Mike has been working on The Quotations Weblog for a few weeks now. The software and integration of the website has taken longer to set up than it did for Starling Fitness or this weblog. I’ve been writing in anticipation for the site and I’ve been waiting to tell you. Today I can!

• The Quotations Weblog

I’m hoping that this addition to my writing responsibilities won’t make me as tired as adding Starling Fitness was. I’m only writing twice a week for now, so I should be able to write here just as frequently as before.

We also moved the old Quotes of the Week entries from the featured section to the weblog. I wrote those entries way back in 1997 and 1998. I let the Demon of Perfection get to me back then and Quotes of the Week didn’t last too long. My favorite entry was: My Perceptions of Trains. The rest of them felt like school work to me. Writing is much easier now, if only because I don’t have to do much HTML programming anymore.

If you finish reading here and want some more, go ahead and check out The Quotations Weblog. You might enjoy it also.

My heart is breaking… James Doohan, the actor who portrayed Scotty on Star Trek, died today.

Via: Boing Boing: James Doohan, RIP

I don’t know how I feel about this. I don’t even know if I really understand it. Television broadcasters have agreed to stop broadcasting analog signals in order to free up the crowded airwaves.

• Broadcasters accept new deadline for digital TV signals – Yahoo! News

If I understand correctly, that will mean that people who watch televison using their antennas (instead of cable subscriptions) won’t be able to watch anymore unless they upgrade to digital television. They say that they are doing this to clear up the crowded airwaves, but wasn’t the HDTV Mandate the reason that the airwaves are clogged to begin with?

All of this sounds like enforced upgrading to me. Did television sales slow down or something? As far as I’m concerned, they can keep their digital signals to themselves. I’ve already moved on to getting all my entertainment from other sources. I only turn on the television to play Xbox and DVDs.

It was predicted here: *spark>> media>> *television – the future of television – by Frank Beacham

Via: Engadget – Broadcasters OK 2009 analog TV shutdown

Can’t write… busy reading Harry Potter…

Halloween is coming so soon and I don’t have a costume ready or anything. These will come in handy for the party, though.

• Haunted Paper Toys

There’s nothing like the phrase “Free Toys” to make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, even if the free toys are a little spooky!

Via: STANDING ROOM ONLY – Everything You Need To Know – by Hugh Elliott

God, I needed this. When I saw this picture, I laughed out loud!

• Chicken Viking Hat by Sarah @ Aloha Misc. Media House

This knitting pattern is for a baby (6-12 months) Man, I need a pattern for a full grown adult. Nothing like a funny hat to lighten my day!

Via: gadgetgirl – just when you thought the internet was getting boring

Jin Wicked writes a webcomic called Crap I Drew on my Lunchbreak. It has been on my comics list since I started this website. This past week, Jin’s pet rat, Yuki, died.

• Picture of Yuki’s Final Days

Mike and I owned pet rats when I worked at UBTL. Perdita had been part of a teratological study, but had been kicked out when they found enough pregnant rats. That would have meant that she would have been a practice animal, but she was pregnant, so she was scheduled for euthanasia unless someone was willing to take her home. I did. She had 17 baby rats. We found homes for most of them. Cory and Kathleen took two of her sons and other friends adopted. We sold the rest to a pet store. We kept Perdita and two of her daughters, Gretchen and Elsie.

Laboratory rats have a life expectancy of two years. They are bred to live exactly two years. Perdita was a really young mother, so we lost all of our rats within the span of six months. It was so hard to lose each of them. Their personalities were so different. They were also bred for intelligence. For an animal with a brain the size of an almond, they were so smart and funny. Each death was like the loss of a beloved pet.

People are so stupid.

“You spent $40 on a vet bill for a RAT?”

“What’s the problem? Just buy another one for two bucks.”

