I just spent the day working from home because I had arranged with the post office to deliver a package to me today. After waiting the whole day, my mail showed up, but not the package. Grrrr... I just Googled my local post branch, and the reviews are so bad and so burning with customers' frustration, that it was actually comical. So I'll have to sort that issue out, probably by just trekking over to that part of town.

In my mail the other day came the long-awaited invitation to become part of the Nielsen TV Family, where my viewing choices become part of the programming data for the entire television industry. I really, really wanted to be randomly selected for this task... back when I was 10 or 13. I wonder if they have updated their data-gathering methods to account for the time-tripping effect of DVD television collections? Would the media higher ups take notice if I would often rather watch canceled quality television like old seasons of 2003's Battlestar Galactica or Everwood over the currently-produced bad television that's available? Can I help doctor the outcomes? Put votes up for auction on the internet? Hmmm.... Maybe I'll at least mark down something I've never endured, like Dog The Bounty Hunter just as a favour to friends of mine. You know who you are... Dan and Amy

Leslie made me beam with delight today by mentioning during a quick conversation (I jumped off the phone when I realized that Dad was visiting, not wanting to interrupt his time with his granddaughters) that the nieces loved my email from yesterday, and that Sophie was particularly intrigued by my describing having seen Komodo Dragons at the Audubon Zoo here in New Orleans. I was rather jazzed by this, myself, having tripped across the Komodo exhibition while walking around the Zoo grounds on Labor Day with my visiting friend Tanya. I had thought that the only Komodo Dragons in the United States were at the San Diego Zoo, and that going there was my only likelihood of ever seeing them, which is something I've wanted to do since first discovering them in reading in junior high. So that was all good. I'll link my brief Komodo Dragon video here for Sophie's delight: