I am pleased to announce...

...that I FINALLY shook off the binds of flickr and have a brand, spankin-new, PICASA page.

But you can't see it!

One of the reasons for having this picasa page, and I have to thank alex for this, is that I can just dump all my pictures online--getting them off my camera, and out of my active folders on my laptop--and then call on them at will, or share them only by giving the address to others (the other people who joined me on any given ski trip, for example.) They won't be private, so if you happen to stumble across them, you don't have to feel guilty or anything (unless you WANT to) but I won't call attention to them by putting the link up.

You will more than likely see them appear here in the blog, though!

Also, today I did something I swore I would never do: I donated money to my incredibly expensive college, and NOT in the way of paying back my student loans.

Yes. I succumbed to Carnegie Mellon's constant attempts to beg for money, and I gave them a very small gift, no more than five lattes, and...here's the kicker...

The Lazy B matched it! Now CMU has ten lattes, and I only had to buy five!

Why did I do it? Well, it's a sad but true fact: a large part of CMU's standing in lists such as U.S. Best Colleges, and so forth DEPENDS on alumni giving. To put it another way: the long and involved algorithm that U.S. News uses to rank their colleges, definitely includes the AG factor, as in, alumni giving. When CMU tells you that you can make your degree worth more by giving money to them, they're not kidding. It is a total bitch, because that shouldn't matter, but it is true.

SO. I gave money to a college that I'm still paying student loans for. SO SHOOT ME.