I like things that speak for themselves. Colorado is one of them.

Can you spot the baby in this Black Friday shopping cart?

Also, if you own an iPhone, you will enjoy this.

This may be the coolest thing I did all semester.

I should be sad about this, but, for some reason, I am not.

It’s one of those things you don’t notice until there’s something wrong with it.

Like that white banister in Oviedo I cleaned obsessively.

I’m talking about things like walking, writing, showering — the mundane tasks that comprise daily life. It’s so easy to take these things for granted.

I know I did.

And I know this has been said a million times by a million people in words more eloquent and poignant than mine, and I know, at best, such words evoke only sympathy, but never empathy. Platitudes like “treasure every moment” take the word ‘trite’ to a new level.

No, it’s not until you experience such things yourself that you truly understand the vulnerability, the frailness of things. The ephemera. It’s hard to wrap your head around the ramifications vegetable oil, five seconds, one bad judgment call can have. It really puts things into perspective in a way that is beyond my ability to transcribe.

I wish I could relay these things with words so powerful they have the same effect on people it took second-degree burns and fire-hot oil to teach me. As bad as the physical pain is (and it is bad), the mental anguish is greater.

I have recently started using a Web-based photo editor called Picnik. Easy, fun, addictive. PhotoShop for dummies.

come on baby let’s get out of this town
i got a full tank of gas with the top rolled down
i’ll pack my bag and load up my guitar
in my pocket ill carry my harp
i got some money i saved
enough to get underway
and baby you can sleep while i drive

we’ll go through tucson up to santa fe
and barbara in nashville says we’re welcome to stay
i’ll buy you glasses in texas, a hat from new orleans
and in the morning you can tell me your dreams

-melissa etheridge

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The open road empowers and liberates. The whole world — or, at least the continental United States —stretched out before you, daring you down it, the possibilities endless. Evocative of emotions you didn’t even know you had. It starts to make you wonder who you want in the passenger seat. And where you want to go.

Someone left this little bit of wisdom in a book at Barnes & Noble. Leave it to a stranger to put things into perspective.

These Huffington Post slideshows kill me.

Cute/weird Halloween costumes for kids.

Here’s my favorite:

I also notice many people have a penchant for dressing up their animals – especially small dogs.

This ranges from really cute…

to kind of cute…

to sort of hilarious…

to what is, unfortunately, the most ubiquitous - the downright shameful…

These Vibram Five Fingers shoes just might make me take up running.