This month, on page 3...to the left of a photo of the Yard of the Month and directly above a half-page ad for a mortgage company (yes, really)...we have this:

PURPLE PANSY EATERS!

I planted some great looking pansies last Fall - 12 flats in fact (12 X 18 = 216 flowers). They got big and beautiful with a little water and some miracle grow. I admired them every day when I went out to fetch my mail. Suddenly one day I headed out to the mail box, looked over to admire my flowers and.......half of them were gone! AWOL! Perplexed, because I do not know exactly where the pansies went or what could have possibly happened to them, I do nothing.

The next day as I drive up to my house, there he was...Peter Rabbit! He was happily munching on the remainder of my flowers right in front of me. If you do the math he should have gained substantial weight after eating the blooms from 108 of my purple flowers!!!

Although Peter Rabbit is fuzzy, brown and cute, I am now mad as a hornet over my lost flowers! So I called the City of Allen Animal Control who loaned me a cage and caught Peter Rabbit (who I then relocated in a field some miles away - so his diet of purple pansies has come to an abrupt halt - I imagine he is now enjoying wild sunflowers from the field instead.)

The following day I go out to get the mail and there's another Peter Rabbit having dinner.....yes on my pansies again! I've already returned the City's cage, so I went down to Home Depot and bought my own in an effort to rid myself of the little Purple Pansy eaters!!

The traps I found at Home Depot were Model #1089 for "RACCOONS" (the smaller trap for squirrels and rabbits from Lowes for $30 weren't big enough for OUR RABBITS who have been dinning on purple pansies). The cost of the cage is $44.99 and worth every penny!! It's also collapsible, so you can put the cage away until the next round attacks us! After all Spring is also breeding time for rabbits, so I think they'll be a new bunch back for the Purple Petunia buffet in my yard later this summer!

First off, I thought this article was incredibly sexist. Why did she assume the pansy muncher was a boy? It could have just as easily been Taylor, Britney, or Morgan Rabbit. Was the rabbit bald, with a goatee and a big, paunchy belly? If so, then I'd suspect it was a male from Texas. Secondly, if something is eaten...can it be considered AWOL? If the pansies had asked permission before being eaten, would that have been a case for an honorable discharge?

Even better, on page 8 we have this:

SAFETY REMINDER!!! Per THE POLICE DEPARTMENT OF ALLEN
Garage Doors Open & Unattended!

It has been reported and sighted that there are homeowners leaving their home garage doors open and unattended. When you allow this to happen, your property is left wide open for CRIME to occur. Please remember to always keep your garage door closed during the day or night if you are not in the garage or outside the door, so you are able to keep a watchful eye on your belongings!

That's right...keep those garage doors shut or Peter Rabbit will come by and commit CRIME and EAT your vehicles!!!

O-kay.

I enjoy Earth Day...it's kind of like Easter and Memorial Day. On Easter, Christians who normally wouldn't go to church oftentimes go to church. Memorial Day is one of very few days a year when everyone supports the troops, which is interesting...since the holiday actually honors the dead. On Earth Day, everyone is eco-relevant and enviro-savvy. If for just one day, we can all hold hands and float so high on the fluffiness of our own eco-egos that we leave no footprints whatsoever...carbon or otherwise.

While I understand that children are our future, and we're supposed to teach them well and let them lead the way...it took a lot of restraint for me to not go up to the front door of the house and ask Mom what kind of chalk her kids used to spread their eco-gospel. I have a funny feeling said chalk wouldn't be very enviro-friendly to our area's flora and fauna once mixed with water and disposed down the City of Allen's drainage system.

But, I didn't want to get all wound up because that involves inhaling and exhaling and I wasn't in the mood to destroy the environment on Earth Day. Instead, I hopped into my Jeep Grand Cherokee (14 MPG!) and drove to three different Targets looking for a very specific fitness bra.

In taking a look around the EPA's Earth Day web page, I saw where I was supposed to pick five things I could commit to to help the environment. Let's see...

