random thoughts

Today I'm going to write down all the little thoughts I have that I want to share with someone but tend to forget about before I get the opportunity. (It'll be kind of like a lot of Tweets/Facebook status updates, but a lot more rapid-fire. I always try to hold those down so I won't annoy anyone.)

Last night I wished my first Merry Christmas of the season and saw my first holiday-decorated house of the season. :)

I've never understood the appeal of The West Wing. Even Aaron Sorkin can't make the daily doings of the White House seem interesting.

Recording "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" was a nice thing for Gordon Lightfoot to do. It keeps the memory of those men alive and is a reminder of the dangers of life on the sea.

I wish there was any one thing I found as harmless and comforting as my daughter finds sucking her thumb.

Prerecorded phone calls should be abolished. If it's not important enough to hire a real person to make the call, it's not important enough to call about. (I make an exception for the school superintendent's announcement of school closing due to inclement weather. But that's it.)

I suddenly want to read a dialogue between Free Range Kids's Lenore Skenazy and Baby Name Wizard Laura Wattenberg on the naming practices of free range parents, how names affect our kids' lives in the world, free range or otherwise, and how to tell what kind of parent you are by what you named your kid.

The U.S. adult smoking rate has risen. What century do we live in again? How can people squander their health and money that way for nothing?

My daughter is quite irritating with her constant demands for Christmas and visits to a hotel and her birthday ... all of them RIGHT NOW. Or possibly tomorrow. But certainly no later than that, or she will whine, pout, and stamp her foot.