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On my way to a job interview in Grenoble, France (this was back in 2000), Mrs. MZM and I decided to take one of those new high-speed trains from Paris to Grenoble. We’d always wanted to see the beautiful scenery in southern France, and a train ride seemed to be just the ticket.

Gee, were we surprised! See, for the first few hours, I could swear (if my Momma hadn’t taught me not to) they must have put all the scenery somewhere else! I mean, sure, you’ve got your typical French countryside, all beautiful and everything – but there really wasn’t that much to actually see, if you know what I mean. Hey, to me, one picturesque vine-covered hillside looks pretty much like any other picturesque vine-covered hillside.

No, what I really wanted to see were the French Alps (remember, I’m from Houston, Texas, where the land is pretty much as flat as a plate!): we’re talkin’ majestic mountain vistas, distant snow-covered peaks, deep secluded valleys, the occasional French chateau – you know, scenery. Alas and darn, we didn’t start seeing mountains until just about the last hour or so of the trip; the part from Lyon to Grenoble.

But what made the trip really difficult (at least for us) was that the only seats left on the train were in a smoking car. Ugh! Hours of torture trying not to breathe put an unexpected damper on our enjoyment, to say the least.

The seating, though, was arranged such that pairs of passengers faced each other. It wasn’t long before the man sitting across from us noticed our discomfort (he could hardly miss it, I’m afraid). I noticed that he refrained from smoking out of consideration for us; it was an incredibly kind thing to do, to say the least!

We thanked him profusely, which turned into a lively conversation about places of interest in Grenoble (the cable car ride across the river and up the mountain was a must-see), a certain cooking school he recommended for dinner (the students love to cook for tourists – it was oo-la-la!), and a hilarious lesson on how to properly pronounce the name ‘Grenoble’ that went something like this:

“Grenoble,” I’d say.

“Ah, no,” he smiled tolerantly. “It’s pronounced ‘Grenoble’.”

“That’s what I said – ‘Grenoble’!”

“No, you said ‘Grenoble’. It’s ‘Grenoble’. Here, try it this way,” he said, exhibiting the patience of Job. “Say: ‘ble’, then ‘noble’, then ‘Grenoble’”. (This is an old trick, by the way; you pronounce the last syllable first, then add each successively earlier syllable until you get the whole word. It always usually works!)

“See the difference?” he asked.

“Oh, of course!” I said with sudden inspiration. “‘Grenoble’!”

At which point he didn’t, um, quite start pulling his hair out in frustration… but it was probably a near thing. Needless to say, this went on for some time…

But actually, we ended up spending a truly wonderful 45 minutes just visiting with him, right up until we pulled into the station. In fact, we were having such a great time – we actually forgot all about the overwhelming stench of stale cigarette smoke in the air!

Amazing! And to think, just a short time before it was literally impossible to ignore, overwhelming any enjoyment we might’ve gotten out of the trip. It was like telling someone, “Whatever you do, don’t think about pink elephants!”

But, by shifting our awareness onto, well, other things – we discovered we had completely forgotten about it! Mind you, nothing had physically changed – the smell didn’t just suddenly go away; the lingering odor on our clothes was proof of that.

No, what changed was our focus.

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

Question of the Day: When you’re confronted with a multiple choice situation, and you truly don’t know which one to pick, what do you do?

Are you familiar with the Bible story of Jonah and the whale? I know, I know – not everyone has heard it. So rather than assume you know what I’m talking about, here’s a synopsis. (And before you cry out “Hey, it wasn’t a whale!” – you’re right; but if you’ll just bear with me a bit…)

A Clear Command

OK, to begin with, Jonah was something of an “unwilling” prophet. God had an assignment for him, and had stated it in no uncertain terms: go to the city of Nineveh (known far and wide as the Sin City of his day) and tell them to repent. If they didn’t – well, let’s just say they wouldn’t like what happens next, if you know what I mean…

However, Jonah decided he wanted no part of it. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t because he didn’t want to actually be a prophet. No, the sad truth was that he was so full of prejudice and anger toward the Ninevites that he didn’t want them to repent – he wanted them to be destroyed!

(Another question: Have you ever had the misfortune to run across someone like that? Someone so rabidly angry or prejudiced you could barely even have a conversation with them? I have, and it ain’t pretty, lemme tell ya!)

