If that doesn't spur the Monorail craze, I don't know what will!

"Is there a chance the track could bend?"

"Not on your life, my canine friend!"

I call the little one Bitey.

Flea, it does sound like sciatica. I had it during the last half of trimester the second, and boy, did it suck.

The good news is, it did go away when she got bigger, for whatever reason, so you might not have it the rest of the pregnancy. Call your OB or midwife and ask if they have any tricks for it--there may be some stretches you can do. (I can't remember what I did. I think I just suffered.)

Sophia, Royalty-Free images aren't, strictly speaking, free. It's just a one-time usage fee that gives your company or organization the right to use them perpetually, rather than having to pay for each use as is the case with Rights-Managed images. From the major companies they can average around $200 per hi-res image individually, though there are serious price breaks if you can find a CD with multiple images that you want to use. Fotosearch.com is a good place to use when searching for images (check the CD collections), though I'd suggest contacting the source company of each CD to see if you can negotiate a lower cost.

There's also a supposedly free alternative of photography at www.morguestock.com but the images don't have signed photo releases as part and parcel of the deal. I've been reluctant to use them myself for fear of loopholes in the legality, but you might want to read through their terms and FAQ to see if it's something that could be useful to you.

Good lord -- I am again reminded that I don't understand how ita functions, due to being in and out of bed all morning with a migraine. I'm not sure if the nausea is from the headache or the drugs, but it was a bonus I was not looking for.

Sophia, your bosses are nuts.

Hi, I got snowed in during my trip to Lunenburg this weekend, and I just skipped 500+ messages. How is everyone?

Thanks Matt!

Is anyone familiar with this site?

[link]

It looks to be inexpensive, although I might have to sell my soul to the devil to get these prices.

I just don't understand how my department (nursing entreprenuership), which is supposed to insubate business until they are ready to be on their own, seems to display a complete ignorance of standard publishing (and might I also add marketing) practices.

Your bosses need to be beaten, and then to be shown the court cases where law firms paid millon-dollar copyright fines for photocopying whole books and newsletters.

It's amazing when lawyers don't understand the concept of copyrights, isn't it? My old department had a two-year battle when one of the lawyers who was editing a book decided to lift an article whole-cloth and republish it in our product. Of course, the lawyer who was the original author saw it and immediately filed a lawsuit. Unfortunately, the employee who was stupid enough to do this had already been fired for being stupid about using her phone for personal calls (she was on the phone for about 7 hours of her 8-hour workday, and called friends across the country). The guy ended up settling after more than a year of legal wrangling.

So, in light of our conversation a while back, Sheryl Crow is on today's Ellen, and Ellen brought up the breakup, and Sheryl was basically like, "Well, you live your life in the public eye, and that's how it goes."