The eight states and twelve days Christmas

On the first day of Christmas...

We hugged the furry dependents goodbye, piled in the car and drove all day through Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky. The trip began in drizzle and we actually had some snow flurries in Texas, but the weather was cooperative, otherwise.

Not so, the traffic (a major bane of my existence). Memphis has had some of its trickiest interchanges torn up since who knows when. The last few times I've passed through Memphis, I felt like I was picking my way through a war zone. Nashville is Nashville. The timing of the drive is such that we pretty much always hit town during rush hour, so slowdowns aren't unexpected. But it's gotten much worse over the past five years or so. The only way we make it through without me having a complete meltdown is for Sweetie to continuously coo calming words.

Coming from a Schmendrick who commutes daily in Dallas traffic, that's saying something—but nothing good.

Finally, we arrived at the homestead of the Foo parental units. Mom and Dad were waiting to greet us with open arms, bourbon and water, and the anise-flavored cookies that are traditional in my family. Later in the evening, one of my sisters stopped by to help, lest the task of eating the cookies prove overwhelming.

On the second, third, and fourth days of Christmas...

My youngest sister and her husband drove down to Mom and Dad's and brought the progeny for a visit with Uncle Foo and Aunt Sweetie. We don't get to see our godchildren often, and it's always astounding to see how much they've grown and matured. One is four now, going on eighteen. The other is three and needs constant supervision as he rumbles around the house trying to pull down the Christmas tree, unroll the bog rolls, and drop heavy objects on his feet.

I know I started a couple dozen conversations with my baby sister over the three days. We may have finished one. I gave numerous elephant rides (I'm too old and decrepit for horsey rides), tickle attacks, and hugs.

Sweetie and I love kids' animated movies, but we usually rent DVDs and keep this as our dirty little secret. With our niece and nephew as an excuse, though, we ventured out one afternoon to take in Chicken Little and had a great time of it. My favorite character was Fish Out Of Water.

On the fifth day of Christmas...

All quiet on the Foo front. Baby sister, brother-in-law, and godkidlets headed home in the morning.

Does the word tinitis ring a bell? I rarely notice it under normal circumstances, but with a 50% decrease in the household population came an 80% drop in decibals that made the ringing more pronounced. Don't get me wrong; I really enjoy playing with the kids. It's just that Uncle Foo and Aunt Sweetie never had any kids and just aren't used to extended periods of non-work related chaos and all that extra yelling and ramping around.

In the evening, we got gussied up and went to church. The service was quite nice, aside from the somewhat overenthusiatic application of incense which a choking fog and many a watering eye. Afterward, we headed back to the folks' place, had a glass of wine, and started putting our stuff back in travel bags for the next leg of the trip.

On the sixth day of Christmas...

On Lancer! On Scion! On Civic and Lexus! On Buick! On Geo! On Mazda RXes!

Christmas morning. After a hearty mom-produced breakfast, we hit the road and made for Sweetie's mom and dad's. The previous night's weather reports had hinted at snow in our travel path through Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. The worst we saw was a cold drizzle. A very cold drizzle. But we were snug inside the purple grapemobile, warmed by CDs of Christmas music and the celebration of our Savior's birth.

Sweetie and sweet tater tot

We arrived at my in-laws' place in plenty of time to relax and freshen up before the relatives arrived for Christmas dinner and gift exchange. The surprise guest was Sweetie's sister, who was supposed to be in Europe for Christmas.

I like Sweetie's family a lot. They've gone out of their way to embrace me from the first time Sweetie introduced me to them as her fiancee. But I've been part of it for a relatively short time, so I'm most comfortable at such gatherings if I can find a quiet spot on the periphery from which to click away with my camera.

Someone brought along a mutant sweet potato, which quickly became like one of the family. A good time was had by all.

On the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth days of Christmas...

We hung out with Sweetie's folks, her sister, her niece, and assorted other friends and relatives in the area. This is always an enjoyable time for me. I don't get to see my new mom and dad very often, so I'm always grateful to have a few days to spend with them and get to know them better.

