Aveda's Light Elements Defining Whip is the best hair product I've discovered in years. It's a bit pricey ($20 a jar), but worth it for those of us who consider hair products to qualify as life necessities, right along with food, clothing and shelter.

Writing that tries too hard is almost as distasteful as run-of-the-mill bad writing. Articles that fall into the Arts & Entertainment category are often guilty, as evidenced by this review of Under the Tuscan Sun. My favorite is the reference to "multitudinous supporting characters, who scatter about the movie like jelly beans across a terrazzo floor."

I'm not a fan of standard Phoenix architecture - stucco tract homes with vaulted ceilings and tile roofs. I've noticed that ads for major Phoenix homebuilders usually include: A) a happy couple, B) children playing, or C) a kitten sleeping on the floor. None of the ads show an actual house. I think this is a pretty good indication that even the homebuilders know that their houses are sadly lacking in visual appeal.

I've been working several days a week for a college department that calls itself "Institutional Advancement" - a cumbersome title, especially when you try to pronounce it quickly while answering the phone. Unless I apply full concentration, I usually end up dropping the first T, which probably makes me sound like I don't qualify to work for a college.

But I prefer this challenge to the nearly impossible feat of correctly pronouncing Tempe's "Rural Road." Most of the name becomes buried beneath all the Rs, making it come out something like "Rrrrrroad."

Is it too late to sign up for speech therapy?

The trouble with neglecting your website for so long is you start to feel self-conscious about writing again - like you should come up with something really profound, as though it's taken a couple of weeks to ponder some deep subject. But profundity escapes me right now. I just wanted to provide evidence that I am still a living, breathing member of society - one with a really bad case of writer's block.

The date/time feature on my computer is messed up. I adjusted it a few weeks ago, but for some reason it defaults to January 1904. When I send e-mail to someone not familiar with the quirks of my system, I always feel a need to acknowledge the problem - which is probably not really necessary, since nobody's really going to think I sent them e-mail a century ago.

I just got back from vacation last night, and feel like I'm moving in slow motion. Why is travel so tiring? Between flights from Springfield, Mo., to Dallas, and from Dallas to Phoenix, I spent most of yesterday evening sitting and reading. It's not like I climbed the Himalayas.