“Yeah, she’s sad because her RAT died? giggle“

When we lost Gretchen, I didn’t even tell anyone. Hearing Jin talk about her loss healed me a little bit…

If you look carefully, you can see me, Mike, Stacey and Dan in the reflection. I’m holding the camera. Mike is to my left, blocking out some of the sun. Stacey is to his left. Dan is holding the shopping bag on the far left.

We were picking up supplies for camping at a tiny grocery store / strip mall in Highland, Utah. This scooter was beaming at us as we walked past.

I am laughing my head off! Despite the security on the new Harry Potter book, there has been a leak. This story tells you the gory details.

• Harry Potter and the Embargo of Doom – by Anna Weinberg

I’m laughing because of how they were found out:

“Suspicions of a leak were first raised back in May when officials from an Internet gambling ring noticed an odd betting pattern coming from a small town in England—a town in which, it appears, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was being printed. Blue Square, a gambling outfit, was running a bet on the character most likely to die in the sixth installment, and noticed a disproportionate number of wagers from Bungay, in Suffolk, all on the same character.”

I won’t tell you who they betted for, but if you don’t want the story spoiled, be careful reading the article.

On a more serious note, just think how much more money they would make if they shipped the books as soon as they were printed and allowed the stores to put them out as soon as they were printed. They could even charge more for the “first batch” if they wanted. I’m sure there are tons of fans out there willing to shell out extra bucks for a chance to read it as soon as possible.

Hey, while we’re dreaming big, just think how great it would be if J. K. Rowling just posted the chapters on her weblog as soon as she was finished writing them.

I speed past him every morning. He’s waiting for the Eastbound 30 bus at the corner of Redwood and 17^th South. He’s usually smoking. He’s always slouching. The curve of his back is a sharp 60° angle right below his shoulder blades.

He was wearing a black t-shirt this morning and he glanced at me as I whizzed by. His thin frame leaned over his thighs. He was taking a drag of his cigarette and I could smell smoke as far as the train tracks.

I’ve never seen him smile.

In Chapter 10 of my book, Looking For Christ, I created something I called Automatic Music, which fed off the moods of the listener and created music based on the people in the room.

• Cure-α – the mood-altering audio player – Engadget – www.engadget.com

It looks like that invention is coming sooner than I thought. Silly me, I thought I was being so inventive…

This video shows the inevitable conclusion to the iPod Phenomenon.

• The iPod Flea

Of course, if I want only one song playing over and over, I already live in that hell. There is hardly a time when I don’t have a song (or piece of one) playing over and over in my head.

Update: 04-05-09: Now that Apple has released the newest iPod Shuffle, this video doesn’t seem so funny anymore.

It won’t take any time for them to get down to the iPod Flea size.

Of course, by the time they do, it will cost $99 and play my entire music library… and I’ll be able to control it with the power of my MIND!

I can’t believe that I have been writing for two years and I haven’t written anything about 7-11 Day. It was so important to me when I was a teenager and now it flies by just like any other day.

In the late eighties, I worshipped at the altar of the convenience store. I had a car and the best excuse to leave the house and go driving in the car was, “I’m going to get a Swig.” My favorite convenience store was Holiday Oil because they would refill my 32 ounce Big Swig cup for only $39 cents. I used to save enough money so that I could have a couple of swigs every day. I would dispense a squirt of Cherry Coke and fill the rest with Diet Coke. I loved to go Swigging.

Mike Pinkston was the first person to mention 7-11 Day to me. One year, we drove around until the appointed hour, waiting until exactly 7:11 pm to stop at the nearest convenience store that the gods had lead us to. All we did was buy a swig, though, and I had to count out my pennies to do it.

I never truly celebrated it until I started hanging out with Mike Moncur. We created a whole religion around the Cult of the Convenience Store. July 11^th was the primary holiday, but there was a lesser holiday of November 7^th. One year, the two of us bought a cake at Albertson’s. We had it decorated with the phrase, “Happy 7-11 Day!” We drove around the city until the appointed hour and then entered the nearest 7-11, presenting the unimpressed clerk with the cake. I don’t even think we bought a Big Gulp while we were there.