I went plasma TV shopping with Dad-in-law, got my butt whipped at Rummy by Mom-in-law, and generally had a nice, relaxing four days.

On the eleventh day of Christmas...

We pointed the grape toward home, driving under heavy cloud cover through much of Missouri. By Joplin, we'd driven into bright sun, which allowed us to fully appreciate just how brown Oklahoma is.

Most of the Southwest is in the midst of a record drought. Over the past couple of weeks, we'd been seeing daily stories in the national news about the grass fires in Oklahoma and Texas. Seeing all the brown grass whiz by reminded me of the signs I'd seen along the interstate on previous trips through Oklahoma: "Do not drive into smoke". I mentioned this to Sweetie, who was driving at the time.

"Why?" she asked.

Sweetie often questions what I tell her. It keeps me sharp.

"I don't know," I said, just to keep things interesting, "but I imagine it's because you can't see very well if you're inside a cloud of smoke. You probably wouldn't notice a 13-car pile-up until you'd become the 14^th car."

"Hmm."

"Or maybe the state wants to avoid lawsuits over allegations of lung cancer."

"Ah."

In any case, we encountered only one live grassfire just before pulling in to (coincidentally) Ashmore's Diamond Shamrock to drain one tank and top off another. We did see several areas along the route that had recently seen extensive burns, so I count us lucky.

Somewhere along the route we had the honor of passing Checotah, which (as the sign at the city limits proudly announced) is the home of American Idol winner Carrie Underwood.

We rolled into our driveway just as the sun was going down and then spent the next hour unloading the car, trying to get my aging Civic started and out of the garage, and trying to make up to the kittens all the ear scratches and belly rubs they'd missed over the past ten days.

On the twelfth day of Christmas...

It's supposed to be 75 °F today and in the 80s tomorrow. I should try to get in a 30-mile ride, but let's face it: I'll probably hang out around the house and try to regroup before going back to work Monday. Maybe I'll feel guilty enough to get out for a New Year's Day ride like I did last year. Maybe not.

Merry Christmas!

Sweetie and I are on the road for holiday visits, so we went ahead and exchanged gifts before we left town.

I've been eyeing this cycling jersey for a while but willpower prevailed. Thank heaven Sweetie went ahead and got it for me. Stylin'.

The kittens, stoned to their eye teeth on catnip toys.

I don't have much access to the internet at my folks' place or my in-laws, so I won't be posting to the blog much until we get home. Never fear, though. I'll do my best to catch up on comments and to come up with some tales to tell.

Merry Christmas to all and to all some spiked eggnog.

My see no anyway deviant

"Ooooo. Now there's something I have to read," I thought. "Or catch a computer virus from."

Spam e-mail with subjects like this are so obviously junk that they're pretty low on my nuisance list. Thanks to the fact that my mail reader is text-only, I can even look at the contents if I want, without having to worry about downloading an image or running a script.

I looked at this one.

"sentimental to Traddles," it began. "I met him in town, and asked him to walk out with me."

Traddles, you say? Hmm. That's actually better English than I've come to expect when dealing with tech support at some outfit like Dell or Symantec. Traddles... Traddles... like some nickname a college girl at Brown might have given her beau, the captain of the sculling team, around the turn of the century (not this most recent one—the one before).*

In those days, Big Men On Campus wore beaverskin coats, smoked pipes, and spoke with vaguely British accents. I know this from watching old black-and-white movies from the '40s and '50s. It's like they were the spawn of Thurston G. Howell III, all imperious and secure in their place at the top of the food chain. Certainly, there were normal people back then; they just weren't worth depicting in movies, unless the plot called for a milkman or someone to drive the coal truck.

They almost certainly wouldn't have found themselves in the pet supplies aisle of the local Wal-Mart grocery. If they had, they might have just grabbed a couple jugs of the cat litter with the blue label. They would not have climbed into the rack so far that only their ankles stuck out, whilst trying to drag the last two jugs of cat litter with the red label from where they cowered, all the way at the back.

