I don't suppose that many people heard that I was going to work for myself and pictured me on a cold floor in a cold house, tying a freaking necktie at 5:30 in the morning on a cold January day. But that's exactly how I found myself yesterday morning.

Shelly sent me a funny post, and that reminds me of something similarly funny from when I was young.

Today, I read about this service called Cha Cha. You text message a question to 242242 (there's also a phone number you can call), and reportedly, a human looks up the answer and gets back to you. It's all free, so I decided to test it out.

I got a book of haikus about dogs for Christmas, and it is the bomb.

The holiday weekends were fun this year. On Christmas Eve, I smoked a turkey, a duck, a seperate turkey breast, two extra turkey legs, a bunch of andouillie sausage, and three large pork tenderloins. And then let's talk about the kids. And New Year's. There's a lot here.

There are only a couple of bad things about the death of albums. First is the end of giant album cover art. Who even notices album art any more? On new albums, they're just mailing it in.

What does a married guy walking the dogs in his pajama pants know about finding a prostitute?

Here's the least uplifting, but one of the most fun Christmas songs to come out in years.

Last night, I was painting some crown molding in the dining room. Even though my ceilings aren't unusually high, I've always noticed how hot it is with my head up there near the ceiling. In no time at all, I had worked up a good sweat.

I did something different on Thanksgiving Day this year. I ordered the steak. We had no family obligations, there was no snow on the ground in Colorado, and the forecast scared us away from a sailing voyage. So we sailed Wednesday, and went down to The Grill Room in New Orleans for Thanksgiving dinner.

Every February, on college football signing day, the experts come out with rankings to let you know who's incoming class is best. It's yet another competition for the fans to watch and root for. But the experts also always say something like, "You have to wait four years to really see what this class is all about."

Flight of the Conchords new season starts on January 18. That gives you two whole months to subscribe to HBO if you don't have it already.