Recently, 7-11 caught on to the fact that they could celebrate and promote themselves on that day. Two years ago, they gave a free small Slurpee to anyone who came in. When we arrived at 7:11 pm (or so, our devotion isn’t as strong as it used to be), the floor was a sticky mess and the clerk looked miserable and tired. I think I bought a bottled water and we refrained from mentioning anything about 7-11 Day.

Ironically, I rarely drink soda anymore. We still hit the convenience stores several times a week for Mike’s caffeine fix, but they have become a place where I feel like I can’t get anything healthy to eat. I guess I’ve fallen away from the Cult of the Convenience Store. I still celebrate 7-11 Day, though.

I had a dream Friday morning. We were at a thrift shop, but I owned everything in the shop. I could take whatever I wanted, so I looked around for something good. Karen, a woman from my church, was in the shop. We were looking at a small (and ugly) collage of yellowing newspaper. She was reminiscing about the 70’s. I nodded my head, “Yeah, I remember making mobiles out of coat hangers when I was in grade school. I actually thought I was making art.”

She smiled at me and I realized that I didn’t understand her point. She said, “Sometimes it’s so hard to describe The Nothing.”

At that point, I realized that I was in a dream. I handed her the collage and moved on through the store, looking at the junk that I was selling. When I woke up, I still remembered her comment.

I am a child of the 70’s. The television was always on in our house. I spent my teens with a walkman and headphones. I’m bombarded day and night with noise, advertisements and scents. I don’t know much about The Nothing, except it was the enemy in the movie, “The Neverending Story.”

Somehow, I don’t think it’s the enemy, but I am completely unable to describe it. I’ve never met it in person.

I hate it when websites have hidden (or removed or it never existed in the first place) the “Contact Me” section. When there is no email address or contact form, I am voiceless. I am the reader. I am the person that you are trying to reach, right? Don’t you want to know what I think? How I found you?

If this website, The Hair Transplant Industry is a Disgrace, has a method of contacting the author, I cannot find it. Instead, I’m sitting here, voiceless. Instead, my message to him goes out to the world instead.

This guy had a “life-destroying experience” with hair transplants. He was very angry when he created this website. He estimated that he still had ten to fifteen corrective surgeries to go at a cost of $75,000 to $100,000 in order to regain a “normal” appearance.

I just wanted to pat him on the arm and say, “There, there.” I just want to tell him to save his money and buy a house. Shave his head every day and show his scars to the world proudly. Quite frankly, most people don’t notice that stuff. They look at you, file you in a category and then spend the rest of their time getting to know you and reclassifying as necessary.

After writing for Starling Fitness so much and watching out for false advertising in the weight loss industry, I realized that no one is safe. If you’re fat, the advertisers are going to tell you that you need to be thin. If you’re thin, the advertisers are going to tell you that you need big boobs. If you’re bald, they will tell you that you need hair transplants. If you have too much hair, they’ll tell you that you need laser hair removal. There is no way to please the advertisers because their job is to sell products and services, not to be pleased. No matter how perfect you try to make yourself, there is no way to be perfect enough.

Sometimes, I wonder what would happen if I took all the money I spend on trying to be something that I’m not and just saved it in an interest bearing account. What would happen if I boycotted any product that tried to make me feel like I was less than perfect? Would I be able to buy anything?

I heard about the terrorist attacks a mere four hours after it happened. That’s what happens when I’m on a news-fast. I hear the news; it just takes a little longer. If it’s really important, the news leaks into the daily life and I hear about it.

My first thought was that it was the IRA or some other British-grown terrorist organization. The strange thing is that everyone else’s first thought was al-Queda. I wonder which it will be.

