I got a postcard in the mail yesterday from Emily; she and Kai traveled to LA over winter break to visit his Grandma.  They did all the usual touristy things and had an opporutinity to go sailing, what fun!  They traveled up to San Francisco for a long weekend before they return home.  She said they are going to do the official trolley ride tomorrow.  Envy, envy, envy!!! 

When Emily was in “Meet Me In St. Louis” at the Red Wing Community Theatre production a couple of summers ago, she hung onto a fake trolley and sang The Trolley Song.  I dared her to do it for real and asked her to have Kai film it..  we shall see…   Clang! Clang! Clang!

In 1992 we bought a new phone system at work from what was then AT&T.  Back in those days, you were always given some kind of perk or gift for being a customer and our salesman gave the CEO two tickets to attend an Olympic Skating Event at the “new” Target Center that was sponsored by AT&T.  It included a pre-show reception and tickets to see the figure skating champions of the day.  The CEO couldn’t attend so he gave the tickets to me.  I took niece Kelly with me and we were pretty thrilled at the time that we got to meet Christopher Bowman.  He was very handsome, talented and charismatic.  I felt sad when I heard that over the years he struggled with alcohol and drug addiction.  He was found dead in a motel yesterday, at age 40.

On the day after Christmas, Woot had a Random Crap 2008 Calendar Edition where you could buy up to 3 2008 calendars for $0.87 a piece.  I hadn’t bought any this year so I decided, what the heck.. I’m in for 3.   There was no chosing, you take what you get.

On January 1^st, I got an email from Woot:

“Hey calendar fan!

Remember the great times you had buying a Random Crappy 2008 Calendar from Woot last week?  Well, the times are about to get even greater (and crappier).

We know the selection of calendar subjects was exceedingly lame, as usual.  That’s why we dropped the c-bomb: we ain’t just whistling ‘crappy”.  But to mitigate your family’s crap exposure during the upcoming year, we’ve commissioned a series of original illustrations that will be offered for download every month.

Just print out our custom-illustrated crappy image and tape or tack it over the crappy image on the calendar.  Easy, right?  Don’t feel obliged or anything.  If you prefer staring at the same image of “Motivational Zen Fairies” or “Ireland’s Most Adorable Cats” for a month at a time, we certainly can’t stop you.  What kind of sick individuals would profit by selling people such horrible calendars…  oh, right, that was us.

And just to give you some extra incentive to use our illustrations, we’ve doubled your calendar order.  That’s right – sometime this year, SmartPost will come through with exactly two times as many calendars as you thought you were getting.  If you wanted 1, you’ll get 2!  If you wanted 3, you’ll get 6!  And if you don’t want that many crappy calendars, too bad!  They’re yours now!  No give-backs! Called it!

Your crap-pushing pals at
Woot.com

I got my 6 crappy calendars today…  2 Tuscany, 2 Fairies, and 2 Bon Appetit (French Food Posters).  The image above is the crappy offering to print and use for January.

Woot… what a hoot!