Inedible Ink

We call him the little man. My son’s 19 months old this week, so there should be much more little than man about him at the moment. I’ve taken the liberty of putting his manly manifesto into words for him:

Farts are funny.
Eye gouge, head-butt and dope-slap like a Three Stooges movie. Anyone that doesn’t think that’s funny will stay out of your way. It’s a win-win.
The best way to figure out how something works is to take it apart.
The best place for the hex nuts you don’t want to lose from the thing you’re taking apart is in your mouth.
Scope, Ogle & Stare isn’t a law firm it’s the girl-watching triathlon.
The best place to pee without the benefit of a diaper is on the trunk of a tree.
If you don’t say “Brrrrrmmm” as you drive your toy tractor along the couch furrows, it might as well be a Barbie.
When watching TV, hold the remote control unit. If your diaper’s off, hold that unit too.

The Thinking Toolbox by Nathaniel and Hans Bluedorn

I’d really like to give this book a glowing-two-thumbs-up run-out-and-get-it kind of a review. But that’s not happening.

I want it to be a good book because the prospects for a book that teaches reasoning skills to school-age kids and their parents are so exciting. A book that helped its students to build sensible arguments with proper logic and not fall prey to logical fallacies often presented as fact would be a cherished addition to my library. That glass is half filled at best.

It is directed at students aged thirteen and up. The language is indeed approachable. It avoids the terminology of philosophy and the technical jargon of the scientific method. The clarity of the text suffers under the burden of addressing a technical subject without the benefit of technical language. While I do sympathize with the effort to keep this book from becoming a lesson in latin, I would suggest that the authors reacquaint themselves with the concept of Non Sequitur. That might have been helpful in editing the book.

I cannot find anywhere in the book a credit for Editor. Hmmm.

The illustrator, however, is prominently credited. The illustration verges upon being a real highlight but is used a little haphazardly overall. I get the impression that someone, reading a draft thought, “ya know? it’s been three pages since we had an illustration, let’s stick one in here.”

The book is laid out in a friendly manner. The fonts are readable and spacing is generous. I’d guess they were emulating the usability of the successful …”for Dummies” series. The Dummies publishers use illustrations, typeface, icons, sidebars and shading as visual cues that convey meaning and context to the written word. In “Toolbox” they’re used less effectively than that.

I’m glad to see a teaching text filled with examples. Each chapter is followed by a series of case study style problems. The presentation of these problems is choppy. I felt that some of the problems were poor demonstrations of the subject being covered.

Here’s the Sweet Spot: Buy this book if…
You’re homeschooling a young teen or tweenager. And, you’re beginning study in Logic, Philosophy or Scientific Method. And, you’re going to be there to clarify and assist when the examples at the end of each chapter seem to be incongruous with the chapter.

A copy of the book was provided free of charge by Mind & Media.

World Weather Information Service - Phoenix, Arizona

“18 Jul (Mon) 92 115 VERY HOT”

Seems that little “VERY HOT” comment is required by some users of the World Weather Service who both fail to recognize that message in the “115 deg F” data and fail to gather that it’s “Very Hot” from the little flaming thermometer graphic.

How do they manage to write these things without getting all graphic and animated?
If I had that gig:
“This is oven-mitts territory, people.”
“Wicked freakin’ hot”
“Hotrageous!”
“Caution is urged around molten asphalt.”

Planarity is my kind of game, though, if you play beyond level 5 or so, you might think me damaged for saying so. It’s satisfying in the same way that FreeCell is, bringing order to chaos, you untangle a thing that looks like it was coughed up by a prototype of the not quite ready for mass market Ronco “Sock-Shooter”.

Each level ends when all the dots (vertices) are arranged such that none of the edges overlap. It looks like a rough gem when you’ve finished.

“A hairnet?” “You think it looks like a hairnet?”
“Kinda.”
“It does, doesn’t it.”
“Mmhmm.”
“Who’s going to want to play a game with a hairnet in it?”

So, I was saying, it looks like a rough gem when you’ve finished a level. Very satisfying.

The flash app needs a little work, it lags and hangs at higher levels. (Oh, say, eleven.) But in all John Tantalo, an undergrad at Case Western Reserve University, gets props for putting it together. And Case Western gets props for hosting it, or for not knowing that they’re hosting it. Either way, I’m flexible.

