Every night after work, I run through one of the neighborhoods near where Emily and I live. Now that we are busy planning a house, I've been very critical of items I've noticed on the outside of homes. Onto the list:

1. Electric lawn mower - I didn't even know these existed until last night. Watching this middle-aged woman trying to untangle the cord connected to her lawn mower while the blades were spinning forced me to run to the other side of the street. Seriously, who thought this was ever a good idea?
2. Flags - Let me be very specific: I'm talking about the flags that people strap to small L-shaped poles in their yards. The flags look more like place-mats than anything else.
3. Ceramic creatures - Okay, maybe one of them in your garden is cute. But when they dominate your front yard like a litter, you've got a problem. And the ones holding little lanterns lighting your way? Okay, I guess those are sort of cute, but come on!
4. Stars - Okay, EVERYONE: stop buying those annoying brass-ish color stars at your local Wal-Mart or Lowes. I'm sure you think they look rustic and neat, but everyone has one now. It has to end!
5. Angels - No angels are going up on the side of my house. Enough said.
   

Well, that's it for now, but I'm sure I'll find more things that are annoying soon enough.

This weekend, Emily and I enjoyed a wonderful golf outing with our great friend Carline. I think we all played pretty well considering how hot it was on Sunday!

We played at Winding Brook, a nice public golf course in Valatie, NY. The greens were in great shape!

By popular request, here are some photos of the land that we are thinking of building our house on. Opinions welcome!

This morning, on my delightful bus ride to work, an older gentleman had boarded the bus about 15 minutes into the trip.

He was a cute old man, confused by how the fare machine worked and frustrated that the machine wasn't accepting his money. The bus driver pointed out that he was inserting the money the wrong way and helped the old man get his ticket. After another few seconds of fiddling with his money, the man finally got his ticket.

Walking over to his seat, I was a little worried that the bus was going to start going and he was going to wipe out. His old legs had clearly been through a lot, as it looked like every step he took was an exercise in pain management. Hobbling towards me, I had the urge to get up and help him to his seat, but we had a red light and I didn't think we were going anywhere soon. He finally got to his seat, turned around, and gave me quite the shock.

Peeping through his balding patch of hair was a giant spiderweb tattoo, right at the top of his head.

Cute old man? Sure. Crazy man in his younger days? Most definitely.

1) Why is it that MacWorld, the leading magazine for Apple users, doesn't have an iPad version of their magazine? Are they not confident in the platform? Or just stupid?

2) Why is it that 40-somethings don't understand which side of the road to walk on and which side of the road to bike on?

3) Why is it that the media doesn't talk about the shift from good-paying, fully-benefited jobs to jobs barely paying minimum wage, leading to the disappearance of the middle class? Isn't that a good story?

4) Why did Facebook think that allowing every application the ability to connect to a user's feed was a good idea? Don't they worry that their loyal users are going to get sick of shifting through the marketing BS?

5) Why does anyone still like LeBron James? He's just a big baby and his addition to money and fame makes even Donald Trump seem tame.