The Wrong Response

Anyway, instead of going to Nineveh, he jumped on the first ship headed in the exact opposite direction. Definitely a moment of insanity; perhaps even more than one – I mean, did he really think he could hide from God?

As luck would have it, while they were out to sea a huge storm blew up; one so bad the sailors began to fear for their very lives. Jonah, in a fit of remorse, confessed that it was all his fault, and that he was running from God. He went on to say that if they tossed him overboard – hey, it would solve everybody’s problems.

Naturally the sailors, being a generally superstitious lot, thought this was a great idea. And, as far as Jonah was concerned, he probably figured his own problems would be solved too (since he would be, you know, dead), so what the heck.

Now here’s where the most well-known and interesting part of the story happens. After being thrown overboard, a huge sea creature swallowed him up, and the sea immediately calmed down. The sailors, on seeing that, thought to themselves well, scratch one prophet, and sailed on their merry way.

(Note: by the way, the Bible calls it a “big fish”, but most people simply use the word “whale”. Truth be told, there’s no telling what it really was, other than it was, well, big enough to swallow him whole.)

A Second Chance

But see, God had given Jonah an assignment, and by golly, he was going to do it! (Ever been through something like this with your children? Yep, thought so.) So Jonah, who according to the Biblical account spent three days in the belly of this (well, let’s just use the convenient term for it) whale finally told God, OK, you win – I’ll do it.

On the third day, the whale spits ol’ Jonah up on the beach (yuk; being turned into whale vomit is bad enough – but on the other hand, at least it beats the alternative!), and he heads off (uh, Jonah, not the whale) to do what he should have been doing in the first place – going to Ninevah.

A Credible Messenger

Now, imagine the scene with me if you will. Here’s a Ninevite fisherman, standing up to his knees in the warm Mediterranean surf, happily fishing away and generally minding his own business. It’s nighttime (hey, everybody knows that’s the best time to surf fish), and he’s out there all alone. All… alone. Then, out of the darkness, he begins to hear the sound of someone slosh-slosh-sloshing noisily out of the water towards him.

Like an apparition out of his worst nightmare, Jonah suddenly appears before him, and in my mind, this guy had to be somethin’ to see! He’s bleached completely white from three days’ exposure to the stomach acids in the whale’s belly. His clothes are in tatters. There’s a piece of seaweed stuck in his hair right there. And then, to cap it off, he walks right up to the terrified fisherman, points his bony finger at him and says, “Repent!”

What would you do? Well, Bubba, I’m tellin’ ya – I’d repent!

In fact it should come as no surprise that within a short time of his arrival, the people of Nineveh - well, they repented.

Now let’s think about that for a minute. The Biblical account indicates that the people of Nineveh didn’t have to be told WHO God was, I mean, they pretty much already knew. All they really needed was a messenger with, well, credibility.

You may be thinking to yourself, but wait a minute, didn’t God have enough credibility of His own? Well, that’s the problem – they were ignoring Him. So, to solve that, He sent someone else to get their attention.

Now granted, someone who looked like how I described Jonah might have looked would probably not be taken too seriously today. I mean, I’ve certainly seen stranger folks in my own travels, and you probably have too. But back then, this was pretty unusual.

Hey, up until then, not that many people had been swallowed by a whale and lived to tell about it! I’m telling you, it certainly got their attention! What’s more, it gave his message weight – which translates into credibility.

How to Evaluate Advice

I bet you’ve been wondering where we’re going with this line of thought? So was I.

Every day, all day, we are called upon to pass judgment on all kinds of things; it’s a never ending stream of decisions based on information we’ve been supplied. So how do we make up our minds? Well, the answer is simple, really.

When you want to try a new restaurant, what do you do? You ask around to see if someone you know has been there, right? If you need to find a good lawyer, it’s pretty much the same thing: you check for references among the people you know. Interested in dating a certain person? Don’t you first go check out what your friends know (and are willing to tell you) about them?

See, we consider the source of the information. The more we know about (and believe and/or trust) the messenger – well, the more credible the message is.