"Help," they wouldn't have had to call to the bemused 100-something-year-old decorated WWI veteran, who was shuffling past, looking for the rawhide bones. "Can you give me a tug?"

Of course, I never saw a BMOC eating a hand-tossed pepperoni, mushroom, and black olive pizza. If that's what they gave up for the right to wear the beaverskin coat, I'd say they can have it. Party on, Traddles.

"So incontinence Diogenes anchovy," I always say.


* Yes, yes... Tommy Traddles is a character in David Copperfield. Go 'way, kid. Ya bother me.

Sawin' on a fiddle and playin' it hot

Not really. Not me, at least.

But Uncle Joe's post "That's Life!: A Musical Journey Part 1" reminded me of something that's hiding in the back of my office closet: an old violin that had been in my mom's family for many years. Grandpa always claimed it had been built by one of our relatives, and about the time I started college, he started trotting it out and talking about passing it down to me.

I resisted. Grandpa had already given me his pocket watch, and I didn't want to be the sole caretaker of his treasures. Besides, the old fiddle just seemed like such a fragile, useless thing. I was at a stage in my life where I had just moved in to my first apartment—my small apartment. Where would I store it? What if it got broken?

It wasn't that I couldn't appreciate the history of the thing. I was afraid of it.

A couple Christmases ago, I was visiting my parents when Mom brought it up again. Grandpa had been gone nearly a decade, by then.

"You know," she said, "you ought to take that violin back to Texas with you. Your grandpa really wanted you to have it."

Sweetie shot me her honor-thy-mother look, and I bit back the usual objections about not having enough room in a car full of Christmas gifts, luggage, and us.

"Okay, let's have a look at it."

Mom brought out the battered, hand-hewn case, set it on the dining room table, and fiddled with the latch. She opened the lid. The interior of the case was lined in worn red felt and constructed to accomodate the shape of the violin. The violin itself was protected by a drawstring bag made of soft, red cloth with a pattern that reminded me of mattress ticking.

I lifted it out of the case, undid the drawstring, and carefully slid the bag off the violin. The strings were all slack and broken, and the bridges were out. The bowstring was long gone from the bow. The fingerboard showed some natural wear, but oh man—there wasn't a nick or a scratch or a crack anywhere on the body or neck.

"Wow," I said.

Mom smiled. "Do you remember the story behind this?"

"Sort of. Wasn't this supposed to have been made by one of Grandpa's cousins?"

"I think so," she said. "Or maybe one of his uncles. Maybe you could find him in your genealogy research."

"Maybe," I said, turning the violin this way and that, admiring it.

Then I caught sight of something through one of the f-holes.

"Hey, I see something inside. Have you got a flashlight handy?"

She came up with one, and I used it to peer inside the f-holes. There was a thin, yellowed strip of paper stuck to the inside of the body. On it, in delicate script, had been written "Charles Creque violin maker Suffield O 1903".

Charles, it turned out, was my grandfather's first cousin, once removed—or his father's first cousin, to look at it another way. Charles, born in 1866, was the youngest son of Anthony Creque and Mary Scholastica Farnbach, both French immigrants. At various times in his life, he worked as a carpenter, a farmer, and a laborer doing odd jobs. He died in 1942.

Sitting at Dad's computer, looking through the information in our research database, I could almost feel the violin trying to bridge the gap between its maker and me. I could see that Charles had never married. Census records showed that he and several of his siblings lived with their mother (Anthony died in 1898) well into their adulthood.

A carpenter/farmer who made beautiful violins. I have trouble imagining how Charles came to acquire his skills, but maybe—without a wife and children to support—it was his hobby. Maybe one day I'll uncover the answer.

Five Random Facts

Over at My Gobhole, Susie posted her Five Random Facts. I rarely pass up an opportunity to embarrass myself, so here are mine:

1. There are three degrees of separation between Kevin Bacon and me, as a consequence of my speaking role in a low-budget horror movie called Hauntedween.
   
