As some of you may have noticed, I hit the 1,000 post mark earlier this week.

One of my regular visitors, Sarah Marchildon (who has a very amusing blog of her own), offered to treat me to an ice cream cone!

However, I live in Toronto. She lives in Vancouver and wasn't very specific in her initial message about how she would actually pay for this generous act. :^)

(To be fair, she did ask me about ice cream pricing and offered to send reimbursement.)

But that got me thinking (always a dangerous idea): Some blogs have PayPal accounts so you can make a micro-payment to them, but I wonder how tough it would be to set up a deal with a favourite pub to have someone buy you a virtual pint.

So if Joe Blow from Kokomo says, "Damned good blog, Bill: Let me buy you a beer!," that option is there! I just trundle down to the pub, its computer sees the credit in my account, and the elixir is poured.

To this point in my blogging career, this is a strictly theoretical concern, as only Ms. Marchildon has even offered some tangible thanks for all the hours and hours I spend slaving over this keyboard so that you can get four or five seconds of amusement.

But if it could be done, it would be kinda cool.

I have heard of "starving student" blogs where people have put gift lists on their blogs, in the hope that if you like it, you can buy something for them on amazon or wherever. But I really don't want or need anything material -- a pint (or ice cream cone, for that matter) is an excellent gesture, I say!