1. Use less water! "Take baths instead of showers." Turns out, there's nothing between our bathtub and the foundation...so bath water stays warm for about fifteen seconds. I think I've only taken half a dozen baths in our house in the nearly eight years we've lived here. DONE.

2. Commute without polluting! I'll do you one better...I just won't commute, period. DONE...five years ago.

3. Save electricity! I don't need both TVs and both computers on during the day, do I? DONE.

4. Use chemicals safely. I've totally cut back on just cavalierly pouring Drano down the drain. DONE.

5. Spread the word! DONE.

At this rate, we're going to be back to listening to old-timey serials on the radio by week's end.

Then, there was this bullshit "race" between CNN and Ashton Kutcher over who could get to a million Twitter sheep followers first. As if that weren't bad enough, Oprah Winfrey STARTED TWITTERYELLING ON FRIDAY and as the proverbial cherry on the sundae, Barbara Walters posted her first Twitter update today. Turn out the lights, folks...I think the party's over.

I told Adelle (who hasn't blogged in three months) on Friday (on Twitter, see aforementioned blog comment) that I thought Oprah was about a year behind the curve, and her presence was a clear indication we early adopters needed to jump ship and find something else interesting to do. Then I stopped and thought about how much time I spend every day on the Internet. In my defense, for 4 1/2 years I had a job which required that I be connected to the Internet constantly. If I didn't have to be on constant alert for URGENT!!11!!!!! emails or instant messages, I had to monitor some operational crap to ensure our customers maintained their marginal-to-poor levels of satisfaction. That sense of perma-urgency has kept me chained to the Internet for the last six months even though I quit the job six months ago. Sure, I had school...but that was for only 12 weeks.

The most embarrassing moment though, was when I realized on Saturday how often lately I have been saying, "Sorry honey, can you say that again?" to Capt. UberHusband - generally while I was staring at my iPhone performing some inane task which clearly had no business trumping whatever he was trying to communicate to me. Seriously, it was embarrassing. I felt like I was becoming an episode of Dr. Phil...Wives Who Can't Unplug!

Clearly, the Internet is a wonderful tool and like anything else, is beneficial in moderation. But I personally reached that point where enough was enough. I had an e-breakdown over the weekend, and called it quits with both Twitter and Facebook. Is it permanent? Probably not, but I did need to seriously re-evaluate how I spend my time. While it was great to get reacquainted with folks from high school and college...honestly, do any of them actually like me enough to come over here and read my blog...or are they only interested in little snippets of information I toss their direction on Facebook four times a day? Do they want to "socialize" with me, or with micro-me?

The truly ironic thing...for all of the education I've been acquiring over the past two years, I sure have been doing a good job of truncating my thoughts. Maybe that post I wrote the other day was ongoing evidence of my distaste for what I will call the Executive Summarizing of America. Why drill down to the details if you don't have to? Because...that's where the meaningful information is.

So...let it be known that today, April 20, 2009...five years and one day after starting this blog, I vow to expand my horizons. Join me and retreat from the land of 140-character status updates and quizzes about Which OPI Nail Polish You Are and come back to the blogosphere. I dare you.

Make "blog" the new black.

A few weeks ago, I and several of my Strategic Management teammates received an email from our instructor. He had bumped into a VP of something or other for Starbucks, and as we were all working on Strategic Planning Notebooks for Starbucks, he inquired as to whether or not she'd be interested in taking a look-see at our final deliverables. She agreed, and he passed on her contact information to us to set up meetings with her. This would all be done independent of our actual class, and wouldn't have any impact on our grades. Totally optional.

One of my teammates forwarded me the email and asked me if I'd be interested. "Depends on how our final SPN looks," I replied. I'll admit though, I was intrigued. I lust (and no, that isn't a dramatic overstatement) for honest, intelligent, and informed feedback on my work...both professional and academic. I'm not looking simply for an "atta girl" though, I want to hear true constructive feedback.

A couple of weeks after that initial email, the Starbucks teams received an update on the meeting requirements...if we wanted to take the meeting. Basically, the VP had indicated she was very busy and didn't have time to read our strategic planning notebooks, so we'd need to arrive with an Executive Overview and she'd review them all during the same meeting.

