day; even counting an estimated 100 missed because of a brief server outage in morning prime time, we were shy of the 5,500 hits we had been hoping for. We are now consulting with our sponsors to see if they might be persuaded to give the full amount of their original pledges even though our hit total was shy of our goal. We'll see what they say -- it's up to them -- but as noted earlier, we have racked up at least $12,093, which is a great day.

Once we have the final word from our sponsors, we'll have a detailed breakout of which charities are getting how much of the pot. The largest share will go to the Oregon Food Bank, the perennial favorite charity here; it should get around 40% of our total. Ronald McDonald House is second with about 16%; followed by Virginia Garcia, Sisters of the Road, Human Solutions, and Children's Heart Foundation (about 8%), in that order. If you'd really like to blow our mind, the donation buttons still work; we'll add in any additional amounts that arrive before 3:00 this afternoon, just around the time the cocktail wieners go into the oven for our Cyber-office Christmas Party, which starts at 4-ish.

We're grateful beyond words to everyone who visited, everyone who sent traffic our way, everyone who left a comment, and especially everyone who donated money. It wouldn't be Christmastime at Blog Central without all of you. In the darkest time of a dark year, you have helped some people who need help, which is what the season should be about.