Usually, I wait until a blog has been online for a month or two before adding it to my ever-so-exclusive blogroll. Not with this one. Randall Gamby is blogging about IT security and seeing as the guy holds super-maven-guru status on all things security related, I'll personally guarantee his blog will be a worthwhile read. Motormouth sez, "Check it out."

Free Hallmark 5x7 folded card: Choose a 5x7 folded card by May 1st, personalize it, and Hallmark will mail it directly to the recipient. Get it free (even the stamp is free) when you select "I Want Hallmark To Mail My Card For Me" at checkout and enter the code: CARD4MOM. You can choose any of the cards -- it doesn't have to be specific to Mother's Day.

Free Romance Novels: Accepting your two free Harlequin Intrigue books and mystery gifts places you under no obligation to buy anything. You may keep the books and gifts and return the shipping statement marked cancel. If you do not cancel, about a month later we'll send you four additional Intrigue books and bill you just $4.24 each in the U.S. or $4.99 in Canada, plus 25¢ shipping and handling and applicable taxes, if any. NOTE: Be sure to cancel if you don't want to be charged monthly!

Free Dessert for Moms on Mother's Day: Free dessert for moms on Mother's Day with the purchase of an entree at more than 600 participating T.G.I. Friday's restaurants in the U.S.
Additionally, if you sign up for the T.G.I. Friday's Give Me More Stripes recognition program, you'll get a one-time skip to the front of the line pass and a coupon for a free appetizer or dessert, but turn down your speakers if you don't want to hear canned restaurant ambient noise. Also, the restaurant will send a Buy One Entree, Get One Free coupon to all Give Me More Stripes members who visit Friday's on Mother's Day.

A card, smutty books, and free chocolate: sounds like a darn fine Mother's Day to me!

All I'm going to say about this is, this is a song of great social and political import, and I might have been half in the bag when I recorded it last night, because it just seemed right that way. Enjoy!

I offered the following reading-list suggestions to my writing students:

Personal Essays/Political
Republican Party Reptile: PJ O'Rourke
Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?: Molly Ivins
Consider the Lobster: David Foster Wallace (the titular essay is remarkably distasteful)

Travel Writing
Holidays in Hell: PJ O'Rourke
The Best Travel Writing of XXXX (yearly edition)

Short Stories
The Things they Carried: Tim O'Brien
The Age of Grief: Jane Smiley

Novels
A Prayer for Owen Meany: John Irving
A Very Long Engagement: Sebastien Japrisot (Motormouth's favorite novel)
Angels and Demons: Dan Brown
The Eight: Katherine Neville

A Ridiculously Long Novel that is Totally Worth It
Infinite Jest: David Foster Wallace

I haven't said anything to my bloggy public, but I'm selling a domain name I registered about eight months ago. Someone wants to buy it and the likelihood of having the time to put up my own site with it is slim, so hey, free money, right? So we're most of the way through the escrow process and last night, when I checked my email? There was a message from someone ELSE who wants to buy it. I told the johnny-come-lately no, because I'm already deep in the escrow process and that's just not how I roll. But I'm pretty happy that my creativity is going to equal free money and has already earned me a cult following. :)

One of the best analysts in the high-tech field is currently accepting opportunities to help companies with product management, marketing or pre-sales analysis.

Randall knows everything, will tell you what he thinks without any conflict of interest, and is the most responsive analyst with whom I've had the pleasure of working. His resume is sterling (hello ARPA-net) and he's a heck of a guy, too. Tough combination to beat.

If you know of a technology company that might be looking for someone with his remarkable skill-set, email lynn at shotwellpr dot com.

The drugstore CVS seems to be quietly discontinuing its line of Bright Beginnings Milk-Based Infant Formula with Iron and Lipids. I have purchased 25.75-ounce cans for as low and $4.25 apiece. Yes, four dollars and twenty-five cents. You read that right. Call your CVS now and see if they have any. (If you're in the Northampton area, they're probably all sold out, and you have me to thank for that.) It is not available from cvs.com.

So I've been writing for Wallet Blog for about a month, and I put up a cool article a week or so ago: basically, you can get FREE & LEGAL mp3s from Amazon.com. But you have to read my Wallet Blog story to get the link. Happy music-hunting!

So I sent an email to the editors of Playboy yesterday:
I attended a graduate-student conference at CSU-Chico the week Playboy's poll downgraded the university from number one to number two party school in the nation. Under the auspices of literary-journalism research, I pestered the cutest Chico State guy at the conference to show me what they did for fun. He was hung-over from the night before but ultimately acquiesced. Now, seven years later, we're married with kids. CSU-Chico may be out of the top ten, but I'm damn glad you downgraded it when you did back in 2002. Go Wildcats!

And today, they wrote me back:
Great story! We hope you renew his subscription every year. --The Editors

To which I responded:
Thanks, but who says it's *his* subscription??? --LBJ, 15+ year subscriber

To which they said:
You're right; our bad.

And I said:
heh heh heh. :)

And they said:
We hope you let him see it.

And I said:
Well, I keep him pretty busy, if you know what I mean (and I think you do). --LBJ

So tonight I had to pay up or shut up. It was a matter of principle! And of us both being well-rested for the first time in weeks. Thanks, Playboy.

Decided to go a little more upbeat today because I think we could all use it, especially what with it being Earth Day and all. I hope you like it!

Thanks for the new hot-pink iPod nano, sweetheart. I think it's pretty much the cutest thing you've given me since Babykins.