Take politics, for instance (please!) Granted, what we hear is filtered through our own experiences, leanings, and let’s face it, prejudices. A political conservative, for instance, would probably hear things a certain way; likewise for liberals (and bear in mind, I use these terms in their broadest sense).

But the thing to remember is this: Sooner or later we’re going to be called upon to make a decision based on what someone has told us. Hey, it happens all the time; in business, in our personal lives – like I said, all the time. And there will be times when we simply can’t know with certainty the truth of everything we hear.

When that’s the case, sometimes we have no choice but to fall back on our final line of defense.

Consider the source.

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

Note from the proprietor: Today’s guest writer is Joanna Young of Confident Writing.

It all started when he said “just tell me a story”. That was enough. I knew as soon as he said it that I wouldn’t be able to write because the very words “tell me a story” make my mind go blank and my fingers freeze.

It’s the exact same thing that happens when someone asks me to tell a joke. Nothing. Nada. Except fear and trembling of course. You’d think I’d never been told a joke in my life. Not a single one from the age of 4 upwards that had been stored anywhere within some kind of reach of my frantic, embarrassed neural networks.

But then I went back to thinking about why I wanted to write here in the first place. It had started as a What I Learned From project in my head (I can’t be the only one who’s missing WILF this month?) It was going to be called what I learned from the man with the exploding head.

And seeing as I’m here I’m going to tell you about it anyway.

I used to be a civil servant, working over 10 years for what’s now the Scottish government, before that in a range of public service organisations. Words were part of my stock in trade, words carefully chosen and used – to inform, to explain, to manage, to keep some sense of order around things. Anyway, I digress – kind of, because that’s part of the person I was when I first stumbled across the Middle Zone.

And the first time I came across the man with the exploding head, well it was after I’d written a WILF piece and sent it in. It bounced back to me because he’d published the wrong e-mail address for submissions, so I dug around a bit and found a different one and all was well. Next month: same thing happens. And you know my heart always warms to people who make recurring mistakes because it’s the kind of thing I do too, and the more I try not to, like not getting mixed up with dates and booking tickets on the wrong day, well that’s precisely what I end up doing.

Anyway, third time round and by this point it’s kind of a routine between us. Four writing projects in and yes – we were still playing the game, and that was the point that his head exploded. And I’m glad that it did because it was a bit of a whack on the side of the head for me too. Waking me up to the realisation that these were the things - alongside the self talk in the posts and the funny rejoinders to other Middle Zoners in the comment box – that these were precisely the things that create the possibility of relaxing, of breathing out, of enjoying some banter, of softening the edges of the way that I think, and write, and get to talk to other people. To enter into the spirit of a place that is just so – well I’m still not so sure what the one word is – but it’s like – refreshing, or rejuvenating – the way you feel after a long cool beer after a hot dusty day.

Because small conversations can be bridges to longer and more lasting ones, to new stories and connections and possibilities which have added a wealth of fun and understanding to my blog and to my readers there – and to my own growing confidence in shaking off some of that old public service persona and learning how to hang out with writers whose heads can explode in places like the Middle Zone.

Which is a long way round of getting to the point.

Labels – like “story” – and expectations – like “how can I write something funny enough, thoughtful enough, quality enough for someone else’s site” – well they get in the way of writing – writing the way that we are and writing what we want to say. They get in the way of the bigger purpose - and it’s that bigger purpose which is what I always try and hang on to when I get lost for words. Big doesn’t have to mean grand – in fact it can be something ordinary and everyday – like saying a word of thanks to someone you’ve learned from. Just something that’s big enough, and human enough, and important enough to take you beyond the fear and awkwardness that tangle up your words – and find a way to tell your own version of the story.

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

Speaking of assumptions (click on this link: Too Slow for His Own Good), here’s a great story that illustrates how we all make assumptions, pretty much all the time.

Mrs. MZM’s niece is a rather petite woman who could be described as a self-reliant person with a very can-do attitude. As a matter of fact, I’ve always admired her pragmatic approach to life.

A few years back she and her husband decided to join the countless hoards who have decided they wanted to own and ride motorcycles, so he of course bought a Harley, while she got a Honda Shadow. As I said, she is petite, so even though the Shadow is already somewhat low-slung, she still had to have it lowered 3 inches so she could comfortably hold it up while standing at a stop sign.

