This is new to me:

Bleg
A blog entry consisting of a request to the readers, such as for information or contributions. A portmanteau of "blog" and "beg". Also called "Lazyweb."

It is also a verb, as evidenced by this Freakonomics posting:

Overheard 1

Male student sitting on bench, yelling to female student walking across the square: "Did you find a dress yet?"

Female student, yelling in response: "No, I decided to wear an ice skating costume instead!"

Overheard 2

Girl: "Did I tell you? That I'm totally, like, obsessed with France?"

Her friend, whom she is walking with: "HA HA HA HA HA!!!!"

Overheard 3

Woman leaning out of her car at the Taco Bell drive-through this morning at 10am, angrily directed at the speaker in the drive-through menu: "HELLO??"

For tolerating us in our humanly activities, for looking so improbably cute, for keeping Joe guessing, for wearing the ridiculous clothing we brought you. You were truly a gritty Tacoman.

I've been trying for some time to write the story of our refinance last fall - our first experience with refinancing. In my mind the essay deftly frames our refinancing experience as a microcosm of the sub-prime crisis that exploded at precisely the same moment. But maybe there isn't enough distance between me and the experience to allow for that kind of eloquence, because it isn't working yet.

Joe asked Marc and Shannon to put $5 in a slot machine for us in Vegas, and they sent us this picture message in response:

But does it say $3 or $53? The suspense is killing us. What do you think?

In case you haven't heard from us in a while, and you're wondering where we are, we are busy trying out all the flu virus strains. We should finish working through them by spring.

Between flus, we took a short trip to Tucson. Tucson is very purple.

Check out the photo album for more.

The report from Stanley Elementary School is that Obama wins in a landslide!

We arrived at 1pm to find the cafeteria already swarming with people. Number of volunteers handing out Obama stickers at the door: 2. Number of people handing out Clinton stickers: 0.

There were about 5 precincts meeting at the school. Ours was so large that we were sent to the gymnasium to proceed with our caucusing. Carrying chairs, we organized ourselves into a semicircle; some people also grabbed those thick blue exercise mats and made themselves comfortable. It seemed like our representatives were about 60% African-American. We didn't see anyone from our block, but we saw Ethan, the real estate guy who lives a block away; Jenne of Bill & Jenne who bought a house about 6 blocks south; and Sally, the development professional who keeps an eye on the whole Hilltop. Sally said the last presidential caucus for our precinct was held in a tiny church basement.

We sat around for about an hour while these folks tallied up the votes everyone had cast with their sign-in sheets:

The results were about 14 for Clinton, and over 100 for Obama, with a handful of undecideds. Then we listened to one one-minute speech for each position. After the speeches were done, we had 5 minutes to try to persuade the other side and the undecideds. Our Obama speaker (a well-organized white guy) jumped on the opportunity to speak further to the whole room about Obama's stance on foreign policy, plans for healthcare, and commitment net neutrality. The Clinton speaker (a white woman who wasn't wearing any shoes or socks) said, "If we vote for Hillary, we also get her husband!" which elicited a chorus of loud boos. She tried to say a few other things, but was drowned out. A young woman got up and said "I'm in my 20's, and there's been a Bush or a Clinton in the White House since I was 3 years old. I want someone new!" and was cheered.

The main volunteer lady brought everything back to order and said that Obama currently had 13 delegates, and Clinton had 2. Then she gave everyone a few minutes to change their votes, during which the undecideds must have gone for Obama, because we ended up with 14 delegates.

All the Clinton supporters are under the basketball hoop (excepting the woman with the bedazzled white hat; she's just getting a drink from the fountain, because I saw her yelling for Obama). Note the barefoot woman.

These are just the delegates for Obama, and their alternates. There was much confusion over where and when the county and state conventions would be held, so Joe and I didn't volunteer to be delegates.

And then, a mere 2 hours after it started, it was over, and we were filled with the spirit of Obama and covered with his likeness on buttons and stickers.

Five down, and apparently the war is over.

For this mouse graph in our kitchen, I created one mouse cutout for each mouse captured. A mouse facing right represents a live catch-and-release; left-facing indicates the mouse did not survive the battle. The graph starts on the left and proceeds in chronological order.

Though this graph may seem grim, we have but to remember the evening that the final gauntlet was thrown; the incident that caused us to escalate from our initial three-pronged approach involving sonar devices, spray foam, and the installation of a covered garbage can; when a mouse ran across the couch and over Joe's toes before darting across the living room into the kitchen. All of the mice we have encountered during the war were cute, and some of them were no bigger than my big toe, but one ran across the couch. With a lot of mouse action, as Joe describes it.

To add to our oeuvre as talented host and hostess, I'll point out that the mouse war coincided with Matt U.'s visit. (I am going out of my way to mention him here, because he despises the blogosphere and all its users and contents and will no doubt be disappointed to find himself implicated in this whole mess.) The mice did their best to welcome Matt into the home by nibbling on the loaf of bread that he purchased the day he arrived. After that, he stored his bread at M-Space. He took it in stride, but Joe and I could not believe we'd lived to see The Day When Food Was Safer At M-Space Than At Home. Indeed, the only rat seen at M-Space while Matt was here was a dessicated one; posing no threat to the food supply, he'd chosen a box of my artwork as its coffin. Behold, the new world order.

But it has been two weeks with no additions to the mouse graph, so it seems that all is right again. We will tentatively return our sacks of grain to the pantry and begin storing plastic grocery bags, as we are wont to do, and perhaps, someday I will leave my work bag in the living room unzipped again, without the fear of its contents being worked into each other in a frenzied chewing session that may have been narrated thusly "glove-Ziploc-receipt-receipt-glove-satsuma leaf-Ziploc-glove-receipt-glove-Ziploc-satsuma leaf-someone's coming-argh!"

"We've got sticky rice with, like, a coconut situation on top, which is really good." - waitress at Galanga, after explaining that mango sticky rice was out of season.

"Let's do this." - waiter at Asado, while delivering Joe's steak

"We Built This City" by Starship