As I previously mentioned, I was in Colorado on vacation a couple of weeks ago. Eileen took approximately 900 pictures, and we're just now starting to poke through them, so I thought I'd give you a pictorial trip to Colorado while you're stuck reading this website at work...

Although it looks like a giant UFO landing, this is us arriving at the Rocky Mountains after driving off the edge of the map and through the most boring place on Earth. I am speaking, of course, of Kansas, where cows outnumber people 5 to 1 and Stuckey's restaurants outnumber people 3 to 1. Instead of spending the time to research whether it is indeed flatter than a pancake (hint: yes), perhaps we should be looking into whether there are signs of intelligent life (hint: are cows intelligent?).

This little blurry guy is a Ground Squirrel. You can see by the carrot and the sleek body that these squirrels are much healthier than WashU squirrels, as they must make do without a daily diet of pizza crusts, french fries, and Krispy Kreme. They also get winded more easily and presumably can't throw curveballs as well.

More tomorrow (or the next time I post)...

I know it's been awhile since I posted. I was on vacation all of last week and have been extremely busy at work so far this week. I got a newsletter from the Missouri House of Representatives in the mail today, though, so I thought I'd share some of the bills and resolutions that have passed this year:

House Bill 33 designates the North American Bullfrog as the official state amphibian, so you can all sleep soundly knowing that Missouri finally has a state amphibian...or maybe you can't sleep with all of that croaking...

House Bill 64 authorizes an annual state sales tax holiday in August. We used to have this in Florida until The Other Other Bush took it away.

House Bill 219 requires the secretary of state to name a reading room in one of the buildings comprising the Missouri State Archives as the "Alex M. Petrovic Reading Room". Here's hoping it's a broom closet, bathroom, or shed.

Senate Bill 38 adds highway designations within Newton and Jasper County. Apparently neither of these counties were previously big enough to warrant highway signs?

Senate Bill 355 creates the Missouri Wine and Grape Board. It's good to know that our state government is so bored that it has time to create unnecessary boards. Perhaps a "Road and Highway Pothole Board" would be more prudent?

But most of the bills don't have any sort of useful description. They carefully denote all of the highways and reading rooms named after people, but give us shady descriptions for important things like "Authorizes various local taxes". What kind of taxes? Or "Modifies various sections pertaining to hazardous waste". Am I going to wake up tomorrow and find syringes outside my doorstep? This, to me, is more important than who they're naming a mile of State Road WW in Podunk County after.

From what I can tell, our state legislature sits around and chitchats about who to name pieces of our highways after and has pointless arguments about altering the "definition of 'teacher' in the teacher tenure act". Have any of then driven in this state recently? Instead of naming the highways after people, why don't they repair the highways?

I've always been amazed by the success and longevity of the Beach Boys, considering that all of their songs were about cars, surfing, and, to a lesser extent, girls. Many of their car songs, in fact were crazy strings of geeky automotive lyrics involving "four-on-the-floor", and my favorite "four-speed dual quad posi-traction 409". I have no clue what any of those things are (except the "four-speed", I think I can take a guess on that one), but I'm sure they made those gigantic cars with the huge fins zip along.

The really amazing thing in my mind is that we've never seen anything like that since then. Of all the fads and trends, there has never been a band that has had a long, successful career singing about popular teen pastimes. Extreme sports, for example, were extreme-ly popular a few years ago, and while a lot of bands played music to appeal to kids who street luged or paraglided, none of them actually sang about street luging or paragliding. I think there's a real market here...

jump out of a plane with a board on my feet,
slide down a mountain on a plastic sheet,
soup up my car with those spinning rims,
fly off of my bike and break my shins

So catchy.

Well I've had my new cell phone for almost 2 months now, and as I suspected I rarely every use it. Verizon tried to sell me one of the packages with 80 bazillion minutes and internet access and a camera, but as it is I don't even reasonably approach the 400-some-odd minutes they give me (the fact that I have no recollection of how many minutes I actually have should say something).

I can think of only 2 occasions where it has come in handy at work (when I was away from my desk and someone was able to reach me at the cell phone with something important), but besides that it sits idly in my pocket, waiting for someone to call so it can play the Legend of Zelda theme until I answer it.

Unlike most of the people who live in my apartment complex, who seemingly can't drive their oversized SUV-monster truck hybrids without their ear glued to their phone as they swerve all over the parking garage, I abhor using it while in the car. I do remember to turn it on and carry it with me a lot more frequently than I did my old phone, though. For $40 a month I might as well get all the use out of it I possibly can.