learnandteachonline.com

The Cadillac Database celebrates the absurd 1959 fin.

Wouldn't it be fun if a car maker produced new Mini Cooper-sized old caddies (I'd prefer a '64 -- pink, please) or a teeny tiny 60s VW microbus?

Chrysler struck some kind of psychographic chord (though I'm not sure what kind) with the PT cruiser, which I've heard described as a new Chrysler that looks like an old Ford. I understand it was conceived before the Daimler partnership, now over.

I'm not an insider. Just speculating. What possessed a big car company to take such a risk on that odd funky shape? Some quick rare burst of inspiration? I don't think so. I believe there are creative people in every big organization, but usually they just can't get near a sympathetic audience. So hats off to whoever thought of the Cruiser, and two hats off to the person who said "do it."

If I published a draft of my two-thirds-finished novel with a service like Lulu and ordered a copy for myself, I wonder if it would inspire me to finish it?

I had not gone looking for these demand services in a number of years. I notice CafePress doesn't do it anymore. When did that happen and why, I wonder.

Laser eye surgery prices keep coming down. I wonder how cheap other procedures would become if health insurance didn't cover them.

Riggidy jig. I've been up since 4 a.m. One good thing about early morning flights is you still have most of the day left when you arrive. (But I'm still going back to bed.)

Last time I visited my parents at their Florida place I had to get online with dialup. This year there's a nearby Rally gas station with wifi. So it's 9:40 p.m. and I'm online, outside, in a t-shirt and shorts. We Northerners need spring break. Also anyone whose blood has been thinned by living in warmer climates. Just three years in L.A. made me not really a Michigan person anymore.

I had an absolute blast today. My son, my parents and I toured the area around the St. Petersburg pier on Segways. Perfect day, perfect place for it: the parks around the Tampa Bay shoreline taking in gorgeous stucco hotels and mansions, marina, blinding white beaches, tropical gardens. Heaven.

I'd never been on one but took to it pretty easily. It's less like a bike than it is like a horse, and less like a horse than it is like an old Tiger Moth I flew a few times, with your input to the controls being so directly and observably related to where you're headed.

The polar opposite of pottymouth sports spectators is one of my favorite cute kid stories.

When my Adam was about four, I came into the room where he was watching a hockey game on TV. When I asked him who was playing he answered in his sweet clear little voice, "It's the Black Hawks and the Toronto Makebelieves."

Last night, sitting in the high school auditorium waiting for my son's band concert to begin, I had another thought about my impending emptynester status. I've had a lot of those lately.

This one was about school programs (and soccer, baseball and hockey games, and marching band performances, and solo and emsemble competitions). Aaron's a junior in high school, and I started going to things like this when my older son was three, in preschool, playing a gray squirrel complete with bushy tail. Doing the math, I realized that by the time it's over next year I'll have been attending these things for 20 years.

It's a nice feeling when your almost-grown-up kid faces an ethical choice with a blurry line and steps on the right side of it.

Another good feeling: being able to have the windows open in your home. Nothing like it. Spring sure does wonders for my outlook. I wish the office building where I work had windows you could open. I don't care if a ventilation system is supposed to bring in fresh air, I like windows.

Used to be Netscape was a good lazyperson's HTML validator. Code that looked fine in IE would be all messed up in Netscape (especially tables). Now with IE7, it seems in my limited testing that it's less forgiving than Firefox.