Wondering Fair celebrates today 10,000 visits! Although no match for McDonald’s or Starbucks’ number of coffees served, we are thrilled to have started our own virtual cafeteria and for the community gathering around it. Thanks to everyone involved, be it through writing, commenting, offering suggestions and helping us spread the word around. Our community is expanding bit by bit, and now includes visits from 80 countries. Cheers to folks down in Libya and the Netherlands Antilles!

News from the WF team of contributors: after renovating her basement during the summer, Jessica is considering construction work if things don’t go as planned, while Hélder is offering consultancy on IKEA furniture assembly. Matt Gray’s baby daughter, the cute gal to the right, has just started giggling, and selected 11:30 pm as her hour of giggle party. Matt writes: “It’s hard to quietly rock to sleep a kid who’s woken up in fits of laughter – you find yourself fluctuating from exhausted annoyance to wanting to join in on the joke.” Madi continues on as a non-stipendiary domestic goddess and waits her second baby, also congrats! Her big challenge now: “trying to stop myself eating more than two bags of salt and vinegar crisps in a row.”

Although not pregnant, Dave also reports snack cutbacks: “I’m discovering first-hand how one’s metabolism slows after 33! … Crispy-Creme Donuts are no longer my friend–doh!”  Also not pregnant, but now experienced in labor-level pain, René is cutting back on goodies too, after a luxurious 3-day reading break in hospital, thanks to a kidney crisis and Rome’s calcium-packed tap water. Mineral water everyone! Jeremy, on the other hand, has had a less acute but more spectacular pain: his chair collapsed right when he was leading a committee meeting at work, to a chorus of gasps. He emerged to to wave a white flag and carry on, but maybe offering Dave’s left-over Crispy-Creme Donuts to everyone could also have worked.

One special thanks goes to Matt Stauffer, who blogs here, and who has been helping us tweak the look and design of Wondering Fair. Articles are more visually readable now, and more lookin’-good improvements are on the way.

As a gift to everyone, besides our regular articles by contributors and guests, John Stackhouse has just posted a new answer to a reader question, at Ask John, and Dave Benson and a team of fellow Aussies have produced a new mp3 resource, One Path, Many Doors, available at the Media page. Enjoy!