How cold is it?

How cold is it? It’s so cold that as I walked from my car to my office building this morning, when I sniffled, my nose hairs frosted together and briefly pinched my nostrils shut. So cold that as I approached the front door, the wind made my eyes water enough to blind me, then iced the tears on my cheeks. That cold.

I left a trickle of hot water running from the bathtub tap in hopes of forestalling the pipe-freeze that has plagued me the last couple winters.

So you know what this means: I’m going straight home from work and curling up in bed with my laptop playing Moonlighting DVDs and Lost downloads all weekend long. I’m just starting Season 2 of both.

Which reminds me, has anybody out there heard of or watched The 4400? It’s sort of an anti-Lost show on one of the non-big-four networks. Instead of being lost, 4400 people are found — returned to Earth after being sucked up by a bright light at various points throughout the 20th century. The show deals with the aftermath of their return and their inevitable supernatural powers. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Today I got an e-mail query about my online resume — from India. I’m sure Mumbai is lovely this time of year, but I don’t think I’ll pop over for an interview.

And for everybody who imports photos into their blogs and other web pages:
When I worked for the student newspaper in college, our staff attended a layout/design workshop at a national college journalism conference. (Yeah, the one in New Orleans where we spent 90% of our time comparison shopping for Hurricanes. That conference. The one where we became known-by-name regulars at a local bar within 36 hours. The bartender’s name was Rooster, and he always greeted us with a lusty, “Heeeey, South Dakota!” I lugged a street paving brick home in my carry-on luggage and gave it to my parents as a gift, and it’s now propping open the door to my home office. You don’t remember that conference? Me neither.)

Anyway. At the layout seminar, we were taught that inset photos should always appear at the right side of a column, not the left. This is so that the text starts on the left as our left-to-right-reading eyes feel it ought to, and we don’t have to backtrack for the long lines that flow beneath the photo. Okay? It’s an easy fix that will make your pages much more reader-friendly.