It used to drive me CRAXY when people would leave the signature panel blank because they felt that it would make them not liable for charges if the card was stolen. The logic for that one defeated me.

This drives me crazy too, and I have gotten many angry looks from people when I have ever so gently mentioned that they should at least write See ID on the back because if it is blank anyone could sign it and then the signature will match.

Oh my goodess, sj... you are bringing back retail memories....

Weirdly, I think I actually liked retail better than being a secretary, but the pay and the hours suck. But because I was good and worked in a department store, I got to work all over the store, and wasn't bored too often.

you are bringing back retail memories

I apologize. I didn't get called in today. I appear to be on my punishment week for calling out sick in a snow storm. I got a whole 4 hours.

I am watching A Week of Dressing Dangerously right now because it has been mentioned here. I like it. I could never do it, but I like it.

I sign the backs of my credit cards but they rub off pretty darn fast.

A friend of mine used to work at a record store - she used to ask to see ID for every credit card purchase, which she'd compare to the signature on the credit card. But she got tired of being accused of being racist when she would ask to see ID.

I sign the backs of my credit cards but they rub off pretty darn fast.

This is the other instance when I ask for ID, when the signature is either all smudged or the white strip is gone altogether.

Small town forces out McDonald's with good bread:

"I was afraid of McDonald's," he said in his bakery on Tuesday. "I was afraid we would be completely glossed over. I was afraid no one would even notice us."

For a while, McDonald's drew in the customers of Altamura. "In the beginning," Mr. Digesu said, "McDonald's was McDonald's."

But soon there was a migration of locals who preferred their own version of fast food: hunks of thick focaccia like the dozen that Mr. Digesu was tending in the oven as he spoke. Part of the reason seemed economic: Mr. Digesu said a big slice of focaccia cost the same as a single McDonald's hamburger. It was also, clearly, preference.

McDonald's began fighting back, offering school trips to visit the kitchens, free rentals of the restaurant for children's birthday parties, coupons for children and a television for customers to watch soccer. Nothing seemed to work.

"They'd watch the game, and as soon as it was over go out and get focaccia," Mr. Pepe said.

Finally, in December 2002, after less than two years in operation, the McDonald's closed shop, according to the company, for lack of profitability.

Kix...

Your kid's not hyperactive, just over-evolved:

Indigo children were first described in the 1970's by a San Diego parapsychologist, Nancy Ann Tappe, who noticed the emergence of children with an indigo aura, a vibrational color she had never seen before. This color, she reasoned, coincided with a new consciousness.

In "The Indigo Children," Mr. Carroll and Ms. Tober define the phenomenon. Indigos, they write, share traits like high I.Q., acute intuition, self-confidence, resistance to authority and disruptive tendencies, which are often diagnosed as attention-deficit disorder, known as A.D.D., or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or A.D.H.D.

Indigos

Shit, they couldn't have picked a different color?