Ironically, that morning, I had passed a newspaper sitting on the table at work. It said that London won the Olympic Bid. I thought to myself, “We should go to London two months before the Olympics come there. They will be excited and setting things up and there won’t be any tourists there because everyone will be waiting for the Olympics before they go. Maybe a month after…” My mind rushed like that.

I remembered the excitement that filled Salt Lake a couple of months before the Olympics and I was happy to see that come to Great Britain. My family has wanted to go there for a long time.

It’s funny, when I’m on a news fast, what pieces of the news filter in through my barriers.

The UPS delivery guy hands me the brown machine. I sign the screen, feeling a little like Captain Kirk.

“She’s out of town this week,” I tell him.

“Yeah, Disneyland.”

“I guess she was so excited about it she told you, too.”

“Yeah. I’m like a traveling bartender. You wouldn’t believe the stuff people tell me.”

Religion is hard for me. When I threw out the beliefs of my father, I searched for meaning. It seemed like all religions had some good to them, but I was lacking faith. I became an atheist and left it at that. If you are looking for a richer meaning of life with an atheist background, Steve Pavlina might speak to you.

• Personal Development Blog – The Meaning of Life: Intro – by Steve Pavlina

This is the first post of a six-part series. Be forewarned, these are long entries. Don’t expect the meaning of life to be as simple as 42. If Douglas Adams and Aristotle left you a little short, Steve’s got some good ideas for you.

I’m sorry I was out of town this weekend. Things have been nuts since Grandpa told us he has cancer. I got laid off at my job and thankfully, I got a new job really quickly, but now, I have no vacation time. I have no way to go up to Billings and see Grandpa before he gets so bad that he won’t even remember seeing me. The only time I have to make that drive up to Billings is when there are holidays. Your birthday is so close to Independence Day. I chose to see Grandpa this time. I hope you understand.

We’ll celebrate your birthday next weekend. You keep saying that you don’t want any presents and this year I’m going to try to respect your wishes. It’s so hard for me because sometimes it’s hard to say, “I love you” and the easiest thing to do is to give a present.

Happy Birthday, USA! I’m sorry about November. I did what I could this year as a citizen, but I only have one vote. The voice of one Democrat is drowned by the Republican majority here in Utah. At least I didn’t let apathy get the best of me. I showed up and placed my mark by my name on the list of your citizens.

I hope you have a better year this year than last. I hope your name is no longer sullied by our actions. I hope your children in the armed forces are brought home soon. I hope you survive another couple centuries. Show the Roman Empire how it’s done and outlive ’em!

Remember my entry about the Dehumidifier in Bobka’s house? It looks like someone had the same idea as I did as a child.

Air2Water Dolphin Dehumidifier/Water Purifier

I never tasted the water out of the dehumidifier, but I guess it needs purifying. With 25% humidity in Salt Lake, this thing wouldn’t work at all, shucks…

God, I love this stuff. I remember being a kid and being so excited to work with computers in the future. Check out the huge floppy disk she’s holding!

How It Works…The Computer

Now, I work with computers all day every day. My Zodiac Tapwave is probably more powerful that the monstrocity she is sitting at. I can’t even imagine a day without it. How would I keep track of my food? How would I play my music? How would I tell what time it is?

Via: Boing Boing – Kids book about computers from 1971 scanned and posted

This week’s Illustration Friday is “Heroes.” The most recent heroic act I’ve experienced in my life happened when I was playing softball a couple of weeks ago. I joined the company softball team because they are in constant need of girls. I told them that I hadn’t played since grade school. They didn’t care. As long as I was female, owned a mitt and was willing to show up at the park every Thursday, they were happy.

A couple of weeks ago, they were really shorthanded and pulled me out of right field to put me in the catcher’s position. The team captain was pitching and I was throwing the worst balls back to him. I was terrified of the batters taking my head off; I was lousy at catching the ball when it looked like it was coming straight for my face. I felt embarrassed and apologized for every errant ball.

