Whew. Just came back from running my walk around town errands. Now feeling much to exhausted and legweary to contemplate doing the take the bus out to the place with all the stores errands.

But I have mailed a package, finally picked up my contact lenses AND new contact lens crap to keep them clean and bought the "lotus pink" yarn I want for my next knitting project PLUS the bonus of longer needles than the ones I currently have. (I now have 2.5 pairs of #8 needles - I had a nice long pair of #8s, somehow managed to lose one, bought another set of #8 - this pair quite a bit shorter - which is annoying and now have a new pair of longer #8s.) I also have a new future knitting project in mind: one of my friend's is expecting a baby in May - it's kind of a miracle due to female troubles of one sort or another and I want to knit a nice lightweight baby blanket for the future little one. They live in SoCal so I'm thinking cotton will be okay, what do you guys think?

Washable cotton is never a bad choice for baby gear!

Oh, and also, I've been remiss, so:

Happy Birthday+3(I think) to ChiKat!

Happy Birthday+1 to sumi!

Happy Birthday to any and all people I have missed lately!

(I got Jilli in Bitches)

Happy birthdays, all!

Altogether, the census found six million surnames in the United States. Among those, 151,000 were shared by a hundred or more Americans. Four million were held by only one person.

I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around that. Are all those people with made-up names? And no spouses or children?

Kids with hypenated names, maybe. And widows with no kids or married daughters who changed their names? And there's made up, and made up -- I know someone whose last name is only shared by her family, because her great-grandfather or whoever shortened their Italian last name when he came over.

Yeah, I'm sure those are all a part of it. It seems like such a huge number, but I guess it's really not.

There's what, 300 million in the US? So it's more than one percent, but still a small percentage.

Thinking about the "kids with hypenated names" category, I went to high school with at least one of those who was an only child, so most probably the only person with that last name. I should google her and see what happens.

Huh! She apparently owns a club in Seattle. Fascinating!

Could be some single aliens? Like ita, whose last name is so uncommon.

Dana, I should thank you for initially raving about QI on this thread. That totally encouraged me to check it out and I LOVE IT.

New episodes! Series 5!

I wish I could check it out; it sounds highly entertaining. And enlightening.

There are many episodes on YouTube, including the new ones.