As for riding gear, well, they went all out; they bought the leather pants and jackets, three-quarter helmets (thank goodness they weren’t stupid!), riding boots, leather gloves – the whole kit. Adding to this image were their wrap-around sunglasses, the bandannas they wore on their heads under the helmets… oh, and his long beard.

Man, they looked like a couple of real desperadoes by the time they got fully suited up! But overall, I gotta say they made a pretty cool pair.

One fine sunny day she decided to take a quick trip up to College Station, Texas (home of Texas A&M University!) to pay her son a visit and show off the new bike. So she saddled up the Shadow and took off for the day, timing her arrival at her son’s place of work (they build farm trailers) so they could have lunch together.

Her son was inside with some of his co-workers when one of them noted the interesting phenomenon of Small Woman With Big Shadow (it has a sorta Dances With Wolves ring to it, doesn’t it?) pull up and park.

“Man, get a load of the tough-looking chick on this motorcycle,” the fellow called out.

Guys being guys, they all immediately crowded up to the window to check out the, uh, motorcycle.

Her son stepped back in horror as sudden realization sank in, and in a shocked voice cried out, “Hey, that’s no chick – that’s my mom!”

OK, the question we should be asking ourselves is not whether or not we’re making assumptions – and let’s face it, we all do it, all the time. And, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. No, the real question is, what’s the risk? Or, to put it more accurately, what’s the risk of those assumptions?

Huh? How’d we get from assumptions to risk? Hey, glad you asked!

See, in the engineering field, we often talk about controlling risk. There’s always a safety risk of course, but there are plenty of other, sometimes more subtle risks as well, such as construction risk (what if that crane isn’t available?), financial risk (what if market conditions change?) and start-up risk (what if you build something and it flat doesn’t work? Believe me, it’s happened!)

Well, the way we control risk is to identify the underlying assumptions made during the planning phase of the project, and then figure out ways to respond just in case things don’t quite go as planned. That’s basic risk management. And by the way, this is where bringing multiple brains to bear (follow this link: Keep Thinkin’ Y’all…) really comes in handy.

What’s really great is we can do the same thing in our everyday lives! Instead of acting on our assumptions of such-and-such about so-and-so, for instance, what if we learned to manage the risk instead?

What do you think?

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

A while back I wrote a Public-Service article called Fellowship of the Carpool, and Other Small Groups with a few thoughts towards forming your own FotC (pronounced “fot-see”). Here’s a brief excerpt apropos of, well, nothing really:

Have you ever been in a carpool? I’m in one with three others (names have been changed to protect the guilty innocent: there’s Joe, Fred, Sherry, and what the heck, since everyone else gets a new name – call me Steve).

Well, the other day in our FotC we started an interesting discussion about technology, and I have to say, it was a particularly zany conversation. Sherry wasn’t riding with us that day so it was just the three of us: Joe, Fred, and me (Steve).

Fred instigated the whole thing as we went through one of the EZ Tag lanes at a toll gate, wondering out loud if there were any way to circumvent the EZ Tag system.

I suppose the testosterone level must have been rather high that particular day, kicking off a wild and whacky discussion about various ways we could think of to fox the sensors. (Brings to mind a list I saw once entitled “Why it’s good to be a guy”. #1 on the list: “We know stuff about tanks.” ‘Course, the words, “– or we’ll make something up” remain, er, unspoken.)

Two of the most interesting ideas included:

• Make a fake EZ Tag (the part of the system – the tag itself – that rides in your car with you). However, since this was rather too blatantly illegal, we quickly discarded it.
• Build a “null” tag that causes the sensors to not “see” your car passing through the tollgate. (Not that this would be any less illegal – just more, um, devious.) After all, the best solution would be for there to be no record of your passing. Sortof like Tiny Tim tip-toeing through the tulips.

Someone (actually, it may have been me) noted there are also cameras pointed at each lane, so even if the sensor wasn’t triggered, your license plate would still be recorded (no doubt resulting in one of those thoughtful greeting cards from our fine Men or Women in Uniform with a request for a donation).

This naturally steered the conversation toward ways to thwart the cameras. Ideas abounded. (Is that what happens when ideas bounce more than once?)

