I am reminded again how lucky I am to be living near Athens. Yes, I know there are other similar towns (reports continue to come in extolling the virtues of Iowa City, Madison, and Seattle), but I don’t see how they can beat where I am. I just had an hour to kill between work and dress rehearsal for the play I’m in. The show’s at the Morton Theatre downtown. I’ve written about the place before (it’s a fabulous formerly Black owned and operated theater that brought in some of this century’s entertainment giants), but can’t link to it due to my using my Handspring to post this backstage. Anyway, I went down the block to what used to be a great hole-in-the-wall Mediterranean restaurant. Now it’s a hole-in-the-wall diner-type named, as far as I could tell, “Diner”. I plopped on a comfy couch and browsed the menu. It consisted of various burgers, sandwiches, grilled cheeses, pasta plates, fried potatoes in multiple forms, ice cream drinks, and the like. I settled on the fish and chips and iced tea (not sweet). While I waited, I read a copy of a magazine/book on the Beatles, 1963-1967. Meanwhile, the sounds of an equipment check drifted in from the 40 Watt a few doors down. As diverse a mix as you could imagine drifted in and out. When the basket arrived, I moved to a table and enjoyed what turned out to be the best fish and chips I’d ever had. Without all the atmosphere, they still would have been.

Like with many other agriculture products, the state of Georgia is very strict on who can sell eggs. If people come to your farm, it doesn’t matter, but the moment you bring an egg off your farm to sell to someone else, the state steps in. It used to be that folks with only a few chickens who sold less than 30 dozen eggs a week could escape regulation, but the large producers successfully sued the state into changing that law. Well, actually, they threatened a lawsuit and pressured the legislature into closing the hole for the little guy. So, to be able to sell eggs at the market, I had to get liscensed by the Ag department. Today the regional guy-in-charge came by and gave me a two hour class and a written and practical test. I passed, so now I’m liscensed. However, I’m still supposed to buy some special equipment, and I’m not supposed to sell just “eggs”. They have to be graded and sized, just like the eggs from the store. We’ll see how well that goes…

For Windows XP users, here’s a fantastic guide to tweaking your system. This is better written and more thorough than the other tweak guides I’d seen. It even pointed out a built-in Windows XP utility I didn’t even know was there.

Schlake pointed out this fun little cartoon on correct driving practices.

Free food heads up: Today between 11am and 2pm, KFC is giving away snack-size servings of their popcorn chicken. I don’t eat fast food all that much, but I like those popcorn chickens.

Today is World Sauntering Day, so celebrate by going from point X to point Z in an appropriate manner. This day was created by W. T. Rabe at Mackinac Insland, the perfect place for sauntering. Other events Mr. Rabe created include Dancing Cuckoo Week (in January), the Mackinac Island Stone Skipping Tournament (July), and the very popular Unicorn Questing Month of October.

Ahhh! One of my favorite shows on television is BBC’s Coupling. It’s funny and intelligent in a way that put it well above Friends. Now NBC has bought the rights to the show and will set it in LA with American actors. I can’t think of a single instance where we’ve inproved on a BBC show and am having a hard time even thinking of one that held its own. Except for the accents, there was nothing inherently British about the show; NBC would be much better off just airing the original rather than trying to remake it. Although, there’ve only been 15 episodes of the original made so far.

Growing up in Missouri, I listened to a lot of St. Louis Cardinals baseball games on the radio. They were all called by Jack Buck, who passed away yesterday. Since I was fairly isolated in the country, playing basebal with other people was pretty rare, so I had to play my own games with a rubber ball against the side of our shed. The shed was the batsman, and I was the pitcher and fielders. But I wasn’t so much imitating the players (except for Ozzie – trying to do his summersaulting diving catches were just all out fun) as imitating Jack’s play by play. Out loud, even. I thought of him during my own brief stint in radio, though my play by plays of the local parades weren’t near Buck’s quality. He’ll be missed.

I talk basil and give my pesto recipe on the front page of this week’s food section of the Athens Banner-Herald.

Some big businesses have taken to the absurd notion that one must obtain permission before linking to their online content. This is akin to a department store forbidding you to tell your friend which aisle you can find socks or a restaurant forbidding you to tell anyone their street address. And now NPR, who really ought to know better, has announced the same policy. Well, boo to them. Here’s a here’s a completely unauthorized link to this morning’s segment on World Sauntering Day from Morning Edition in RealAudio format. And, for good measure, here’s a link to their segment on Jack Buck. Take that, National Public Radio! (Side note: The NPR web staff munged their own link to the World Sauntering Day story. My link may be the only one in the world that correctly points to the story, and it’s 100% unauthorized.)