2. I am a cancer survivor.
   
3. I used to really enjoy Hallowe'en.* Now, not so much.
   
4. I like it when I have money, but I hate the way anything to do with money attracts red tape. Yes, it's that time of year when I have to fill out all those benefits and 401K forms again.
5. I enjoy karaoke night.
   

(Not a nun.)

* One year, I attended a party dressed as a nun. Spending the evening with a bottle of Old No. 7 in one hand and a cigarette in the other (an occasional but unfortunate vice I've since given up) has most likely added a commensurate period to my time in purgatory.

Another year, I dressed as a creature that one might describe as the love child of David Bowie and Paul Stanley. Witnesses understandably found this disturbing; however, I don't foresee it having an impact on my afterlife.

Tholving The Theme Thituation

Right. Enough of that.

I'm not sure how I got left off the V.I.P. notification list when the new level release of the Firefox browser came out, but come out it did. I like to stay on top of such things, so I promptly downloaded the Firefox 1.5 installation, uninstalled my existing version, and installed the new one. All went smoothly, as usual, but when I set about updating my various themes and extensions, I ran into a problem.

When I clicked on the Install link, I received one of those thin yellow warning bars just under the tabs saying that I needed to enable the software installation feature. No surprise there; I typically leave software installation disabled. Firefox was on guard, and this pleased me.

Off I went to the Tools => Options => Content panel to enable software installation. But what the...? The panel had changed and no longer provided a check box to enable software installation. "Warn me when web sites try to install extensions or themes" was where the old option used to be, so I rolled my eyes and unchecked it, thinking someone had simply decided to "enhance" the old wording.

No dice. No matter what I tried, I couldn't install new versions of my favorite themes.

"But I want to install software," I muttered to the recalcitrant program.

Firefox crossed its non-existent arms and widened its stance.

"None... shall... pass."

Right. It was time to get nasty. Off I went a-Googling and in short order found an article that addressed my problem and explained how I'd been hoist by my own petard. Firefox's habit of leaving all settings intact when you upgrade from one version to the next is normally one of its more endearing traits. In this case, however, not so much.

It turns out that if you have software installation disabled in your Firefox 1.0.x installation and upgrade to 1.5, the setting is carried over. This would be fine were it not for the fact that the checkbox to enable it has been removed from the content options dialogue. Fortunately, the fix is simple:

1. Type "about:config" in the address bar and hit enter.
2. Type "xpinstall.enabled" in the filter bar.
3. If the value for "xpinstall.enabled" is "false", double click the entry to switch it to "true".

That's it. Easy cheesy; pulse rate returning to normal.

Now playing: L7, Bricks Are Heavy

We're movin' on up

I've never been a particularly social creature. Let's face it: if I were good with people, I probably would be living fat on commissions earned selling people things they can ill afford and need less. Instead, my strong suit is my ability to communicate with machines, which take offense over my relative lack of social grace only when that involves the phrase, "Hand me the big hammer, please."

My sweet wife, on the other hand, is very sociable. The first couple holidays that we were married were difficult for her, because I don't have a lot of friends—which meant that the company party was pretty much all I had to offer in terms of holiday social engagements. Although she'd never admit it, I suspect she had some regrets about being uprooted from her social circle and replanted in such rocky, uncongenial ground.

This year, all of that has changed. Thanks to invitations from church friends and bike club friends, my wife's holiday cheer batteries and our social calendar have been full. Perhaps the most unexpected invitation came from a couple in our neighborhood—unexpected because neither of us had any idea who they were.

It was all very mysterious.

I suppose most normal people would have simply accepted the invitation at face value, but I—a suspicious sort who not only looks a gift horse in the mouth but also orders its dental x-rays—agreed to accept the invitation on condition that we could establish that there would be no Tupperware, timeshare, or multi-level marketing pitch involved.

We were assured there would not be.

Come the evening of the party, Sweetie and I were edgy with anticipation. We snorted, scenting the breeze. Ears twitching, we pawed the...