Let’s see… there’s always the ever-popular “cloak of invisibility” (who says J.K. Rowling hasn’t made her mark on the world?). The fun part about this one is that it would trigger the sensor that a car was there, but none would be visible.

Much hilarity ensued at the thought of the imagined confusion of the operators (hey, give us a break; it’s a long drive). That idea led to others, like a holographic projector that can overlay the camera’s lens with the image of an empty lane as your car passes through.

Alas and fooey, the technical challenges seemed at least temporarily too formidable to solve, so we had to think a different direction. (Well, for now, anyway. But hey, we’re optimistic about the future, so you never know…)

So we came up with a few ideas that were decidedly much more low-tech, and actually (theoretically, at least) possible. Thus were born the following (patent-pending) ideas:

• Train 10,000 chameleons to sit on the top half of your car and mimic the color of the pavement. (Hey, I did say theoretically possible.) Don’t forget to take the time of day into account so they can adjust for shadows. (See – we think of everything!) You may also need a lot of, uh, glue to keep the frisky little critters in their places. Oh, and flies – you’ll need lots of flies.
• In order to avoid talk (what would the neighbors say?) and a visit from PETA, paint the top half of your car to look like pavement. Again, don’t forget to take the time of day into account so you can adjust the paint job for shadows.
• If you really don’t like the idea of driving the world’s only Lizardmobile, or of having a truly unique paint job, how about this one? Buy, beg, borrow or steal a piece of sheet metal a bit larger than your car. Then, paint THAT to mimic the concrete. Mount it on top of your car with removable clips, and Voila! (which is French for Hey, lookit that whack job idiot silly goof!) you’ve got yourself a plan!

Just as we got to our dropoff point, Joe (our driver for the day) just shook his head sadly, saying, “Keep thinkin’ y’all…”

OK, before you go running to the authorities to alert them to a series of potential misdemeanors, allow me to point out that no actual laws were broken during the writing of this post (other than the laws of sensibility, propriety and common sense – but what the hey). However, this does serve to illustrate an important principle we can all use every now and then.

When you find yourself in need a new idea and you’re, well, stuck – hey, get help! And I don’t mean a psychiatrist, silly (at least not for, uh, this) – no, I mean get a few more brains working on it with you. The fact is, there’s nothing more powerful to give creativity a kick in the backside!

It serves two purposes.

First, they can help “prime the pump” so to speak. Ever seen or heard of “story starters”? Writers use them to help get past the dreaded blankpageitis disease. These usually consist of anything from a few word to few sentences, on virtually any subject. The trick is, once they see something – literally anything – on the page, it becomes easier to pick up and go forward.

Another great benefit: they can provide a springboard for even more ideas. For instance, you can sortof follow the progression of our thoughts in the story above. I mean c’mon – there’s no way I would could have made up half the stuff we talked about – it was too far outside my own experience (not to mention level of insanity sanity). But by playing ideas off each other, we were able to come up with far more than what we could have on our own. Works nicely that way, don’t you think?

Besides, it can be ‘way more fun that trying to figure it out for yourself. I’m tellin’ ya, the three of us made one heckuva brain that day!

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

Hey, things happen, you know? Here I was, all set for today’s post; I had it all written and prepared. Then, it happened.

It was a dark and stormy night. Intermittent lightning flashed, the rains came, the waters rose. Civilization as we know it collapsed, and zombie hordes overran the Earth. They managed to break through the outer walls and were clamoring for blood…

Oops, sorry - different story. No, what REALLY happened was…

Did you know that thanks to the phenomenon of blogging, becoming self-published has become so easy that you can do it without even knowing it?

Last Thursday I was writing a post on the subject of clarity, and then realized it still needed some polishing, so in the midst of my tinkering around with it, I inadvertently pushed the “publish” button, and, well - the rest is history (as you know, you can never take anything back once it’s out there on the Internet).

I didn’t even know it was published (I thought it was still in draft form!) until I got an email notification of a comment! Sheesh!

Luckily, I had pretty much finished the editing, so for what it’s worth - it’s done! So if you’re interested in today’s post, just follow the hand back to last Thursday, where you’ll find The Importance of Clarity.

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

… what would it look like, and why? Even better, what would you WANT it to look like?