You’ll have to forgive me another rerun. We’re just now back home from our family’s fifth Emergency Department trip. I’ll write about tonight’s trip soon enough, this story is about two years old as well. From May 2003, the bead crisis…

Ah, the bead crisis. It’s all a bit anticlimactic, I’m afraid, it goes like this….

My first clue to something amiss was the dog, running out under the garage door to greet me when I came home from work, I’m running late and I know that there just fifteen minutes before Bette needs to leave to be ontime for work. The dog should not have access to the garage, too much dog-incompatible stuff. I have to wait for the garage door to go up so that I can stop it. It has a certain point of No Return where if you’re not quick with the button you end up having to wrestle with the dusty dryrotted derelict thing to get it back down. A little sunlight found its way back to the pedestrian door so I can see Bette, Tia and Lizzie. I can’t quite make out the activity underway in the garage, and I’m partly concerned that the dog is loose in the driveway and might head into the road. I am just arranging the time of day alongside Bette’s nonhospital attire in my mind and am forming a temptation to believe that she has the night off when the dog sticks her nose in the driver’s door and the garage door passes No Return.

I am very quickly informed that I am needed immediately, and no, this is not her night off, and no, she has not been cancelled.

Most nights, even if I am as late as this, I am graciously allowed by my family to set the pace of my own reinvolvement, just like Mr. Rogers had his routine with the song the sneaks and the sweater, well, I usually get to change shoes too. This is like Lady Elaine and Mr. Greenjeans interrupting before the ‘Won’t you be my neighbor?’ song is half done.

“Tia has a bead up her nose. I need a light and I need you to hold her. We’ve been hoping you’d get home soon. We’ll have to take her to the E.D. if we can’t get it.” ED is professional-talk for Emergency “Department” because, it isn’t a “Room” after all, is it?

“Really?” “She seems to be breathing OK.” This is two messages in one: Tia is hollering very effectively, there is no risk of suffocation short of her inhaling the bead further and choking and she’s upset. Let’s all take a break from chasing her down with flashlights and tweezers for a moment to observe that she’s upset.

“Yes, really.” my question has obviously come across as possible spousal professional disrespect and my nonchalance must look akin to parental neglect while my functional airway observation is unwelcome sarcasm and a second helping of spousal professional disrespect. “I’ve been on the phone with day shift, and they agree that this is an E.D. matter.”

“So, you want me to hold her while you grab it with tweezers?”

“The foreceps are too big.” My dumb question must’ve sounded like more second guessing.

“Can I pee first?” This is legit. I try hard to drink 2 liters of water during the work day, and too often I don’t make the coffee-to-water switch until late in the day. It would’ve been a clever delay ploy if I had needed one, I didn’t need to ploy, I needed to, well, nevermind. “Are you planning on going to work?”.

“They know I’m already going to be late, and they know what we’re working on, but I’m not called in.” She started getting ready to go to work. Tia was glad to be released.

A little later, we reconvened with flashlight and tweezers. I took a look and saw nothing, or effectively nothing, after all I was looking for a small round pink translucent thing in a small round pink dark hole.

There was an extended, lengthy, difficult struggle while I held Tia and Bette probed for the bead, perhaps 7 seconds elapsed.

Try to explain blowing through the nose to a three year old in the midst of a crisis. “No. That’s your mouth. good, close your mouth, no, that’s in, we need out right now, ok that’s out but your mouth is open again, try again, through your nose, no, out, yes, no, your nose, no, out.” This is perfectly futile and as close as we got to success at home.

Next came a doomed effort to suction (vacuum) it out that was part drinking straw, part shop vac, all noisy, and all frightening. Let the record show that T was a trooper for these experiments, she was a squirmy trooper that screamed and cried alot, but she was well justified, we were vacuuming the inside of her nostril, you know.

“Do you girls want to watch a movie?” This was too off-track and off-task again for Bette who was determined to right the wrong before she left for work. I put a favored video in for the girls and got them juice. Bette was afraid that I had lost my marbles and was going to either ignore this until it went away by itself, or ignore it until she came home from work in the morning when she would have to make the trip to the ER, pardon me, ED by herself after a sleepless night. I had wondered if this might be better treated by the pediatrician the next morning, but I was clear in the understanding that there was a long evening at the hospital on my schedule. I had made this determination during the failed tweezing efforts. Father might know best, but mother gets her way.

The movie was just what Lizzie needed. For a little while she stopped trying to look up Tia’s nose and asking if it would be up there forever or would the Doctor have a bigger vacuum cleaner at the hospital or would they make her drink black juice* or some other colored elixir. Tia did not relax, but was probably pretty glad to be out of my headlock and freed of the tweezers, the straw and Lizzie’s eyes uncomfortably far up her left nostril.

