One in a million.

I love thunderstorms. It seems, like other things, that they were better when I was a kid. We get them infrequently around here. Maybe I should move to Arizona or Ohio. When one is on the way, I perch my camera on the tripod and wait. Having southern exposure may be nice for sun worshippers, but for lightning worshippers it sucks. Once in a while I get lucky, but like Dirty Harry, it's not all that frequent. Mostly, we get that flashy-thingy lightning and not the bolts that look cool on camera. To get one in the east is a big bonus. Lucky to be here.

By the way, those jeans from yesterday - $89.50. That's why I don't shop at Abercrombie & Fitch. If you want to see my butt crack, I'll show you for a lot less than $89.50.

I see that the recent upsurge in the price of gasoline has prompted some school districts and local governments to go to a 4-day work week. At first that sounds like nirvana, but it's really just 4 10-hour days. Most people I talk to think that's great. "I'll have Friday's off," they say, as though the three-day weekend is their little slice of heaven. What it really means is that they work themselves silly for 4 days to get a day "off." I'm not buying it. I like my free time too much to sacrifice two hours a day so that I can get one day off. I think they'll find that the extra two hours a day that they have to work is a bad trade-off for the weekend. Like a lot of things, you should be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.

Jealous? No. Maybe the shirt should say "Sucker." Clueless (above) is said to be the first buyer of the new 3G iPhone in Hong Kong where apparently people have more money than brains. Honestly, I couldn't tell you what separates the 3G iPhone from the iPhone that people went nuts for 6 months ago, but I can tell you that 6 months from now there's going to be something "better" than the 3G iPhone, and goofy consumers with time and money will flock to it because they think they're supposed to. Meanwhile, laws are being made faster than phones to keep them from using it in all the places they want to use them.

Here in New Jersey we have a law (or so they say) against using phones while driving. What it has done is create a race of people whose eyes move like lizards - independently - tracking the road and the sidelines looking for police. A law that is unenforceable has created a new crop of drivers who are both distracted by the phone and the effort it takes to check for law enforcement. I've yet to see one adjacent driver using a phone pulled over because - guess - there are never any police around.

I'd say the odds of being caught using a cell phone while driving in New Jersey are about the same as me catching a lightning bolt from the deck of my condo.