What made you smile today?

I found an incredible bookcase at the dump today. It is real wood, sturdy, tall, just the right width for the space I have and the shelves are set at just the right height for the books I need to put on them. All it needs is a coat of paint.

It made me smile thinking that anyone would paint a gleaned bookcase and destroy its authentic dump post-modernism.

post modernism didn't even enter my mind - I just want it to look nice.

my Echinacea purpurea are starting to bloom;

Beautiful -- are you going to make some tea?

Headline in today's Daily Mirror which, I hasten to add, was on the bar in the pub.

A SMILE IS THE ANSWER TO ALL LIFE'S LITTLE TRIALS THAT CAN SEND YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE SOARING.

Then a sub-headline-

WAITER forgotten your order?
Train late again?

Then the ironic meat.

While it's tempting to shout, I've (the writer--not me) found the best way to get what you want is to complain with a smile.
"Don't get mad, get even," is the advice of my consumer site disputer.com. which launches this week.
So here's how to get what you want. And with thousands of families (I think it should be millions actually) planning days out with the kids over the half-term you can guarantee there will be plenty of opportunities to put some of these winning tips into practice.

You selfish, devious bastards. All of you.

Makes sense to me, Spendius. Take the pills the doctor gave you. We will see you tomorrow. Good night.

Excellent, Aidan.

Yeah, and it just keeps bringing the smiles everytime I look at it- I think this is my best dump find ever!

And I'm smiling and having fun thinking of how to paint it - I might use it as a piece of functional art.
I'm thinking of a beautiful sky-blue background and a sort of blurry, abstract looking tree (each leaf a daub of green paint) up each long, uninterrupted side board. I have to get exactly the right colors for that though.

Meeting up with farmerman to visit America's oldest brewery made me smile today. As we drove there, he told me some bullshit story about "mountains" that exist, he said, in the Appalachians. He assured me the only reason I didn't see them was because they were hidden in the clouds. Yeah, right.

You really ARE a doubting Thomas, aren't you?

Indeed. I don't even believe you are a cigarette smoking bunny.

Hey...do you refuse to believe people have navels until you've poked your finger in them?

All right, that's a smiler.

Heh. Come over HERE and say that.

I've been thinking about that. It's not going to happen within the next, like, weeks. But in the longer run, I wouldn't mind having some carrots and dandelion leaves with you.

There are carrots in Canada yanno. In Joisey too for that matter. Gorgeous, multi-coloured carrots.

I AM grinning. Thanks folks.

I went out to eat this evening and this little boy of about three asked his mother, with obvious concern and interest in her choice while looking at the menu, as if he could read just like she could, 'What is you gonna has Mummy?' It was very sweet.

One of my employees is in a pretty well known "Goth" band. He got an e-mail today from a producer in one of those dreadful TV reality shows. This one called "Trading Wives" or something. Not, of course, as risque as it sounds. It involves moms switching homes for a week. Did I mention that the concept sounds dreadful?
Anyway, he got an email saying that there was a poster on the wall of his band and they needed him to sign a release so it could appear for a few seconds as a minor prop in one of the homes.