Balance

I like biking no-hands--it reminds me of how mysterious the way a bicycle works is. With my hands on the handlebars, I can succumb to the illusion that steering a bike is as linear and rational as driving a car. Let go of them, and the steering is by magic. I need to go left, and there's a little twitch of my hips, a little shift of my balance, and the bike angles off to my left. I don't understand what just happened. It makes me feel powerful and humbled all at once.

I wonder if toddlers feel this way about walking. By the time they're big enough to express such emotions, though, they're too blase to notice.

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...And Least Informative Headline of the Year goes to....

LEADERS TACKLE CRISIS from the Chicago Tribune.

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Uninformative

My chicken quesadilla from Marvelous Market has an ingredients list:

CHICKEN QUAESADILLA(sic) FILLING, CHICK QUESA SALSA, FLOUR TORTILLA

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Weirdest spam I've gotten in a while

FREE LOVEMETER SOFTWARE ON 

http://www.net4matrimonials.com
whr marriages are made
CONVERT YOUR LOVE MARRIAGE INTO ARRANGE ONE
(Create your porfile and his/her profile and send msg from     his/her 
profile
and show it to your parents)

I think what they're getting at is that the site will help convince your parents to arange the marriage that you already desire...but I'm not sure. The site is a trip, with plenty of scrolling text and creative spelling, and a downright mischievous Javascript window resizer. Their ads feature a form field for manglik status, which I had to look up.

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Sebbo meets the Obedient Cat

I was having the aforementioned scrambled-egg breakfast on the charming patio of my Berkeley hotel. On the wall beside me sat a large handsome gray cat. After he'd been there a few minutes, disinterestedly watching me dig in, a man in kitchen whites emerged and looked at the cat. "Vamanos!" he said sternly. "Vamanos a la casa!"

The cat looked at him, but didn't move.

"Vamanos a la casa!

With painstakingly slow casualness, the cat got to his feet, leapt down off the wall, and meekly followed him off to another building. Now I've seen it all.

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