Hmm.

I was really disappointed by this, and let me tell you why. You see, I think one of the fundamental problems in business today is that everything is an Executive Overview. Managers and employees can talk about the Big Picture and think Outside the Box all they like, but at the end of the day...it's the details that determine whether a project or a business fails. My team had spent twelve weeks performing several different strategic planning activities and had produced a rather comprehensive document. I was proud of it. To take it and whittle it down to an Executive Overview (really - what does that even mean?) was an insult both to my team and to the hard work we'd done. If she couldn't take twenty minutes to read our SPN, then clearly she's too busy to provide us with any truly meaningful feedback. Not everything should be scanned at the 35,000-foot level.

I was also disappointed because I think the woman (and Starbucks) missed a great opportunity to mentor some enthusiastic business students. Also of note, she did a fantastic job of actually demotivating said business students by minimizing their efforts to make her day easier. If she didn't want to truly engage herself in this process, why on Earth did she say yes?

When I grow up, I won't be that kind of manager...or executive. If I don't have time, I won't do something. If I say I will though...I will follow through.

"Those who behave with Internet addiction tendencies will have a lower productivity than those without..."

Indeed. By the same token, those who behave with addiction tendencies in general will have a lower productivity than those without. Case in point: a job I had 8 years ago, where fully 2/3 of my department took 10-15 minute smoke breaks every 45 minutes. Yes, I kept track. They weren't very productive...it's tough to program software applications outside, with no laptop.

To quote Jon, I WANT GRANT MONEY!

"We can't say that use of Facebook leads to lower grades and less studying - but we did find a relationship there...There's a disconnect between students' claim that Facebook use doesn't impact their studies, and our finding showing they had lower grades and spent less time studying."

So what you're saying is...if people are doing something other than studying, then they're spending less time studying? Wow. Insightful. Thanks to WebProNews for actually providing the details of the study, as I had a humdinger of a time finding them on my own:

On average, Facebook users in the study had GPAs between 3.0 and 3.5, while non-users had GPAs between 3.5 and 4.0. In addition, users said they averaged one to five hours a week studying, while non- users studied 11 to 15 hours per week.

The study surveyed 219 students at Ohio State, including 102 undergraduate students and 117 graduate students. Of the participants, 148 said they had a Facebook account.

The study found that 85 percent of undergraduates were Facebook users, while only 52 percent of graduate students had accounts.

Findings indicated that 79 percent of Facebook users claimed it did not have an impact on their academic performance. In open-ended questions, users said they were not on Facebook enough to notice an impact, and stressed that academics were a priority for them.

Karpinski emphasized that the results don't necessarily mean that Facebook use leads to lower grades.

"There may be other factors involved, such as personality traits, that link Facebook use and lower grades," she said.

"It may be that if it wasn't for Facebook, some students would still find other ways to avoid studying, and would still get lower grades. But perhaps the lower GPAs could actually be because students are spending too much time socializing online."

Now, I don't claim to be an academic, but I am a research study junkie. One of my favorite things to do is to pick apart research studies because, truly, you can make them sound however you want in order to push your own agenda or prove your own hypothesis. I could write another six paragraphs about that, but will spare you all the gory details. Trust me. But, the fact that the researcher specifically mentions other factors may be influencing the reduction in GPA completely negates the "outcome" of the study.

I do not claim to be a 20-year old college student either, but I once was. I didn't have a Facebook account but believe me, back then if I wanted to waste time and not study and procrastinate and watch my GPA suffer, I was going to do it. And, I did. It was called Sega Genesis Golf. The folks who are on Facebook nine hours a day clearly have a different set of priorities than people who don't have a Facebook account or who use it in moderation. Is that a bad thing? I would argue it isn't. Facebook isn't some evil overlord who chains you to your desk and forces you to fill out quizzes about which Nebraska town you should live in.