The team captain pulled me aside after it was our turn to bat, “Don’t worry about throwing the ball to me. Just do your best and I’ll get it.” It was at that moment that I became a team member. I’ve never felt so good about playing with a team before.

It seems like the heroes of the world are the people who say or do little things. They are so important to the people who received them, but the heroes think nothing of it and go about their day as normal. At some time or another almost everyone is a hero and we don’t even know it.

After so much derision and scorn I experienced for being a fat kid in grade school, having the guy in charge say something nice was like water on parched lips. All of us are just dry sponges wishing that a nice word would come our way. I’m a permanent member of the team now because he didn’t mind me throwing a few stray balls or having to run after the ball when it slipped away from me.

I’ve never seen a super hero. I’ve never met anyone who has saved a life. I’ve only seen the every day heroes that say the exactly right words to save the day. I’ve only met the every day heroes that show up when all is lost and say two simple sentences.

The most enjoyable thing that I have been indulging in lately is something that I feel like I can’t even talk about right now. I feel like I have a gag around my mouth. I fear talking about it, but I learned long ago that if I do what I fear, I achieve more than I could have hoped for.

Every weekend, I have been getting a pedicure and a manicure. I found a lovely nail shop within walking distance of my home. It is family-owned and I love going there every week. The technicians don’t talk my ear off while they work on me, so I am able to relax and truly enjoy the pampering.

The reason why I have been reluctant to write about this weekly delicious pleasure is because of an entry I wrote long ago (Todd Oldham Update). In that post, I mentioned my pampered feet. Back then, I pampered my own feet, but I have to tell you that it’s much better to have someone else take care of me. That post is the cause of at least one email a month from someone wanting to get a picture of my feet.

They are polite emails, but they scare the bejeezus out of me. They scare me so much that I haven’t talked about my favorite weekly reward for months now. I never respond to the emails. I file them, hoping that the police won’t need them for evidence in the future.

The funny thing is that allowing that one gag into my writing makes the act of writing about other things harder, and I have many of those gags. I don’t write about my feet. I don’t write about sneezing anymore because one entry (Sneezing) attracted another group of scary emails. I don’t write about my full time job because I signed a non-disclosure agreement when I started there. I don’t write about my relationship with Mike. There are things that I don’t write about that I’m not even willing to mention the existence of.

With so many things gagging me, it’s a wonder I am able to write at all. Sadly, everything I write when I feel gagged feels like it’s not the full truth. For weeks I have enjoyed a happy ritual every Saturday morning, but I felt like I couldn’t tell you.

The truth of the matter is: no matter what I talk about, there are people who are going to get weird about it. There is no way to escape small groups of the strangely obsessed on the Internet. The world is so large that I can’t hide without removing myself from the blogging world and I’m not about to do that.

So, today I take off the foot gag. Today, I take off the sneezing gag (though I really have nothing else to say about sneezing, but if I wanted to, I could). Two less muffles stifling me. The other gags fill most of my day so I refuse to collect any more.

I was at the Utah College of Massage Therapy, waiting for them to call out my name. I rode my bike here and I was a little winded from the ride up the hills and happy for some water and a seat to rest on. It felt good to write and listen to their relaxing music.

I just heard some one say the words, “chug-a-lug” to someone else. It was the brown-haired girl manning the computer. That was the name that the kids in elementary school made fun of me with. It hurt a little to hear it. I looked up and identified the girl who said it. She hadn’t been talking to me. She hadn’t even noticed the glare I threw her. Of course, she had no idea that I had been tortured with that name for years.

(Continue Reading…)

MIT is performing a social networking and blogging survey. It only took me about 5 minutes to complete it. If you are a blogger, be counted.

Plus, it’s MIT. Who doesn’t want to be able to say they participated in a study by MIT?