I assured Bette that I would take her to the hospital without delay, and that this video was just a break for us all while I readied coloring books, juice sippys, story books, crayons, library books and pyjamas. She could go to work, and we’d visit her unit after our business was done downstairs.

The second time I asked Tia if she was ready to go to the hospital, she said that she was.

The garage door returns from above No Return with a lucky lurch, and we drive up to the hospital

I was pretty pleased with my own ability to act cool, like, this happens all the time, no big. I think both girls were able to relax in part because Dad’s eyes revealed no alarm. But evidence that I was not so relaxed came in the form of a hospital volunteer. I gave her all of the insurance info, told our little bead up the nose story, made a little small talk and explained that Tia-short-for-Therese is the little one. All of the visible panic was on Lizzie’s paled face, so besides the fact that the hospital forms said that the patient was a three-year-old (and Lizzie is frequently mistaken for a third-grader because of her stature and speech), she was presumed to be the one in need. Through the I’m-perfectly-cool-facemask I was apparently unable to recognize one of the only three beautiful women who ever have left me literally breathless, at a distance of just under arms length. She finally reached out and touched my arm warmly and said “I know you from work, don’t I?, How ~are~ you? How have you been?” She said this like she was a long lost dear friend, Miss Virginia 1999, Miss America 2001, and The Democratic Party’s nomination for Leader Of The Free World in 2004 all at exactly the same time. I responded in the same way I would respond if Coors beer’s buxom blonde twins spoke to me directly from the billboard and asked “How ~are~ you?”. I blinked and said “You mean besides the fact that my little girl has a bead up her nose, don’t you?”

There was lots of waiting, I was apparently not alone in my assessment that this was not a life threatening incident. And there was lots of crayon coloring. ESPN’s Baseball Tonight was on with the sound turned down.

It is an Emergency ‘Department’ isn’t it? There is no one-size-fits-all answer to emergencies. There are all kinds of folks in there. There are the hurt, the very hurt, the sick, the very sick, the EMTs, nurses, paramedics, firemen, cops, respiratory therapists, Doctors of differing stripes, the wheeled and the wheelers, the wheelless, the splinted, the cervical-collared, the wrapped and the back-boarded are all there. Lizzie’s daddy can’t begin to answer her questions about why they’re all there and what they’re all doing.

In the end, I get the honor of removing the bead myself. One hand holds the back of her head, another pinches her opposite nostril closed, a firm puff of air into her mouth forces the bead into plain view. It is, relatively, enormous. Her nostril is stretched wide and the doctor’s finger pushes it the rest of the way out. This, I think, you could have suggested over the phone.

The nurse suggests that a little neosporin in the nostril would help prevent infection, I think that’s utter nonsense, but manage an obedient nod all the same. The same nurse gives us directions to Bette’s unit upstairs and direction to the nearest elevator. I should not have asked directions to the ‘nearest’ elevator, I should have asked directions to the elevator referenced in the previous set of directions because the two sets of directions given, when followed in sequence, led directly into Surgery. Oops. “Lizzie, don’t go in there, come back, please right now.” The pressurized rush of sterile air did not faze her in the least. I followed with Tia in my arms lest the automatic door close behind Lizzie and strand her in with the blue people. After explaining and apologizing to a fully gowned, masked and beslippered OR nurse, I did a little indoor bushwhacking and made our way to the correct unit. Our arrival there was met with equally wide eyes, as the door we used was the ‘back’ door used only for going to surgery or the morgue. People sent out that way do not come back unannounced.

There is a cat in the parking lot on our way home who makes for good distractions from conversations about how Lizzie thinks Tia deserves an ice cream treat. He is stealthy and shy and each time I say “There he goes again.” in responses to suggestions of the Library and McDonalds it is always partially true and more intriguing than reasons like ‘the library closed hours ago’.

When I do get to take off my shoes at home, I set aside my employee badge for the next day and I realize that can’t conjure an image of what that hospital volunteer used to look like so many years ago.

Today, the girls remember the shadowy cat sneaking around in the hospital parking lot after our visit and sometimes wonder what it found to eat there. The beads of the broken toy necklace have all been thrown away except for one. It has been suggested that the semi-precious pink faceted plastic bead be incorporated into a handmade fishing lure that is saved for her use on a special occasion. That may happen one day.