Sorry. I got caught up.

I spent the obligatory hour trying on various clothing combinations, wanting to show some class without making it appear that I'd given the matter a lot of thought. I'm not sure what my wife was doing with her time, but the muttered curses emanating from depths of her closet were what the folks on CSI would call "a clue".

Finally, we'd managed to make ourselves presentable. We patted the kittens goodbye, locked the house and walked the two blocks to the address on the invitation. Up the walk. Ring the doorbell. From the moment the door opened, our hosts and the other guests were as gracious and interesting as anyone could wish for.

It was a wonderful time, even for an introvert like me.

But the mystery remained: how had we been selected? The same question was on several other guests' minds, and finally a couple of us asked outright. It turned out that our hosts had asked our homebuilder's sales agent to recommend a list of people in the neighborhood whom she thought they would enjoy meeting. The reason for their somewhat cryptic handling of the invitations was that they were a little nervous, fearing that someone might be upset that the agent had given out their names. A valid concern, I'd say. Fortunately, the agent chose well and I didn't see any hint of potential legal action in the smiles of the guests.

There's a fresh crack in my tough, asocial shell. I could learn to like this.

Tool of the day

The guy in the white Ford Bronco with the large reflective "Click It Or Ticket" sticker plastered across the rear glass and about a dozen foam balls of various designs impaled on his radio antenna. Not that I have anything against the antenna balls, and especially not the pro-seatbelt sentiment; but I'm reasonably sure his point was lost on three separate lanes full of drivers whom he variously tailgated, cut-off, and ran out of their lanes.

The 12" high "3" that shared the rear window with the seatbelt sticker probably should have been a clue.

1^st Runner Up

Me, almost. I was walking from the parking structure to the building where I work and fell in behind a woman stylishly dressed in a flattering black suit. She was clicking along on spike heels, trailing a potent miasma of the sort of cloying perfume usually reserved for elderly women wearing dead animals draped around their necks.

I wanted out of her draft—and badly—so I upped my normally brisk walking pace another notch and quickly overtook her. I must have scuffed my shoe or something, because she looked back. She saw me in my jeans and sneakers, and her entire demeanor changed from Boardroom Ballbuster to Pauline in Peril.

The race was on.

Perceiving me as some lowlife scumbag wanting to relieve her of her purse, her virtue, or both, she quickened her pace. Still wanting out of her Prince Matchabelli (or whatever) fog, I quickened mine.

It didn't take long for me to overtake her, and when she didn't get mugged she reverted to Boardroom Ballbuster mode. "Sorry I'm too slow for you," she said in a tone so sulphurous that I began understood her need for aromatic camouflage.

And I thought I had a snarky streak.

Anyway, I almost... almost... responded that I was only trying to get upwind so as to avoid spewing my breakfast all over the pavement. I've been trying to do better about cleaning up my karma, so I didn't; but if I had, it would have made me Tool of the Day.

At least, until this afternoon's drive home.

No room in the stable

http://www.electrabike.com/

I'm not sure what it is, but Electra's Ghostrider makes me itch. It's very similar to the Rockabilly Boogie I sat on at my local shop last week, and I can't explain my yen except to say... man, it's cool. 26" wheels with big fat tires that looked half again as wide as the ones on my mountain bike, and a laid-back riding position that would be just too sweet for rolling around the 'hood. And it has a three-speed hub with a coaster brake. How's that for luxury?

Relative to my other bikes, it's pretty cheap; but Sweetie says there's no more room in the stable. Le sigh.

That's brisk, baby

It was 19ºF and windy when I crawled out of the bed and into the shower this morning. I know that's nothing to my friends and family up north, but it's pretty nippy by Texas standards.