I’m sitting outside at lunch right now. The sun has been going behind the clouds and peeking back out. There is a dull roar of traffic from I-215 and a pretty strong breeze playing with the wispy hairs that have escaped from the knot I’ve tied my hair into. It feels so good to be out here. I’ve taken off my sandals and my bare feet are enjoying the cool green grass. I’ve finished eating my lunch and I have that full, warm feeling from eating the exact right amount of food.

The clouds in the sky look like a painting. There are huge puffy clouds close to me and a large array of the silvery cirrus clouds further away. The sky is mostly white with them. The wind is playing with them just like it plays with my wispy hair. They flow and change and move between my sentences.

If I were wearing white, I would worry about grass stains. Instead, I turn my body and lie on my stomach. I can feel the cool plants touch every part of my belly and legs. I can’t think of a more enjoyable way to spend a lunch hour: relaxing and writing to the roar of the traffic.

The Ford Mustang was lime green. That’s the only reason it caught my eye. Not quite the limey goodness of my Volkswagen Beetle, but limey enough for it to draw my eye to a car without German Engineering. The license plate read:

EMSHTRD

You all were so good at deciphering the license plate for me last time that I thought you could shed light on this one.

All I can think of ends with the word “turd” and none of them make any sense.

Since I don’t watch the news on television and I rarely even bring CNN.com up, I have a very strange and skewed view of the news. It actually started to make me angry the other day until I realized how limited my exposure to the outside world is.

I don’t like to let anything negative into my life. That’s why I cut the news out of my life. It’s not apathy; it’s self-preservation. I steer clear of anything that affects me negatively. So, I read blogs that are supposed to be fun, like the Disney Blog.

I don’t know if you heard, but a four year old child died on a ride at WDW in Florida. Because of this, the Disney blog talked about it… a lot. It’s big news when someone dies at Disney World and even bigger news when it’s a seemingly healthy four year old child. After reading all the entries about what Disney should do about their Mission Space ride, I started to get angry.

There are hundreds of kids dying in Iraq. They are a little older than four, but they are still kids in my book. I don’t see warning signs about that anywhere. I felt like the whole world was ignoring the war in Iraq just because one child died in Florida.

Of course, that’s because I don’t read the news. I have tried to shield myself from all the horror that our boys are experiencing overseas. In effect, I have ended up thinking that the world is ignoring the shameful and deadly events that happen every day and are focusing on a single, tragic, unexplained death.

I suspect that the news stations are filled with depictions of the war that we have wrongly been involved with. I bet that the American public is bombarded every day with images of our boys dealing with terrorists attacks. The regular news stations aren’t obsessed with this event at WDW or the Michael Jackson verdict, right? They are covering the war, right? Anybody…

I just finished covering the Red Chair. It matches the couch and the living room but it seems a little more bland to me. Something about that red velvet that makes it just look over the top fabulous to me. Sage chenille just makes it seem… I don’t know… boring, somehow.

It’s a nice comfortable chair for sitting at the computer typing my fingers off. I’m sure the DI will take the fashionably ergonomic chair that used to be in front of my computer. Mike is willing to live with the sage green version of the red chair, so it seems that all of us are happy now. I just need to make sure the cats don’t use it as a scratching post, though…

Our next door neighbors , Rick and Tracy, are moving and I’m grieving the loss of them. Their three dogs greet me each time I come home. Their cats have been more loving to me than some cats that I have considered my own pets. They always gave me a friendly hello and a little bit of conversation.

I’m going to especially miss Pedro, their black cat. He loves to sit on our porch and sit on my lap. He will shed his thick, dark hair all over my clothes and hands. Based on his behavior, you would think that Rick and Tracy gave him no attention, but I know they fawn over him as much as we do.

When we first moved to Sugarhouse, we had to give up our black cat, Ezzy. She was a feral cat that had we adopted. She never was tame enough to be enjoyable, so we gave her up when we moved. I felt guilty and lonely for a black cat and Pedro filled that sadness for me. Now that he’s moving away, I feel like I’m losing Ezzy all over again.

