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I realize that this post is only going to amuse a fairly limited portion of my readership. And even those who understand the joke may not be particularly amused by it. But it’s my blog, and I’ll cry if I want to, so to speak.

Anyway, I was drafting a document that discussed various property being using as a collateral for a loan. One of the schedules listed all the relevant property, and required that I indicate whether it is “owned” or “leased” property.

Maybe it was too early in the morning for my brain to function properly, or something, so every time I tried to type “owned property” it came out as “own3d property.”

As much fun as it would be to draft my documents in 1337, I think I would be the one getting pwn3d if I left my typo in there.

As many of our friends know, Jannine and I are affectionately known in shorthand as Jannate. It’s more efficient than pronouncing all the many syllables in our names, plus that pesky “and”. (The ending of this sentence introduces one of the formal usage rules that I constantly fight with in my head. Technically, I believe, the period should be inside the closing quotation mark. However, that makes no sense to me, as the quotation marks are only related to the and. It seems like a non-traditional use of the quotation mark, which should allow the period to be placed in a non-traditional location. Which I did. Sue me, grammar police!)

Anyway, the “couple names” started with our friends Jeremy and Erica, aka Jerica, and spread to us, Zane and Angela (Zangela) and Stefan and Aneta (Stefeta or Stefaneta — there is debate about the proper contraction).

I was thinking about all this today, and that made me think about how Kat and Suz started using J9 as a nickname for Jannine. I then realized that my name could be shortened to N8. Which would make us N8 & J9. How cool is that??

Do not write a comment telling me that it’s not cool. I have decided that it is cool, and that’s all there is to it.

It seems like time to post another photo, as I haven’t posted anything for a few weeks, or so it seems.

Today, we have one from the archives: I took it last summer when Jannine and I were in Michigan visiting my parents. We went to the Horticulture Garden at Michigan State University (my alma mater). While there, I took a bunch of pictures.

This is one of my favorites.

Well, it’s official (or as official as it can be right now): Jannine and I are going to Paris for our honeymoon. I booked our tickets this afternoon through Northwest, expending most of my banked frequent-flyer miles (thank you, Accenture!) for one ticket and paying for the other ticket.

Thanks to the rules of the Northwest frequent flyer program (otherwise known as: we don’t really want you to use your miles), I had to spend double miles on one leg of the flight. This nixed the possibility of getting both tickets with miles. And, given that we’re on Northwest, the itinery is not as clean as it could be. Given that we paid one third of what we would have to fly direct LAX-CDG-JFK on Air France, that’s a tradeoff we’re happy to make.

Now, we just have to pick a hotel. We’ve narrowed it down to a few decent (and not too expensive choices). Hopefully, we can nail that down this weekend and have those two big pieces out of the way. We can work out the details later, but at least now we know we’re actually going to be there.

New York Magazine had an interesting article on the concept of “skyfarming” — building skyscrapers that would house vast amounts of agriculture. This idea has been explored, in a theoretical sense, by a professor at Columbia.

Of course, as with most big ideas, this one is supposed to solve most of the world’s ills, including global warming, the need for sustainable energy, the ability to feed a rapidly-growing population, clean water, fresh food, global terrorism and Tom Cruise’s love of Scientology. Ok, I made the last two up. But you get the idea.

In theory, it all sounds wonderful. The science behind the ideas is not entirely theoretical. However, unless billions of dollars suddenly appear out of nowhere (attention Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and George Soros), it will be difficult for these ideas to grow beyond the concept stage.

Courtesy of Suz’s Google Talk message, a nice link from Overhead in New York’s archive.

It sums up the conflict of two enduring problems: New Yorkers can be so rude, but sometimes, it’s entirely provoked. Tourists should not stop in the middle of sidewalks any more than they would appreciate people suddenly stopping in the middle of busy streets in their communities. Sidewalks are our streets.

But it does sound like those suits had a slight anger-management problem.