How depressing.

And too bad we spend so much time and money *spreading democracy* in the Middle East, but can't fix the damn bridges in my home state.

I think the 2010s will be remembered as the "list decade." I'm as tired of them as I am of these repetitive reality shows. Top Ten this; the Best 15 thats. Click, click.

Most of these lists are meaningless, and yet we click on them. We don't even find them useful or believable when we read them. (Someone sent me a list a while back of the top ten places to eat in my city: um, no ... not by anyone's standards who actually lives here, whether the restaurant was white-tablecloth high or ethnic cheap).

Will the lists ever end? I want to print a T-shirt that says "I have the Internet and all I get is these stupid lists."

End of list rant. Sorry for that: I'm not really that cranky in real life. It's just one of my Top Ten Peeves of late

List 25

My husband's allergies are brought to the bare minimum of once a year and my daughter's asthma is nearly non-existent - she only uses her inhaler once every three months instead of once of week. Although we get 65 m/ph winds where we live, we have zero smog. And the scenery is as if it's in high definition because we don't have to peer through that brown smog.

I have a hard time believing that, while parts of the state do occasionally get hit by tornadoes, they are not super common and most people who live here have not experienced a tornado. I would guess it would be a state like Kansas or Oklahoma that would have the most tornadoes, they certainly seem to be in the news more often than we are when it comes to tornadoes.

What is this? Did anyone get that

Okay, so that explains Govs. Bush and Perry.

would not have graduated from either without being a legacy admission.

that makes news around here.

It tells me i have an old version of the browser (true enough) but, "Slow down grandpa. . ." seems a bit untoward.

I feared that that might mean we loved him the most, but no, it's opposite.

Something to take pride in, in other words.

Mass: "Worst happy hour"!