You see Bob, it's not that they're lazy...they just don't care. I suppose a fantastic companion piece to this study could be titled, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy with a great GPA, but no social skills...virtual or otherwise." I could argue that young men and women who are in dating relationships in college also get worse grades than their single counterparts, or college students who eat ramen five times a week use proportionately more water than students who only eat it three times a week.

On a macro level, I suppose the "outcome" of this "study" really doesn't matter much. People are always going to find more interesting things to do when the task in front of them seems uninteresting. Classmates in my MBA program blow off project meetings and deliverables all the time in favor of more interesting things, but when you grow up and get out into the real world, that sort of activity is given the politically correct moniker of Maintaining a Work/Life Balance.

Maybe I'll have to try that next term..."Sorry folks, I'd love to go to that client meeting...but I need to see if I can find some pieces of art in Mafia Wars." Better yet, maybe it's time to start looking at Ph.D. programs.

Anyhoo, last night's ep did reunite us with Nurse Hathaway, Dr. Ross, and Dr. Benton. Apparently, Susan Sarandon was also on but...does anyone care?

What did we find out last night?

• Peter and Cleo are still together. I will admit, it took a full thirty seconds for me to remember who Cleo was.
• Sam and Neela went to the University of Washington Medical Center for a heart and kidney because as we found out an hour earlier, Seattle Grace still doesn't seem to have anyone on staff who can do heart surgeries.
• Carol and Doug are still together, and spoon in bed at night. Aww.
• Carter and Kem are still together. Dammit. I can't stand Kem.
• Izzie has melanoma, which has spread to her brain, the ABC network, and the entire Disney empire. Wait, wrong show.
• Hospitals still use corporate jets to move transplant organs around. Hmm...wasteful much? They need to behave like Motor City Fat Cats and drive their hybrid vehicles from Chicago to Seattle! Yeah! Get off my lawn!
• When Jerry left Boston Legal, he went to med school and wound up at Northwestern. Go figure.

After all of that, I started thinking about how Dr. Doug Ross could get a crew together of 10 of his buddies, and they could knock over Indian casinos in Washington.

I decided a few weeks ago that I didn't want to watch Dancing With the Stars this season because there were not, in fact, any stars on the show! In fact, what the show was giving us this season was truly the bottom of the barrel.

Now, we're subjected to the boyfriends of much-loved pros and sucking from the overflowing Bachelor teet jussssst a little bit longer. We also have a recovering alcoholic, a blast from Carrie Ann's FlyGirl past, and a "rap superstar" who first watched DWTS from jail.

There's a reason these people have fallen off the radar, and it isn't because we've outsourced our celebrity needs to Bangalore (well, not entirely) to save money. What the Hell is this nonsense...and what have you done with what once was my favorite show? Gee, if I didn't know better I'd think it was March sweeps. Ahem.

So like any good red-blooded American couple without kids, we decided to pour a couple of glasses of wine and sit around discussing Obamanomics, why it wasn't funny to give the Russian Foreign Minister a Big Red Button, and whether or not it was a good idea for Proctor & Gamble to introduce a luxury cosmetics line smack-dab in the middle of an economy so soft and squishy it would make the Pillsbury Doughboy giggle.

Eh...I'm lying. We watched Dancing With the Stars. In my defense though, I have been American Idol-clean and sober for two months! And...I will have to give props to Jilted Bachelorette Melissa. She was the best dancer of the night next to Shawn Johnson, and the costume folks did a fab job trying to legitimize the ho tag on her lower back. Go Dallas!

The Good: Julianne's boyfriend, and Naked Sex and the City guy...in spite of Cheryl Burke's ongoing efforts to make it All About Her. Great scores! Jump up and into partner! Squeee!

The Bad: The Woz, The Belinda, The Denise, The Movie Star, The Professor, and Mary Ann

The Poor Taste: Jewel, in her way-too-short skirt

Finally, after being held hostage for two hours not ever truly realizing why we were sitting in front of the television, Capt. UberHusband and I wrote a brief essay:

Dear ABC,

Sincerely yours,
Snarkwife & Capt. UberHusband

Extra credit if you can figure out the degrees of separation between Naked Sex and the City Guy and Lil' Kim. GO!

