The roof of my car is pink. So is Kevin’s truck. In fact, the whole right side of the sky is glowing like crazy all over everything.

I sit down on the third step from the ground floor outside our apartment. It’s damp. Nicolaus is on my lap. A minute ago he was fussing – no, screeching — but now he’s quiet. We can hear a bird somewhere and a tree full of cicadas.

Everything is a little bit wet. Did it rain?

Nicolaus reaches out his drool-soaked hands and bumps himself up and down. “Yyyeah,” he gurgles, “Yeah.”

“Yeah!” I tell him, and, “Look at that car. And there’s a truck. And clouds, see the clouds?” I say it all like I’m tipsy, “And treeeeees?”

There are no trees right around our building, but huge pines wave above that building way, way across the parking lot. The top clumps of leaves are wriggling – it looks funny because I can’t feel any wind. Like the trees are over there discussing something.

It’s warm and humid, and now the sky is lighting up orange. The whole thing looks fake; in fact, the left half is full of the classic clouds they use on wrapping paper. The entire right side seems to be one massive cloud. Some parts of it are crisp, almost digital, and other areas of it are smudged, like someone tried to rub it away with a big gum eraser.

Nicolaus reaches up into the orange and squeals. “Yeah!” he says, flapping his arms “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.”

There are no words to describe the feeling a mother experiences the first time her baby says the word “Mama”.

To his daddy.

I have lots of stuff to put in my journal. Interesting dramatic developments, juicy gossip, thoughts on where we should live, exciting ups and downs of life as an independant contractor, thoughts on the world in general and of course, amazing adorable baby things… but none of those were the thing that compelled me to finally stop working, open a browser, log on and post an entry.

Here’s what did it:
We just got our new Texas license plates (insert Kevin’s rant about having to pay a yankee tax for bringing cars into texas, having to carry over $300 cash to the scary part of town, having to wait in line for an hour so they could tell him to come back and get my signature before he could go back to the scary part of town having not had any lunch, interlaced with his artist’s critique of the gay-ass design of the new Texas license plates).

But that’s not the point. The point is that I just got the coolest randomly-generated license plate number ever! I’m told that posting details such as your exact license plate number on the internet where strangers live is not a good idea, but I will tell you this:
If you read my license plate and have even the tiniest imagination, it very clearly says “Wait to jack off”

Which I think is fantastic. I’m trying to decide what sticker I should put above it… “I can’t”? “You really should”? “You’d be a better driver if you would…”?

“I think society today really needs more beautiful people.”
-Hao Lulu

And Hao Lulu is doing her part to make the world a better place:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3093139.stm

I just wish I had a cool name like Hao Lulu.

I have an awesome idea for a different kind of company. For example, where many companies are so locked into this old-school idea of being profitable, we will work expeditiously to eliminate any profit centers we manage to develop.

And where a lot of companies market their products to people who might want to buy them, we will focus our marketing dollars exclusively on the 14 people who have already pledged undying loyalty to our products.

And while most companies feel the need to tell the public about amazing features their product has, well, we think that’s just plain braggy and obnoxious. Such conceited boasting is what’s wrong with corporate America today. We’re going to keep all of our best features and benefits a secret.

And every few years we’re going to take all of the things that work and change them just to prove that we are on the cutting edge of doing things differently.

And although our product will not be the standard, and will therefore be difficult for people to find support, software, or hardware for it, we will charge nearly twice as much as our competition.

And when we produce products with serious design flaws, such as wireless base stations that cost $300, we will replace those products for free. With refurbished products that contain the same freaking design flaw. And then refuse to replace them a second time because “sorry, that program has been discontinued.” You know, the program of providing a respectable level customer service.

And then we’ll hire that guy from The Fly to be our spokesman. It is a perfect plan that cannot fail.