In honor of Thursday's Predicted Snow, some random ramblings

• I just placed my order for Moo cards yesterday. I can not wait. I'm running low on my boring, black font on white cardstock business cards anyway, but that's not the sensible excuse I could get away with for doing this. No, for once, Malcolm, something's just hitting the Tipping Point and I'm in on it! This is a huge trendy thing that's going to be satarized by being referenced just-briefly-enough-on-the-Simpsons-to-prove-they-still-have-the-edge-on-pop-culture-but-know-not-to-club-you-over-the-head-with-it. And for once, I'm in on it before the saturation point! It's not that I don't want to be a ridiculous slave to bleeding edge trends. Its just that I'm too busy to keep an eye and be on this stuff before it turns cliché. (No really, I didn't get a myspace page until like a month or so ago --and I still don't get myspace, I only started a blog less than a year ago, and I still don't have any kind of a team bicycling jersey to wear out on my weekend rides. I am waaaayyyy behind being trendy.) But these moo cards -- wow, I'll have them for the fifteen minutes I need to have them before I get made fun of for having them. Oh, and I get to be one of those people who sniff at people in four months and go "Oh, that? I'm on my fourth box…" Woo Hoo!!!!!!!!! I'm in, Esme Squalor, I'm "in."
  
  
• My boss has been celebrating halloween by giving everybody on our team little candies every day. Today's offering is Dark Chocolate M&Ms. What a concept: M&Ms for grownups. And there are green ones in there, but not too many. This is a workplace, you know.
  
  
• At Brian's suggestion, I drove into work this morning and took the newly opened Plankinton Avenue exit from I-43 northbound. If you are not a Milwaukeean from the South Side (or thereabouts) who works or otherwise has business to conduct downtown, skip this paragraph, because you will probably never take this exit in your life and you don't care. But if you are one of the thousands who have accepted that this whole Marquette Interchange Project is going to take as long as its going to take for the Packers to ever get in the playoffs again, this is a huge deal. Timewise, its still not worth taking the freeway in, even at 6:15 am when I drive into work. The traffic backups still begin just after the National Avenue exit, because the left lane that used to go to I-94Westbound is still closed off, shoving three lanes of traffic into two. But the Plankinton exit is there, and it’s a beauty! Two lanes wide, that lovely feeling of driving on freshly constructed pavement (especially since just I got a s-load of suspension work and new tires a couple of months ago!), ridges dug into the curvy part just in case you're side-by-side with somebody who NEEDS a s-load of suspension work and new tires, and since nobody realizes its open yet, a creepy (but in a good way) solitaryness about the whole thing. I know, I've got some kind of life getting all excited about a freeway ramp, but still. Nice job.
  
  
• It's supposed to snow Thursday. Freaking snow. I'm not ready for this, literally. I need to drop about 5 more pounds before the wonderful Helly Hensen snow pants I got at Sierra Trading Post last year for only $30 (they normally retail for ~ $150) will fit me and I can look all cool and fabulous wiping out at St. Mary's Hill like I was Lindsay Jacobellis in my euro-styled but marvelously functional snow sport togs. Boo-hoo.

** By the way, this is how behind the hip times I am: I only read Gladwell's The Tipping Point last year, four years after I heard Gladwell speak at a writers' conference in the wake of him becoming a media star over it. I didn't even read andy of the A Series of Unfortunate Events books until the movie came out and I wanted to prove to Stella that you should ALWAYS read the book before going to see the movie. Ah, Stella has the day off this Friday -- we'll make a pilgrimage to Schwartz's Bookshop to get the newest (and last) in the Series. Right, like it's all going to get wrapped up neatly in one little book.