Note on Picture: This was originally a photo of Ezzy. She used to just sit on the couch, drooling and sticking out her tongue. Mike got a really good picture of it and I played with it in Photoshop. I can’t find the original…

We moved out of Stonehedge Apartments in 1996, so we’ve had the chair for almost ten years now. It was sitting by the dumpster. The owner hadn’t been willing to just toss it in the garbage. Whomever they were, they loved the chair too much. Mike wasn’t home. Kathleen Bennett was with me and the two of us hauled the chair into the apartment. I loved it instantly.

The cats loved it instantly. It was obvious that it had been a favorite scratching post at its previous home and our cats furtively tried it out. They very quickly learned that it was ok to scratch it if Mike was watching. Only Laura would scream at them for scratching the red chair.

Mike, and everyone else who has ever seen it, has thought of the red chair as a joke. “She pulled it out of the dumpster.” The truth was that I found it lovingly set by the dumpster, but the image of Laura pulling the ratty thing out of the dumpster was funnier, so I let the slip go. “It’s horrible. Put it back!” No matter how much I tried to convince them, they couldn’t see how fabulous it is.

When we moved to Sugarhouse, we went from 3500 square feet to about 900 square feet, so a lot of our furniture ended up in storage. That was two years ago. In that two years, we paid $2400 to keep that furniture in storage. We could have bought a house of new furniture with the money that we spent to keep our old stuff, so we have decided to give it all away to save money, including the red chair.

The huge pile of our personal items was sitting on the driveway, waiting for Deseret Industries to come pick it up. We allowed our neighbors to pillage the pile for whatever they wanted. They took the imitation Tiffany lamp. “Don’t you want this red chair? It just kills me to let it go.” They looked at it in disgust. “We don’t have room for it, sorry.” I sighed and hoped that someone would find it at the DI and love it as much as I have.

“Did the DI pick up the stuff?” I asked Mike, hoping that they took everything. “They took everything but one. Guess what they left.” I cringed at the thought of trying to dispose of that huge, broken treadmill on my own. “The treadmill?” “Nope.” “The red chair?” “Yeah,” Mike laughed, “They said it was too crappy for them.” We laughed because we have seen the wreck of furniture that they WILL take. If they left the red chair, it must truly be horrible.

“It’s a sign! I need to keep the red chair.” I didn’t want it to go to the DI and I breathed a sigh of relief that they wouldn’t take it. I could hear Mike shaking his head on the end of the other line. “No, Laura. It’s a sign to throw the chair away.”

As of right now, the red chair is in front of my computer desk, taking the place of the ergonomically correct computer chair. I have plans of recovering it and changing it from a cat scratching post to a unique and interesting piece of furniture that will be the envy of everyone who sees it. Why am I the only one who can see how beautiful it is, right now?

My heart is breaking. I don’t know why it took me so long to hear the news, but May 22nd, Thurl Ravenscroft died.

The Blog of Death – Thurl Ravenscroft

He was the voice of The Ghost Host on the Haunted Mansion. He was the voice of Tony the Tiger. He sang, “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch!” The human voice is one of the unique things about us that is irreplaceable and we lost a great one last month.

The green Subaru Outback in front of me had a license plate with the following letters:

SRNIT4U

It’s a vanity plate. The license plate is not a happy flirt with chance because the letters don’t follow the appropriate pattern for plates in Utah. They made this on purpose.

The license plate frame read, “Don’t drive faster than angels can fly.”

The closest I can come up with is: Saran It For You. I imagine a home-based company that wraps whatever you wish in Saran Wrap. I know it sounds silly, but it’s the best I can come up with. What about you guys? Any ideas?

Update 06-15-05: The answer from everyone is “Serenity For You.” You guys are right, especially considering the license plate frame. I don’t know why I didn’t see it on my own.