* The Black Juice is the activated charcoal suspension liquid that was pumped into Lizzie’s stomach during her own ER visit as a two-year-old. She remembers it well and is sure that it is the terriblest of medicines reserved for grave situations.

On the drive home today, I passed a man on his road bike. The man was wearing a yellow jersey.

Normally, I’ve got nothing but respect for athletes of all kinds, citizen athletes, adult-onset athletes, collegiate athletes and even professional jocks get a thumbs-up and a wave from me. I love ‘em.

But every July I get my back up over the yellow jersey.

The ten-speeds come out of every garage, the yellow jerseys come out of nowhere and the Be Like Lance Parade of Two-wheelers starts in every neighborhood in America.

Yesterday, with the overall lead in hand, Lance passed up the yellow overall race-leader’s jersey in favor of his team colors. He had the right to wear it, but it would have been disrespectful to the previous lead rider who had fallen. It would have been a dis’ to his fellow rider and a dis’ to the jersey and a dis’ to Tour de France tradition to wear yellow.

His sponsor balked and complained to race officials. (Bitching to the man of brass doesn’t work, hmmm?) Those race officials thumped the rulebook in Lance’s face while giving him two choices: 1.) Wear Yellow. 2.) Stay Home.

Yellow, then.

But ’splain me this Lucy: How does the guy huffing down my street conclude that he rates that fancy shirt every single day of July? Poser asshole.

Harsh? Maybe, but I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’ve never had testicular cancer, but for a period of a few days some years back I honestly believed I did have that particular cancer. I carried It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life around with me to doctor’s appointments and I tried to believe that I was half that courageous.

Lance is a model of courage and strength for anyone who needs one. Anyone who is facing a battle with cancer or happens to have French cycling officials waving rule books and pushing urine sample cups at them can look to Lance. In other words, this Texan’s got balls.

The unfortunate anatomical truth, is different. As a survivor of an aggressive cancer that very nearly killed him and an aggressive treatment regime that wasn’t far behind, the ‘boys’ were two sacrifices that had to be made immediately after initial diagnosis.

Your vanity probably doesn’t work like mine. Quite probably, you’ve never lived in France. I hope you’ve never considered undergoing the surgery that Lance’s recovery started with. Me? well, I wondered if French National health insurance covers these. Skip past the canine and feline sections.

You wanna be like Lance? Get out and ride, but show some respect.

06-29-05_1759.jpg
Originally uploaded by Captoe.

Smoke from one of the wildfires here in Arizona.
posted by Mike at 7/07/2005 09:22:45 PM

(The following was written two years ago…)

I hit a bear (yeah, the big furry black kind: Ursus americanus) with the Budget-rent-a-Taurus on the way to church Sunday morning June 15. Everyone’s OK, even the car escaped with nothing more than a bear-shaped clean spot (where the bugs and dust from the bumper were violently wiped off the car and onto the bear) surrounded by a bear-halo shaped exceptionally dirty spot (where the bugs and dust from the bear were violently transferred from the bear onto the car.) The bear, mercifully, for me as well as for him, as he spent his last moments crying, died very quickly.

I’m not sure what mythology and astrology have to say about Taurus slaying Ursus, but I’m gonna look it up. I’m betting that mythology has a story of the fearsome bear getting tossed off the horns of the bull into the path and fleeing at a frantic gallop only to crash face first into the dust and die of its injuries as an explanation for the existence of the constellation Ursa Major. Wall Street has its mythology too, but those guys are unreliable, always switching sides to root for the favorite.

Did I mention that I got out of the car? I probably didn’t, because everyone agrees that it was a dumb move, and I don’t like to be thought of as dumb, so I haven’t been too eager to bring it up among people whose respect I value.

• One, the bear was down, quiet and not moving. I could have been back in the car in a moment had he gotten up.
• Two, I wanted to check the front end of the car, particularly the radiator. It was almost surreal that the car was fine, no visible damage.
• Three, I hated the feeling that there was nothing I could do for the bear.

Either Tiss said “There’s nothing you can do.” three times aloud or she said it aloud once and it echoed inside my head, either way it was an idea I was loath to accept.

Lizzie thought it was the baby bear that had been knocked down and mama and papa bear must surely be lurking. The view from the booster seat and her applicable knowledge of bears are both limited. Using ratios estimated from illustrations in “Goldilocks and the three bears”, and presuming that the 200 lbs animal that had just spun through the air was “Baby” I was taking on another combined 13 to 15 hundred pounds of displeased bearflesh by getting out of the car. It is no wonder that she was especially concerned for my safety, frantic.