Here's what I've done since awakening at 8:15 this morning (it's now 3:16 --hi John!)
Fed babykins a million times
Put the toddler in the bathtub after he used a dry-erase marker to color himself green from his toes to mid-shin
Written a refund-request letter I've been meaning to write since November
Contacted my local copy shop about a proof
Investigated Google analytics for a client
Scrubbed a mailing-list database
Edited the introductory letter for a press release
Scheduled one press release to go out on Monday
Scheduled another press release to go out on Tuesday
Confirmed with one client he wants his PR to go out on Tuesday
Spoken with the pharmacist about the ramifications of leaving the toddler's ear-infection medicine on the counter overnight
Spoken with the health center about whether the toddler's currently explosive diarrhea is due to his ear-infection medicine
Consulted with the doctor as to whether we should change the toddler's ear-infection prescription
Futilely urged Monstro to go see Yusef Komunyakaa read at UMass tonight
Showered
Helped my best Northampton friends rid my home of all non-money recycling
Watched Susan Boyle on YouTube -- justified because one of the aforementioned friends hadn't seen the clip yet
Listened to Susan Boyle sing "Cry Me A River" on a different YouTube clip
Gone to the post office to send the aforementioned refund letter certified mail with a return receipt
Gone to the bank to deposit a check and get some cash to convert into laundry quarters
Folded a bin's worth of laundry
Gone to the grocery store for $116 worth of groceries that would have cost me $160 at another store, plus I was able to buy the good local microbrew sampler at this store -- those in California will laugh their butts off to learn that one cannot buy beer at all grocery stores here
Dropped off the old bottle of ear-infection medicine at the pharmacy, to get a new bottle
Gone to the pharmacy for baby supplies, cold medicine, ear-infection medicine, and birth control
Blogged
Confirmed that the press release for Tuesday will indeed go out on Tuesday

No wonder I was awake between 3:00 and 4:30 this morning, fretting about everything I needed to do today!

I'm working on a briefing book for a client who'll be at RSA next week, and found the following description of one of the journalists they'll be meeting:

"As both a manager and analyst, Steve succeeded by explaining complex technologies-- such as aviation and IT -- to lay audiences."

Heh heh heh. I guess it's true: technology *is* sexy!

OK, I cheated this week -- I pre-recorded this one a while ago. Nevertheless, I bet you've never heard Radiohead via ukulele!

I love animals -- they're delicious. Ha ha. Anyway, the Butte Humane Society is a finalist in the Zootoo Shelter Makeover contest. You can vote up to 10 times a day. The Butte Humane Society serves Chico, which is where Monstro and I got married (in Chico, silly, not at the Humane Society), so everything around there holds a special place in my heart.

Click here to vote. You have to register with the site, which requires a birthdate (make one up) and a photo (use the one of Nora on the Fangoria post a few posts down, if you want).

Thank you! Meow! Woof woof!

Seems like a lot of crappy things have been happening in the past week, and with today being tax day, more people are likely to have to face some bummer news. So here's your reassuring thought of the day:

Deuteronomy 31:8 (NIV)
The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.
Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.

Ahhhh. Nice, huh? Wish I'd read this before going to sleep last night; maybe then I would've been able to sleep after 4:00 a.m.

OK, here's my sophomore effort -- a much more challenging song than the first, particularly as I had to arrange it myself using each of my four ukulele strings. Much more GarageBand work was required, too. Maybe too challenging all around. At least I'm pushing myself. Perhaps there are those who would have suggested I tackle an easier song, but I've been obsessed with this song for the past week, ever since that "Scrubs" rerun with Colin Hay was on, as Monstro will attest.

Also, I figured out how to encode MP3s so this one is in a .mp3 format and therefore more universal.

Thanks all for your positive comments from last week -- I hope you enjoy this one, too!

Nora O'Sullivan is a girl-next-door (in the real, non-adulterous "Playboy Enterprises" sense) who is competing for the title of Fangoria Spooksmodel. I've attached her picture to the bottom of this post. She's a pretty girl! You can help her achieve her goal by voting thusly:

1)Click on this link: Fangoria Weekend of Horrors Spooksmodel Contest

2) Scroll down and find Nora O'Sullivan in her evil nurse outfit (she's in the third row), and click the little round radio button next to the "vote" button. After you've clicked the radio button, then click on the button that says "vote".

3) Enter a valid email address--this is done so that no one can stuff the ballot box. Fangoria will send a confirmation email to the address you entered.

4) Open the email and click on the link. That registers the vote. Hopefully. The first time I voted, I never got a confirmation. I just tried it again, though, and it worked.

Nora is in second place as of this writing but I think the fact that some of her votes haven't registered have hurt her chances, so please vote.
You can only vote once for each email account you have. The voting ends on April 17, the first day of the Weekend of Horrors in Los Angeles.

OK, I'm putting myself out on a ledge here... ever since Ukulele God Jake Shimabukuro signed my ukulele at the concert Monstro and I attended on our 5-year wedding anniversary, I've felt the urge to make my ukulele more worthwhile. So, I'm arranging songs and learning them and recording them (thank you iMac Garage Band, I love you so). Here's my first attempt since Jake imbued my uke with his groovy goodness.

I sang better before I got vocal nodes in high school, which ultimately destroyed my dreams of Broadway and instead pushed me toward my camera (earning me the Bank of America Fine Arts award senior year), but I don't hear YOU posting YOUR music (except for you Jim Dee, blessings upon thou), so this will have to do.