Redding isn't the hippest hang-out for teenagers
January 27, 1989

Being a teenager is tough.

We're torn between being a child and an adult, and the teenager years of our generation have been reported to be more stressful than generations before.

After an excruciating week of tests, homework, jobs, extra-curricular activities, and parents...what's a distraught teenager to do when the weekend rolls around?

In the Redding/Anderson/Cottonwood area? Not much.

The era of teenage designed activities are all but gone (the one exception being an occasional "Just Say No" dance at the Veteran's Hall in Redding). Drive-in's (D'oh! Did I really make that plural word possessive? Impossible. I will blame the typist.) don't have the same mystique they held in the movie Grease, and roller-skating went out in old episodes of Laverne and Shirley.

When the meager supply is depleted, what's left? Pizza and a movie? Let's add up the cost: $10 for an average medium-sized pizza with pepperoni and $2 for drinks. After our tummies are full, we cruise to the neighborhood multi-mondom movieplex (36 theaters under one roof!), fork over $11 to get in ($5.50 each), $2.50 for popcorn, $5 for two large Sprites and $1.50 for Gummi-Bears. Drop in at Baskin Robbins after the movie, spend $3 on chocolate chip ice cream cones and you're left feeling like an American Express gold card at the end of the Christmas shopping season.

Grand total? $36 (approximate) for a date that probably clocked in at around four hours.

Aside from this bank-breaking venture, there isn't much else to do. Okay, with the new Cinemark Theaters 8, admission prices and refreshments are less expensive, but that still leaves three other theaters who charge an arm and a leg for admission, unless you were fortunate enough to have been born after 1978 for those oh-so-cheaper 11 and under child rates.

There's always the time-worn classic activity called "cruising", where bored teens find themselves driving around in circles for hours on end. Cruising has its advantages: it doesn't cost much, and it's a pretty decent way to meet people. Unfortunately, it's also a prime place for accidents, turning into a possibly dangerous situation except for those die-hards who never leave the Wendy's parking lot.

Bowling anyone? Bowling began as a garden sport for English nobility, increased in popularity until the late 1960s, then plummeted to almost non-existent teenage popularity. Redding now can boast of a new bowling alley with lower student rates and electronic computerized scoring, for the Future of America that can't understand how to add up a bowling score. It still remains to be seen, though, (double comma?) if Redding teens can be turned on by a bowling ball, ten pins, and a full-service snack bar.

Well, that took a lot of energy to list all that Redding has to offer, now didn't it?

How about a teen dance club? The Redding Planning Commission has supposedly okayed (????) the site for a new no-alcohol dance club, The Fifth Dimension, but one can only hope for its survival. After the shutdowns of its predecessors the Kasbah and the Pound, Redding teens had better utilize this needed resource.

Oh, help us, concerned parents and adults! You have your bars, your lounges, and your nightclubs, many on Hilltop Drive. What are panic-stricken 13-19 year olds supposed to do when Friday and Saturday nights roll around - watch Frank Sinatra croon in a commercial while adults paint the town red? We need things to do! After all, life isn't just one large pizza parlor and a movie theater...

Oh my God, that was unbearable to read again. Listen to me. Of course, now that I'm roughly the age my parents were when I originally wrote this "editorial" I'm a little embarrassed because in retrospect the adults in my hometown didn't have a hell of a lot of things to do, either. At the time there was what...The Rusty Nail? CR Gibbs? I don't even know if Doc's Skylounge was still open back then. Clearly I thought Adult Fun was way more interesting than Teenage Fun. What can I say, I was young...and the Internet hadn't reared its ugly head yet to squash the innocence of the 17-year olds who came after me.

But, I'm not sure which is funnier after taking a trip on the Wayback Machine...this editorial, or my rather cranky Letter to the Editor which was published just to the right of the editorial. By the way, I was the Editor-in-Chief. Why on Earth was I writing a letter to myself?