There was, after all, nothing we could do. We proceeded on to church.

We were informed during that little post church socially interactive minute that yes, indeed, a classmate of somebody’s daughter’s and of Anne’s, my sister-in-law’s, a Stephanie S. had seen a bear in the woods surrounding her house. I hit the bear just up the street from Stephanie S.’s driveway.

Dear Stephanie,
I’m sorry for killing your bear. I slammed on the brakes as hard as I ever have in my life. In an instant that I cannot remember the brake pedal was pegged the car was in a skid. I’m glad you got to see him while he was alive. Have fun at the Prom, drive safe.
Signed, - Mike, the guy that killed your bear.

We visited the scene on the way home. I misjudged the exact location by enough for me to think for a moment that he had got up and shuffled off to do whatever it was he had been on his way to do an hour or so prior. Yet we came upon the bear just a few yards further up the road. I approached with some care, making a wide arc to see an eye from some distance. But a bear that has laid still within plain sight of a road for an hour is a dead bear. His eye was glassy and flat looking and his gums were pale and whitish. This was a bear with no blood pressure.

I was engrossed with the details of this animal when Bette and the girls made their own cautious approach. He was truly large, a front claw equaled two joints of my index finger, his hind foot was as long as my own hand and half again as wide, (my own hand is 8.25″ by 4.25″ large enough to palm a basketball). Tia said “I see a beawr’s toowth.” and then “He has a wittle tail.” from not far off. She was either more curious or less horrified than Lizzie who didn’t get as close. I wish today that I had done a more thorough inspection because it seems so clear in hindsight that it is a truly rare and valuable opportunity to touch and feel all of the parts of such an animal. But at that moment I didn’t get far past the looking and being awed. To grab him by the muzzle and count his teeth one would’ve needed to be less in awe than I was.

It was astonishing how dirty this animal was, the community of insect life living in that fur was as busy and as varied as you would dare to imagine and then some. There were flies, tiny centipedes, termites, every creeping thing that creepeth by the dozen. Fragments of leaves, dust, twigs and dirt that would’ve fallen off of an ordinary coat were held in place because the fur was so greasy, like he’d used too much cheap hairspray and then slept on the floor of the woodshed.

The feelings of remorse and loss of this animal were exaggerated by the sheer improbability and shocking suddenness of the thing. I don’t know of anyone who has ever seen a bear in Otsego County before, except Stephanie S.

My father-in-law rose to shake my hand and with a big grin said something like “30 years now I’ve been riding around in these woods looking for bear, sign, and track and you come in here for not even two weeks and Bam!” he smacked his palm “you kill one! Ha!” My remorse was tempered by this handshake and new perspective.

The local sheriff had been called. It was time for us to get out of the state. The sheriff was called to inquire how one would legally claim the carcass and we were scheduled to fly US Airways 1011 in under 4 hours bear or no bear. All the same, I was not around when the authorities arrived.

I mulled over the oh-so-easy rental car return process and felt in the end that the bear shaped clean spot was adequate compensation for the bear shaped dirty spot, and that each of those was a clear telling of the story, so the guys at Budget needn’t know any more of the gory details from me, it could lead only to misery and fretting over how there was no little checkbox marked “BEAR, HIT” on the triplicate carbon form required to report an “INCIDENT” to “HEADQUARTERS”. Dear Budget, If there’s anything wrong with the car, I’m sorry, really, but admit it, you would have had no glimmering of an idea of what to do about it except for the part where you ask me to sit in some manager’s office while you fret, search the triplicate carbon form for the little checkbox that is not there, inspect the car and make inane remarks about how you had no idea that they were so dirty and how that must have something to do with shitting in the woods while US Airways Flight 1011 leaves without us. You didn’t even see the dirt and bugs. Did ya’?

789 Bears were killed in the state of N.Y. by bear-licensed hunters, that is of course to say hunters carrying licenses to hunt bears, not licenses issued by bears. I’m not sure if that makes my bear a drop in the bucket, because he’s 1/8% of the mortality or all the more significant because all of the bloodthirsties in the whole damned state of 19,000,000 people, a disproportionate number of whom are loonies and otherwise violent, took the whole year to do in 789 of them. I haven’t been able to determine the roadkill deathtoll for New York, beyond the one known instance, but Oregon publishes statistics and had 11 cases in 2002.

