So you don't have to. You never know what you are going to see above. Since we spend most of the day looking downwards at books, laboring over our literary treasures, at night it is a different world. We go out into the dusk and try to sight the celestial bodies.

Because of the bright street lights that come on after dusk, the glow of the sky obscures most of the subtlety of the sky. But we still look up and imagine the orderly procession of the stars, and at least we have our lunar neighbor which is visible. If you have sharp enough eyes, you can see a little speck from last night's photo, which is one of our planetary neighbors. We are checking the records to be sure, but it is probably Venus, since the other planets become visible later at night. Tonight is a half moon, or first quarter, whatever it is called, we get easily confused by formal terminology. We keep a moon phase clock to keep us apprised as to the relative brightness of the moon on any given night.

We did not put up any new books today, we shipped some out, we purchased some new ones, and we found some DVDs for sale. Such is the quotidian saga of the day-to-day life. Of course we met some new people, talked to some old friends, and even had a celebration in the evening over a repast of Chinese food and someone even proposed a toast, so life was seeming sublime compared to other days.

We are shipping out a children's Portuguese dictionary in picture-book format. Sorry you missed it. It went for about $30.00 USD with added shipping. The next highest price on Saturday when we listed the book was $245.00 USD. We think that some booksellers get a little crazy with their pricing, since the book was only 72 pages long. We will be puzzling over that riddle for a while to come. It only took 3-4 days to sell, which is always encouraging, and the book is going to a good home. Did we lose $215 dollars in potential profit by selling the book at too low a price?

We will have to ask the Oracle. It comes in a plastic wrapper as a kind of dessert after a Chinese meal in these parts. One must perform the proper ritual of deference and humility, which is followed by the cracking sound of the tan cookie being broken open to obtain the slip of paper with the lottery numbers and the desired phrase that will determine one's earthly fate.

Eating the cookie at the Hi-Tech-And-Antique International Headquarters is optional. Usually by the end of the meal, the staff and companions of the staff and associated friends and relatives are too full for dessert. We would rather just read our tomes with Master Kung (Kǒng Fūzǐ). If you have the East Asia character set you should see the Chinese characters here: 孔夫子, otherwise you will probably just see a jumble of shapes or random symbols. The fonts are available as an option on Windows, or maybe it is supported by browsers, we have always used it as a language option. Here is the phrase we reviewed tonight as our rather ponderous "philosophical" fortune cookie. Thank you Master Kung, wherever you are, for making us think about the potential power of words and their effects on the larger world. It is applicable to rulers today as it was then:

Duke Ting asked if there were one sentence which (if acted upon) might have the effect of making a country prosperous.

Confucius answered. A sentence could hardly be supposed to do so much as that. But there is a proverb people use which says:" To play the prince is hard to play the minister not easy". Assuming that it is understood that "to play the prince" is hard would it not be probable that with that one sentence the country should be made to prosper?

"Is there then" he asked "one sentence which (if acted upon) would have the effect of ruining a country?" Confucius again replied, "A sentence could hardly be supposed to do so much as that. But there is a proverb men have which says 'Not gladly would I play the prince unless my words were ne'er withstood.' Assuming that the (words) were good and that none withstood them, would not that also be good? But assuming that they were not good, and yet none withstood them, would it not be probable that with that one saying he would work his country's ruin?"