First, for the edification of those who read yesterday's prediction that I'd be held at the office too late to beat the huddled masses home in the freezing rain, the office closed at 3:00—before all hell broke loose. It was a slow-ish drive home with the defroster on full blast to keep ahead of the thin layer of ice that kept trying to freeze over my windshield; but aside from the overpasses and toll plazas where everyone slowed to a crawling-on-hands-and-knees pace, it wasn't bad. The serious panic cases were just starting to come out when I was within sniffing distance of the barn.

On to current events. The company doesn't announce whether or not the office will be closed for bad whether until 7am, which poses me a bit of a dilemma since I've usually been at work for at least 15 minutes by that time. If I went on in at my usual time, I might have to turn right around and drive back home; but if I waited until the announcement and the office wasn't closed, I'd be stuck in the middle of rush hour traffic with all the Nervous Nellies.

I chose the former. The announcement was posted, and sure enough... the office was closed. Ah well, at least the drive home was a breeze.

I've got a lot on my head

http://www.noginsox.com

When the weather starts to get a little chilly, those nice big vents on your bike helmet aren't so great. I've seen helmet covers before, but Nogin Sox has come up with some I'd actually enjoy using. My favorite is the Screamin' Frog (about half way down the page).

No two are alike

http://www.popularfront.com/snowdays/

Winter weather bumming you out? Go make a pretty snowflake (it's fun)!

White fright

We don't get much frozen precipitation here in North Texas, but we can usually count on getting a taste once or twice a year. More often than not, it's freezing rain that paralyzes the metromess and leaves scads of drivers panicked and stranded atop the ridiculously high overpasses that TXDOT builds.

Well, today is our first "winter storm warning" of the year. True to form, half my co-workers have called in sick at the suggestion that we might get some slippery stuff—and those are the smart ones. The rest of us will gamely attempt to get some work done in between trips to peer apprehensively out the window to see if the stuff that's ticking against the glass is starting to stick. If it goes according to previous years' scripts, our managers will tell us to "go on home so you can beat the weather"; but they won't tell us until it's been pissing down for at least an hour. By that time, the roads will be wall-to-wall white knuckle yokels turning a 45-minute commute into a four-hour crawl.

But maybe we'll get lucky and this will turn out to be a false alarm.

Going nowhere fast

Sweetie and I recently purchased a bicycle trainer as a belated anniversary gift to one another.

"I didn't know you guys swing that way," said one wag upon hearing of this.

Huh?

"Everyone knows trainers are torture devices. Yanno... S&M."

He knowingly arched one eyebrow. Nudge, nudge. Eh? Does she go? A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat.

Riiight...

So anyway, last evening I finally got around to figuring out how to set up the thing and giving it a whirl. No problem, but the devil's in the details. I wanted to be able to tell how fast I wasn't going, but the sensor for my cycle computer is on the front wheel, which doesn't move when you're pedaling on the trainer. So I rigged a spare Cateye Velo 2 to register off the rear wheel.

I don't want it there permanently, so I hunted down some velcro strips and "engineered" it. There's quite a large gap between the seat stays and the nearest part of any spoke, so I cut a block of foam packing material and used it as a shim to position the sensor close enough to the magnet. The wire connecting the wheel sensor to the base is pretty short (the reason why it wasn't used on my wife's handcycle as originally intended), so I used another piece of velcro strip to strap it to the top tube.

It seems to work well enough, and since it's the same model as the one I have on the mountain bike already, I can just move the existing computer head to the rigged setup and continue incrementing the lifetime odometer. However, I'm a bit concerned that the constant rocking motion might be hard on the rear suspension linkages, so I may have to bite the bullet and use the road bike on the trainer. It would mean putting additional wear on the road tires (since I don't have a spare rear wheel for that bike) and buying a new computer that would register off the rear wheel, but those factors are relatively minor when weighed against potential damage to my Stumpjumper.

All that aside, it made for a good workout. I did 30 minutes at an average of 12.1 mph. The math majors among you will have noted that this is only 6 miles, but the difference from riding on the road is that you never stop pedaling. I had an average heart rate of 180 bpm and a max of 190. Others have told me that they hate riding their trainers because it's boring, and I can't disagree with that; but it's better than freezing or not riding at all.