And now for today’s quiz:

The dialog for todays quiz question is between my brother-in-law Joe and some guy who represented the State of New York, which seemed to have delusions of dominion over this dead bear. If you’re doing this visually, in your head, picture him wearing a four-dent olive-drab campaigner hat even though a brown nylon baseball cap is just as likely:
Ranger: “did your brother-in-law intend to hit this bear?”Did Joe respond:
a: “Yes, he’s always wanted a roadkill rug, and this way he can stop stitching woodchucks and chipmunks together.”
b: “No, he was actually aiming for the other one, it was bigger.”
c: “No, he was positively horrified.”
If you answered “C”, you’re absolutely correct, put a gold foil sticker on the Mac’s screen and head directly to the fridge for your prize. It’s not in the veggie crisper; in fact, don’t even look down there. Try the freezer.

We were en route back to Arizona by the time this Ranger arrived at the farm with one unbelieving spectator for company to represent the state of New York and assure the voting taxpayers that this their bear had not been wrongly done in by a bloodthirsty loonie evildoer with unfair or out of season weapons but was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. That was the conclusion. Cause of death: a broken rib through the heart wall caused by impact with a moving motor vehicle. I doubt that the word “serendipity” appears anywhere on his written report.

It is this rib that is stuck in my mind. Know that this animal got up and ran after it hit the pavement. I did not truly understand that a bear could move that fast at all, even in perfect health, never mind with a broken bone through the heart muscle. This is why my boss just said “Dumb.” when I got to telling the part about getting out of the car. He had once shot a similarly sized bear and tracked it over 100 yards to where it fell only to have it get up again when he approached it. He had shot it through the heart.

This bear’s skin now resides in a taxidermist’s freezer destined to become a rug one day when the taxidermist can ‘get around to it’. I don’t know what he’ll do about that little bit of road rash.

Bear heaven might be a rotten log the size of a school bus which is full of slugs on a sunny day and where there’s a shady moist spot to nap and an enormous, perpetually-fruiting blueberry bush down by the creek.

This blog celebrated its first anniversary on Friday. It is one year old. Perhaps that explains the crawling and occasional drooling.

7 Comments:

Jamie Dawn said…

I guess your new blog title should reflect you in some way and then you could spice up the look of it with some cool colors and graphics.
Of course, you must realize that these comments are coming from someone with pineapples all over her site. I can’t help it. I love pineapples and palm trees. They were bound to show up somewhere on my blog. I’ll have to work the palm trees in there somehow.
You could always hire a blog consultant and have a blog makeover. I’m sure there are blog designers who’d love to take some of your hard earned money.

7/05/2005 11:55:37 PM

Mike said…

Thanks! (and I do love the pineapple motif you’ve put up)

7/06/2005 10:34:21 AM

Portia said…

I recommend “Queer Eye for the Blog Guy.” I hear they do a fabulous job. I like the all white, personally, but I suppose you could use more graphics. My site’s a bit boring, but my content makes up for it… ;p
Happy 1 year!!

7/06/2005 06:46:41 PM

Merial said…

Scott forwarded your blog to me, and I have to say–it’s given me quite a few chuckles. I appreciate your sense of humour. As for suggestions–perhaps a few photos now and again. I bet you capture a few things on occasion that might aid the spoken word…well, then again, I am glad there are no photos with the bear story.

7/07/2005 10:45:57 AM

Mike said…

Ah, but I have bear photos right here in my sticky little fingers…
Where’d I leave that scanner anyways?Thanks for the comment, I agree that photos might brighten up the place a bit.

7/07/2005 10:59:31 AM

Jamie Dawn said…

I stopped by to see if you’l posted anything new.
I’m sure you’re spending your extra time agonizing over the asthetics of your blog.
All you need in your wit and intelligence to have a great blog. You’ve got that, so don’t sweat it!

7/07/2005 02:13:35 PM

Mike said…

OK, OK, I’ll quit waiting for design guidance and get back to posting.Nice to see you back at regular posting yourself.

7/07/2005 04:58:27 PM

“Happy Independance Day!” to my fellow Americans. If you’re reading from other shores, welcome.

If you’re not sure what we’re so excited about, give this document a quick read. If the text doesn’t quicken your pulse just a bit, then click into the large copy of this image and look at the John Hancock that John Hancock laid down. Has a signature ever said “You got a problem with that?” louder?