From USAToday.com:

Universal is going to cut their CD prices by $6... which means that their top artists will sell for around $12.98. Man.. that's the price CDs were when they first came out. I remember buying my first CD, Kim Boyce (whoa!), for $12.98. It was so exciting... remember the longboxes? What a waste of paper those were... they'd get all dented and the CDs would always tip over in the racks, and it was just really messy. I seem to remember getting the CDs out of the longboxes was a pain in the behind as well... I would always try and not mess up the longbox, so I'd just open up the top and try and slide the CD out, but it would always get stuck and I'd end up just ripping up the long box. I think Costco still sells CDs in longboxes. That's bizarre. Anyway, Universal is hoping that selling their CDs for $12.98 will make people start buying CDs again. Hey, how's this for a concept: SELL SOME MUSIC PEOPLE WANT TO BUY, and then your CD sales will go up! You know why their sales are down? Because mainstream music sucks and people are buying INDIE now more than ever. It's not MP3s that are the major labels' enemy, it's the indie artists who are actually making good music. So there.

Hospitals in China are trying to improve customer satisfaction, and have told doctors and nurses that in order to cut down the complaints from patients and other "customers," they must smile showing at least eight teeth. They say that because of this new "eight teeth smile rule" that customer complaints have gone down to zero.

I'm such a soccer mom today! I baked brownies for Punky's class... it's my day to bring snacks. He's started getting nightly homeword too... I'm feeling very old, very soccer-mom-ish. I guess I fit into that demographic, but geez, that scares me. It really really does. I'm fighting that classification tooth and nail.

I want to get my nose pierced again. My friend Sarah has one that's a really tiny little stud, and I like that... it's subtle and cute. I'm close, so close...

Getting a new CD burner tonight. Am very excited. I just hope it works. I don't know about installing new hardware (well, I did a modem once, but that was easy)... when it comes to changing jumpers and all that, well, I've never done it before. Luckily I have my dad's engineering gene which helps me to figure out stuff blindly -- it either leads to success or just complete disaster. I'll keep you posted.

NP: Fleming and John -- "Sssh!" from the album The Way We Are