Interesting questions, don’t you think? Thought-provoking, profound and personally revealing – all at the same time. The perfect “get to know you” question. If you’ve been around the internet for any length of time, I know you’ve run across (or been tagged already) with one of those too-numerous-to-count memes: 1,000,000 Things About Me, 88 Random Things About Me, 500 Things About Me You Didn’t Want To Know But I’ll Tell You Anyway… or, well, something like that.

Now don’t get me wrong; I do enjoy finding out stuff about folks I read because it helps morph them from just pixels on a screen into actual three-dimensional people. But let’s face it; those are just words.

Yesterday’s post about plans, construction sites and buildings got me to thinking (in case you were wondering about that grinding noise) about what I’d like my life to look like if it were a building. Think of it as a branding question: What would your building say about you?

So how about some Friday fun?

Since most of us are visually-oriented anyway (sound of light bulb switching on), I thought to myself, “Hey! Rather than just telling us about yourself, why not show us instead?” (And I’m not even from Missouri!)

OK, I’ll start. Back when I was working in Las Vegas, I ran across this one:

For me, it would have to be the New York, New York Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. When I first saw it, I was literally mesmerized (sound of me, mesmerized). How on Earth did they manage to mind-meld so many different styles into one single building (and without a Vulcan in sight!)? It is absolutely incredible; not just from an architectural and construction standpoint, but to the senses as well.

Here’s why I would use this structure as “my” building:

1. Authentic. (Here’s one for you, Joanna!) I’ve never been to the actual New York, but it definitely gives you a genuine feel for the place. This was confirmed repeatedly by many I met there who had been to New York. If there’s anything I’d like my life to be, it’s authentic.
2. Consistent. Both inside and out, the entire place screams NEW YORK CITY! From the scale model of the Statue of Liberty on the outside to the choice of food vendors inside, it’s completely focused on giving you a feel for the real thing. The other half of the coin of authenticity is consistency.
3. Proud. Not as in arrogant; no, I’m talking about standing tall and willing to be noticed. The thing is, there are a lot of hotels in Las Vegas you never heard of, but this one is willing to be a focus of attention - a landmark, even. Are you willing to stand out from the crowd and be unique?
4. Whimsical. Defined as determined by impulse or whim rather than by necessity or reason, this seems to describe the overall look perfectly. I found it interesting that the World Trade Center building was shorter than the Empire State Building. It was an opportunity for the designers to emphasize what really says “New York” to most people. Taking a relaxed and sometimes whimsical view of life gives you the opportunity to see things you’d miss otherwise.
5. Serious. Hey, this is one of THE major money makers on the Strip. Big business for sure. And I’m not admiring the casino, or any specific part of it; it’s that I admire the great job the management team does: they know who they are they and do it well. Know your stuff, and be able to do it so well you don’t have to spend all your time on it. That way you can stop every now and then and have -
6. Fun. Notice the roller coaster surrounding the entire structure? That is one fun ride, especially at night! Gotta enjoy life!
7. Hospitable. Hey, the place is a hotel, after all, and the idea of hospitality resonates with me. I mean, I would like to be known as a hospitable guy, ready with a cup of coffee or cold drink if you need one, maybe a place to draw up a chair, have a seat and take a load off… (and hey, maybe even a Klondike bar or bowl of Blue Bell Banana Pudding Ice Cream - and yes, it deserves the Capitals).

(Oh, and by the way, if this building truly represented my life as I’d like it to be – I’d leave out the casino, and relocate the whole thing someplace else! Sin City is aptly named…)

Hey, this was fun! So what about you? What kind of building would you like to represent your life? Not necessarily your actual life, mind you, I’m talking about what you’d like your life to be. (Let’s leave some room for dreams and goals here.)

Hmmm, let’s see now… who to tag, who to tag? OK, how about:

Joanna Young at Confident Writing
Troy Worman at Orbit Now!
Liz Strauss at Successful Blog
Dawud Miracle at Healthy Web Design
Pete Aldin at Great Circle

Got a great response for this question? If you read this post, consider yourself tagged, my friends; no need to sit around waiting for a tap on the shoulder! Go for it! (And p.s., don’t forget to link here so I can capture them all in a wrap-up post later.)

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!