Maybe what I really need is a poster of a cold bottle of Shiner Bock to hang on the wall in front of me while pedaling on the trainer.

Will the real Clark Griswold please stand up?

In case you haven't already received this as an e-mail attachment from every one of your relatives and co-workers, this just may be the most impressive Christmas light display ever.

Sure, I noted with a slightly cynical eye that some of the changes seemed awfully regular. I thought someone might have filmed the house with various combinations of lights turned on and then pieced the footage together with Director (or something) to synch with the music. But the real scoop is much more impressive.

Color me amazed.

Precision lawn chair marching

http://www.lawnchairdads.com

Too bad these guys weren't in the Macy's Thanksgiving parade. Not that I'd want them to catch pneumonia or something, but I really have to admire a group that appreciates the absurdity of marching around in patriotic boxers and black socks.

Kittens is sweet

It's a complete mystery to me, but this little critter just loves my sneakers. Aren't cats supposed to have very keen senses? Anyway, I caught one of our little allergens in a rare moment of quietude between two of her favorite things: a sun patch and a shoe of dubious aromatic quality. The shot just screamed "contentment".

Well... whispered.

Party yawn, Garth

I dragged myself and my wife out to the company's (bite me, lefties) Christmas party last night. I don't know whether I'm just getting old and tired, if the company party and my co-workers are getting old and tired, or a combination of both. All I know is that we had a lot more fun just having dinner with friends after church (but before the party) than at the party itself.

Over the years, it seems like the ever-shrinking group of co-workers who are also friends have stopped coming to the party. Most of those who do come are the newer employees from other office locations and acquired companies. I'm not a glad-handing, networking salesman type, so I'm not apt to walk up and start a conversation with these strangers, and you can be quite certain they'd never come up to me. So really, last night was a political appearance intended to avoid a black mark in the "not a team player" box.

We came, we ate a couple dessert-type things, and then we grabbed one of the wait staff to lead us back through the extremely gross kitchen, down the freight elevator, and out the door to freedom.

The death of a cyclist... and common sense

While I was sitting in my chair, watching some kid get clobbered by a streetlight pulled down by a runaway Thanksgiving parade balloon, Jim Price was fighting for his life. By Friday, he'd lost the fight, and the Denver cycling community had lost a valued, vibrant member.

apnews1.iwon.com/article/20051202/D8E829680.html

Teen Charged in Text Messaging Accident
Dec 2, 5:40 AM (ET)

HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. (AP) - A teenage driver accused of text messaging behind the wheel and hitting a cyclist was charged with a misdemeanor, authorities said.

The 17-year-old was charged with careless driving causing death, according to the Douglas County Sheriff's Office. The charge carries a maximum sentence of one year in prison.

The victim, Jim R. Price, 63, was riding his bicycle Nov. 23 when he was hit by the teen's car, said Lt. Alan Stanton, a spokesman for the sheriff's office. Price died two days after the accident.

The teen has not been identified because he is a minor. Authorities said he lost control of the car because he was sending text messages on a cell phone. He was issued a summons and ordered to appear in court, authorities said.

I read something like this, and I can only shake my head in stunned amazement at the complete lack of judgment. It's bad enough having to dodge all the idiots weaving in and out of rush hour traffic, cell phone pressed to their ears with one hand and gesturing with a Starbucks cup in the other. Now we have to watch out for driving while text messaging?

When I first heard about the Colorado incident, I thought it must be a fluke. Surely, even most kid drivers are more responsible than that, right?

Maybe not. Two days later, my wife and I had been out for dinner with some friends and were driving home on The George (a.k.a., George W. Bush Tollway) when I noticed one of the cars ahead of us weaving in and out of its lane. We gave the car a wide berth, sped up to get around, and as we passed I could see the driver and her passenger. In the dark, I could see two spots of glowing light that I'm reasonably certain were cell phone displays.

They were text messaging.

Now playing: Chris Whitley, Living With The Law