I am in utter shock. Disbelief, really. An eight-lane bridge over the Mississippi for a major freeway, 35W, collapsed about an hour ago in Minneapolis.

The good news is that, as far as I know, my family is safe. The bad news is that many families will not be so lucky.

For those unfamiliar with the area, that is one of the heaviest-trafficked roads in the Twin Cities, and the collapse happened during a traffic jam at rush hour. The bridge deck is now in the Mississippi. My god.

This post marks the end of the 100/100/100 challenge. It’s been an interesting experience. Of the two aspects to the challenge (size and frequency), I found the 100-word constraint far more trying.

Analytically, results were mixed. There were no significant differences in the daily pageviews or visitors compared with an earlier period (excepting the posts that were on social news sites). The average number of comments per post was 1.6 compared with 2.9 for all other times. However, on a daily basis, the challenge produced 1.5 comments per day compared with 0.5 for the past.

What did you all think?

(This post is the last in the 100/100/100 challenge)

Today, I was walking in the Arbor Lakes development, an upscale “lifestyle center” outdoor shopping mall in Maple Grove, Minnesota. The look is very Californian, with beige stucco and red tile roofs.

The sky was blue and the weather was hot, well over 90 degrees. As I strolled along the promenade past the storefronts, I couldn’t help but feel strangely comfortable. That’s because almost all of the stores had their doors wide open and were spewing massive amounts of cold air-conditioned air outside!

Such waste is nothing new, but in these days of heightened environmental awareness and increased energy prices, it seems especially flagrant.

(This post is the penultimate part of the 100/100/100 challenge)

Much to my astonishment, the Simpsons Movie did the series justice.  I laughed out loud many times in the theater, as did my friends and almost everybody else in attendance.  The script was sharp, the production values were high, and the humor was witty.  In one word: woo-hoo!

(This post is part of the 100/100/100 challenge)

Three years. It’s been three years since I started working full-time. Hard to believe.

To celebrate the occasion, I brought doughnuts to the office. I wasn’t sure what type to get, so I chose five varieties: chocolate frosting with sprinkles, white frosting with sprinkles, glazed, powdered, and plain. Which do you think were the first to go?

That’s right, the sprinkled ones. Soon after, the glazed rings of goodness disappeared, followed by the plain-Jane examples. That left the powdered-sugar doughnuts all by themselves. Happily, those, too, were eventually eaten.

The lesson: buy sprinkled doughtnuts. Mmm…

(This post is part of the 100/100/100 challenge)