If I could fix one problem with the wonderful American language, I think I found what it would be. Upon paying my Verizon bill online, I found one of the credit cards I put in their records has since expired. The note by the little asterisk, however, said nothing about its expiration date. No, it had to rub me the wrong way, informing me that the “expiry date” has past.

Expiry? You couldn’t sound more like a stuck up Brit if you tried! Nothing against the English – I have been to London twice, and did enjoy it thoroughly (more so the first time than the second) – but let’s face it, their language is weird. They have lifts, not elevators. Trousers, not pants (well, actually, they have pants, but you generally don’t bring them up much in conversation). Plus a whole other assortment of strange tools of confabulation. And expiry should be one of them. Please, please save the snobby words for the British. Heaven knows we don’t need them here.

I got Russ Iverson in quite a pickle yesterday. Now the secret Russian Mafia wants his head. This may turn into a good book yet.

I’m curious how a person’s handwriting develops. Does it usually happen only unintentionally? Because for me, it’s entirely contrived. Maybe it’s only because my natural handwriting is so utterly awful. But maybe it is this way only because I haven’t used it since junior high. Since then, with a few short exceptions, I have always written in small, all caps lettering. You know the kind. With typewriter precision. The problem is it’s too darn slow. I just wish I could have a decent-looking fast handwriting.

Today I created a new handwriting for myself, and I think I will use it for a while to see if it becomes natural. I like to be able to break away from my all-caps thing, but this is still pretty slow for me. I tried doing the lower-case ‘a’ like most computer fonts show it, my ‘e’ in two distinct strokes instead of one curling line. I changed how I pen a lot of other letters, too, but these are maybe the biggest changes. I like it, it looks neat, clean. I suppose it reflects my personality a lot, just like my all-caps writing does. I’m clean-cut, linear in thought, and I like things ordered.

Yet I can’t help but think that when I don’t consciously put thought into my penmanship, it’s stinking repulsive. I wonder if that says something about my personality, too.

Well, I finally got it. My black genuine leather ESV came in the mail today.

Yeah, I talked about it a whole month ago, but didn’t actually get around to ordering it until this week. Too expensive. Then when I decided I wanted to spend the money, every warehouse in the country was out. Literally. A couple stores could have shipped one in from a couple other locations in Georgia or Alabama, somewhere very far from here. Plus I didn’t want to spend full price. Found exactly what I wanted on amazon.com for almost $15 less. Happy, happy, joy, joy. I just love the sound and smell of crisp new pages.

Wouldn’t it be great if blog entries were more like Strong Bad emails? That way you could scan your mouse pointer over all the text as you read it, to see if the cursor changes to mark secret links you can click on to pull up extra stuff. Go ahead and try is as you’re reading this. I could read the text to you as it appears on the screen, and then we would cut away to an action sequence, where dialogue between me and a select few of my roommates would take place. Then we would cut back here and close, and I could have the little slip of paper slide down at the end, giving you a nice little link to comment to me about my blog.

Did you find the hidden links? Yeah, I hate when Strong Bad doesn’t have any, either.