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Yesterday Laralee returned from a trip to Salt Lake City to visit her family. She flew, of course. Before she left last week, we were talking about all of the stuff she was packing. She wanted to bring a lemon. Yes, a lemon. Don’t ask me why– I don’t actually know, nor is it relevant to this story.

She was concerned, though, because she wasn’t actually sure if she could bring it. Are lemons some kind of controlled substance? Would the TSA confiscate it? Would they ask questions about it, demanding to know why she wanted a lemon on the plane?

As it turned out, nothing happened and the lemon (thankfully) made it through security. But it made me think about how ridiculous the whole situation was.

Congratulations, terrorists. You won. You’ve left our country in such a state of fear that we don’t even know if a stupid lemon is going to trigger alarms or violate the absurd rules we’ve built around air travel, all in the name of hiding from the bogeyman.

I’m 41 today. I’m in the prime of my life.

(Hah, get it? Prime!)

I don’t know where Zack gets it, but today he shared this nugget of wisdom with us:

Laralee may have left me for Valentine’s Day to visit her mom in Idaho, but she dropped off a nice rose on my desk.

What a sweetheart.

Okay, that’s weird. Amazon just sent me an email to tell me that a CD I bought seven years ago is now available to me as MP3 files in Amazon’s music cloud.

Of course I ripped the CD to MP3’s as soon as I received it, so it doesn’t really matter, but this seems like kind of a strange thing…

This is why I love having a big desk.

It’s tax time, which means I have all kinds of paperwork to review, two screens so I can have spreadsheets and PDF’s and my tax software open, and of course the usual accroutrement of pens, a calculator, and old file folders.

Here’s an obligatory macro shot:

My desk is actually a solid-core oak door I bought back in 2001. I sanded, stained, and varnished it, and now it sits atop two heavy-duty filing cabinets. The door itself probably weighs close to a hundred pounds and if the upper two floors of the house were to collapse atop me, I’d probably be safe beneath it. To call this desk “sturdy” is an understatement. I love it.

What I don’t love, however, are taxes. Argh. Back to work.

I bought some sandals today.

For the past decade or more, I’ve been repeatedly buying Mossimo sandals from Target; they cost around $20 and last maybe two years or so. I wear sandals all year, including in the winter– my rule is if there’s actual snow on the ground, I’ll put on boots or at least close-toed shoes, but other than that it’s sandals. Every time a pair wears out, I’ve bought another. Well, Mossimo stopped making the particular sandal I really like, so now that my sandals have worn out, I don’t have a way to replace them. I’ve been wearing my current pair for several years now, and they’re completely shot. Both soles are cracked and falling off, the upper surface is worn through, the straps’ velcro isn’t sticky… in short, they’ve served their useful life and then some.

So I thought maybe it’s time to get a quality pair of sandals– meaning more than $20 a pair. I was at REI in Denver yesterday and saw a really nice pair by Ecco. They looked pretty much like my old ones but were much more comfortable and (in theory, anyway) should last longer because they’ll have higher-quality materials and manufacturing.

The problem? These are $130. Wow, that’s the equivalent of maybe a decade of buying cheap sandals! The economics of this situation are tough. Then again, many years ago I used to buy $10 sunglasses time after time, usually breaking or losing them and then buying another cheap pair; at some point I dropped $80 on a pair (shocking!) and I still wear that pair. I’m guessing these sunglasses are 15 years old by now. In short, sometimes it might be worth the big investment rather than the series of cheapies.

So I dropped the $130 and bought a pair online. Now I eagerly await my sweet new footwear. We’ll see if this turns out well.

Today I took my lovely wife on a date. We went down to Denver, and when it was time for lunch I suggested we stop at Maggiano’s. We’d never been there before, and in fact I hadn’t even heard of it. But it looked kind of cool, and it sounded Italian.

It turned out to be really nice. We had a wonderful lunch, and in the end I’d say Maggiano’s has two big things going for it:

1) If you order a pasta dish (I ordered lasagna, of course), you get a second helping of that dish to take home. They actually cook it separately and bring it to you in a box at the end of the meal. It’s like two for one!

2) The disposable hand towels in the bathroom are, without a doubt, the nicest hand towels I’ve ever used in my life. They have the Maggiano’s logo on them, and they’re made out of paper but in a way that almost feels like cloth. I literally felt bad throwing mine away after I was finished, because it was so nice.

So that’s my review. Double pasta and sweet hand towels. If you’re ever in the DTC area, stop in and enjoy a nice lunch there.

Ahh, First World Problems… always a source of mirth for me.

Many years ago, I bought a bunch of inexpensive Acer nettop machines. They were a screaming deal, small, quiet, and did a good job for my daily work. They came with cheap white “chiclet” keyboards that I really liked. Picture Apple’s mini Bluetooth keyboards, except crappier. Regardless, I liked the feel of them and used them for years. One at home, one at the office, and life was good.

Recently, I upgraded the nettop to a “real” desktop machine that has considerably more power, and it’s noticeably faster and smoother. I decided to see if there was a nice keyboard I could add as well, so I went to Best Buy and clacked away on all of their shelf models. Once I found one I liked, I bought it online (because you should never, ever buy anything from Best Buy– it’s always more expensive!).

It’s the Logitech K750 solar-powered wireless keyboard, and it’s super sweet.

The keys are really quick and easy, and I think that my typing speed has probably increased 10% as a result. I’m already a screamin’ fast typist, but I didn’t realize how much those cheap chiclet keyboards were slowing me down. Now I’m that much more productive, whee!