:: Norah ::

Over this weekend we picked up Norah Jones's new album, Feels Like Home. Everybody and their dog has probably already bought, listened to, and worn out the record by now. It's lovely, relaxed, and fun for the whole family. Seriously, Carly loves it.

Of course, I can't listen to this album without thinking about the guy in the band I know. I played with Adam Levy a few times when he lived in San Francisco, just months before he moved to New York and got this gig-of-a-lifetime with Norah. It's one of those deals where I think two things: one, "I knew him when...", and two, it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. He's a thankfully genuine, cool person, and a wonderful musician. Duh. I just like to think that success does sometimes come for the people who actually deserve it. Not only that, he still gets to play cool music. It's inspiring to think about.

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:: Search Strings A Go Go ::

Lis and Troy came for a brief visit last night through this morning. We went out for a sensible dinner, followed it later on with senseless brownies eaten straight from the pan with plastic forks.

This morning, in a fit of I'm not sure what, we looked over last months search strings for the chellman.org family of websites. Along with links to possibly useful websites, names of friends and family, help cheating on various literary essays, and photos of Chris McCandless, there were lots of searches for amusing garbage:

• pretty horsies very pretty (number one on google right now)
• tree biscuit (also number one)
• what the fuck does natural and artificial flavors mean
• how to control dogs shitting in yards
• i want to buy poison dart frogs right now
• what does the inside of leeches look like
• What the baby looks like inside
• totally dude!!!!!!!!!!!
• HOW DO YOU MAKE GOLDTEETH
• get rid of buck teeth without braces
• lamiter OR thoracograph OR androlepsy OR superficialism OR jumb

Ah, the joy of having a website. It never ends.

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:: Frame Job ::

Lisa and I did some errands on Leap Day that were varying degrees of fun.

The most fun was picking up Lisa's framed pastel drawing. This was the first time we've had something framed by a frame shop. It's not cheap, but considering how long we want this work to last, it's worth it.

The least fun was returning a duvet cover. I didn't know what a duvet was until a year or so ago. Lisa's brother gave us one for Christmas, along with this cover. The duvet is great, we enjoy it thoroughly. The cover didn't really fit the colors of our bedroom, so we figured we'd return it. It came from one of the many stores owned by Saks, so we went to the Carson Pirie Scott in Lincolnwood (a few miles from here, northwest suburbs) to exchange it.

Here's how you return something, step by step.

1. Find parking. If you go during the holiday season, forget it. If you go on Leap Day, parking will be possible, but still a pain. You will have to circle the Evil Mall of Death many times to find parking.
2. Find the store. This is a little easier, because the store has an Enormous Sign.
3. Find the department. Because you're in a megastore, you can't return anything anywhere. You have to go to the galaxy, or department, where such an item as the one you want to return would be found.
4. Talk to the salesperson. This turns out to be the most harrowing step. That is, assuming the person to whom you must is a) half to 75% deaf, b) a little "slow", c) new to the job and doesn't know how to do a return, d) unable to find a manager to help, e) suffering major short-term memory loss, or possibly f) all of the above. Every time we said something to this woman, she repeated it, immediately forgot what she just said, asked us what we wanted, and so on.

Eventually we found what we wanted, exchanged the old one, and got out of the store alive. We Americans certainly have it lucky in most respects with the choices we have available, but that doesn't mean it's fun.

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