In the interest of job security, I don't normally use this forum to make fun of my employer too much. But once in a while, the satire gods throw you such a beautiful opportunity, you can't pass it up. You see, some genius at work had the bright idea for each different team to take a picture, to format that into some sort of Christmas greeting PDF file, and to send those out to the clients that this particular team supports. As my emailed response to these put it, "let the ridicule begin..."

I woke up yesterday morning at around 5:00. I'm not sure why I was up so early, but I was fresh and ready to start the day. I went out to the living room where the gas fire still warmed the air. I watched most of Sports Center and a little bit of the news on CNN. Then I took a shower and went to work early. It was a normal start to a day that would end very abnormally.

Sometimes, when I have half a thought but not a full one, I'll jot down a little note. Sometimes they turn in to a real idea. Once in a while, I start writing about it, and the idea flows into a whole post. On the other hand, I have a whole page of half-thoughts that went nowhere. Here is a collection of some half-thoughts that have no chance of becoming a whole post on their own merit.

When I decided that I wanted to write a web log, it was just the because I wanted to write. Sure, I could have kept a private journal, and I even tried to do that a time or two. But as much as I like to read, I don't really like to read my own writing. I know that doesn't make much sense, but that's the way it is. The idea of writing pages of stuff into a journal that no one would ever read seemed rather silly to me.

Shelly Williams may have the foulest mouth that I know, but she can do research. Last time I saw her, she gave me a pack of dice and a laminated copy of the official Three Man rules (so spilled drinks don't ruin the page). I hereby reprint those rules for posterity.

I only know of one place in Baton Rouge where you can get biegnets and cafe au lait, and of course, you can't get much more than that. The place is called Coffee Call, and I would give you a link to their web site if I knew of one for them. I'm not really here to advertise anyway.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm tired of hearing people complain about how LSU did this season. There are two reasons that these complaints are annoying. First, we **just won the doggone national championship!** And in fact, we are still the national champions for another month. (Read that bold part again, and just try not to smile.) More importantly, LSU had a good season this year. Keep reading, and I'll back that up.

At first, I thought it was my lucky day. I was about to board a three and a half hour flight, and I just found out that I had been granted an unrequested first-class upgrade. I'm not sure why; I'm just barely to the "silver" level of Delta's rank and grade system, but I guess that combined with low demand for those seats combined with having purchased a ticket that any sane person would laugh at got me through.

While my entries are in this reminiscence theme, allow me to spin you another tale of childhood. I guess most of us had that summer or two of childhood where we were old enough to run wild, but not quite old enough to drive or be tied down by a summer job of any consequence. When I was of that age, we lived in a subdivision in Little Rock with tons of other kids of my age. We spent every minute between waking up and curfew roaming the neighborhood in packs.

The other night, I got to trying to think of what were the earliest things that I could remember. I came up with a good number of short scenes that were all before I moved from Baton Rouge during Kindergarten. I remember the house we lived in on Woodbine, and I remember washing the car with my old man. (Specifically, I remember him showing my how to get the whitewalls on the tires good and clean.)

All of the talking heads and advertisements were really getting on my nerves. Especially the past couple of weeks. Yesterday I said that if there was a runoff in our Senate election, and if that meant I have to see the advertisement with David Vitter's premature babies one more time, I would yank out my own tongue and strangle myself with it. Vitter won, sparing me the horrible decision of having to watch that commercial any more or to take my own life in a most horrifying and painful manner.

Does anyone besides me like that song, The Day Ted Nugent Killed All the Animals? The IPOD picked that song for me while I walked the dog last night. It got me thinking that someone could go out and put out a whole page explaining the cultural references in that tune. I'll go ahead and do it myself.