And yet another "Happy Birthday" to wish this week. Gary and I are driving up to Ithaca tomorrow morning to celebrate with Stephani, a.k.a. "Prof-T." But it sounds as if she's already been out celebrating:

GROVELAND, N.Y. - Rocky road was the flavor of the day after a tanker truck crashed and spilled 45,000 pounds of liquid chocolate on an upstate highway. State Police said no one was seriously injured in the mishap, which occurred shortly after 5 p.m. yesterday on Interstate 390 in the Finger Lakes region.

The syrup, from the M&M Mars Co. in Elizabethtown, Pa., oozed along the highway, covered a bridge and a car on another road below - and then hardened. "It smelled like a Hershey bar," Groveland Fire Chief Lloyd Butler said. "There was a lot of chocolate, but no peanuts."

A road grader was used to scrape it off, and the desserted ... er, deserted ... highway was closed for five hours.

Truck driver Bert Nestlrode, 46, of Ephrata, Pa., told authorities the accident occurred after he swerved to avoid a deer, the truck rolled over and the tanker split. Nestlrode was treated for cuts and bruises. No tickets were issued. Groveland is 36 miles southwest of Rochester.

[That Steph and her deer outfit again!]

I just finished the third volume in Lemony Snicket's, "A Series of Unfortunate Events" books. While a very interesting writing style, and highly recommended by several people, I found them a bit too depressing for my tastes. Of course, I had plenty of warning - here is the first page of the first book, The Bad Beginning:

If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters. Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming, and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery, and despair. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.

"How intriguing," I thought. Unfortunately, he was quite correct and there are no happy endings. I understand that he's now up to the eleventh book, The Grim Grotto, but I think the first three were enough.

That said, it is coming out as a movie on December 17th, starring Jim Carrey as the evil Count Olaf. The early press describes it as a challenger to the Harry Potter series.

[Perhaps as a rental.]

Quote du jour:

"Stress wouldn’t be so hard to take if it were chocolate covered"

-- Anonymous

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