Last year the last one came out. It was great, I have a whole book full of quarters, $12.50 worth.

Then I saw the D.C. quarter. ?!?! Then the Puerto Rico quarter. Then yesterday the Guam quarter. My book has no place for these quarters! I don't know what I'm going to do, I just sit and think all day about it.

I went to the quarter page today and looked, and apparently this is the whole list of territories they're going to do:

• District of Columbia
• The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico
• Guam
• American Samoa
• The U.S. Virgin Islands
• The Northern Mariana Islands

Additionally, they've decided to make a quarter for one national park in each of the US jurisdictions (states and territories) starting in 2010. So every 10 weeks there'll be a new quarter.

Tack on the new nickels from a few years ago, and the new pennies coming out this year, we have a wildly varied set of coinage.

Will the madness never end? Sir Isaac, where are you when we need you?

For more info, these links may interest you:

• Territory Quarters
• National Park Quarters
• Lincoln Penny Redesign
• Nickel Series

Recently we were listening to a Nancy Drew audio book on a road trip. For the most part it's simply a reading, no dramatization. But once in a while they play some tension music when something big is about to happen. When we got home this last time, Ema was quiet as she went into the house. I asked her what she was thinking and she said:

"It's just so thrilling! Every time that music comes on, I get so scared my ribs tickle!"

Sport is a seductive metaphor (life as a game in which we gain victory through hard work, discipline, and visualizing success), but the older metaphor of farming (life as hard labor that is subject to weather and quirks of blind fate and may return no reward whatsoever and don't be surprised) is still in our blood, especially those of us raised on holy scripture.

Check out the whole article, it's great.

I wanted it to render an unordered list of headlines, so I wrote this function:

// get rss and convert it to an unordered list
function feed2ul($feed_url = "", $end = "5") {

    // Initialize new feed
    $feed = new SimplePie();
    $feed->set_feed_url($feed_url);
    $feed->init();

    $num = 0;

    $output .= '<ul class="feed">' . "\n";

    // Loop through all of the items in the feed
    foreach ($feed->get_items() as $item) {

        if($num < $end) {
            $output .= '<li><a href="' . $item->get_link() . '">' . $item->get_title() . '</a></li>' . "\n";
        }
        $num++;
    }

    $output .= '</ul>' . "\n";

    return $output;

// end feed2ul
}

You just feed it a url, and optionally how many feed items you want, like this:

<?php print feed2ul('http://www.sportsspectrum.com/daily/daily.rss', '5'); ?>

From your 180 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 5,890 items, starred 21 items, shared 0 items, and emailed 0 items.

We got a package with a little dispenser and 30 bags for $5. Based on usage, that should last about a month and a half. That's worth $5 to me.

In other news, SunChips® is doing a really cool thing. Today, 33% of every 10 1/2 oz. size SunChips® bag is made with renewable, plant based materials. The cooler thing is that by 2010 they intend to have all their bags 100% compostable. That's really really cool. We've been avoiding chips lately for both health and plastic, and SunChips fills that hole nicely.

Additionally, SunChips® has built a solar energy collector at their Modesto plant to help power that plant, with the intention of putting them at all their plants.

Lastly, they've published documents on how to compost, as well as how their solar energy array works, so other people can benefit from what they've learned.

Yay SunChips!

I didn't ride today, as planned. I wanted to give my body a day to recover. Then I'll ride tomorrow and friday. And I lost 1 lb since yesterday. :)