I was in a convenience store today, and a young guy came in wearing black pants with pinstripes and a Ruth's Chris t-shirt. I couldn't hear the clerk, but his side of the conversation went like this.

I just heard the story about how Maxim gave the new Black Crows album 2 1/2 stars out of 5, despite having never bothered listening to the album.

My initials are downright trifling.

I can't believe that we actually had a viable presidential candidate this year who denied evolution. Let's think through the rationale of a guy who wanted to lead the free world.

Yesterday, we went to a dumb little Valentines day party at Vanya's preschool. All the toddlers danced around while their teacher sang, and then we watched them eat their lunch. Then we watched them get grouchy as it came close to nap time.

It's been a half-year of firsts for us: First Halloween with a kid, first Thanksgiving, first Christmas and New Years, first day of preschool. Perhaps the most fun has been in the past week, which featured both the first Mardi Gras as well as Vanya's first birthday with us (and second overall).

I didn't get too much into Super Bowl pregame hype. For some reason, that one off weekend made it seem like a month since the conference championship games. To top that, I didn't have a strong rooting interest in the game, since neither team was local, and since I had no money on the line. There were bad reasons for me to cheer for either team.

What do you do if you're a big, giant corporation with bad financials?

When I upgraded to a 4-door Jeep Wrangler last year, it came with a free year's subscription to Serius satellite radio. The radio has 6 buttons, each of which hold two stations' worth of presets. Push it once for the first station, and push it again for the second. After almost a year of messing with it, I have the buttons laid out like this (actual station names listed in case you are familiar and curious):

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