Item! Breaking News--The Ground Round has closed its restaurants. I'm shocked. Shocked, I say. Apparently the parent company went bankrupt and announced on Friday that all franchise restaurants would be shut down after that night. When I applied there in June, 2002, I told the manager, "I'm not very ambitious," and that I saw myself working there for a long time. So they've pre-empted my dreams of one day returning to the Round and serving up more cinnamon dippers, club sammiches, and mozzarella sticks. But most of all, the mystery of the meaning behind the name may never be answered. It is a dark day my friends, a dark day indeed. (I'm still trying to figure out a way to get my G.R. page back up and running)

Item! I need to find a way to add a new feature to the page titled "The Nathalie Retort." This would be a section where Nathalie could post her reactions to or critiques of my own posts, a place for her to respond to or expand on my ramblings, delusions, or invasive thoughts. The first issue would deal with the name of the feature. She prefers "The Rebuttal." Other items she would discuss:
1. How it should be her typing this right now, not me.
2. NASCAR...I fell asleep while watching, so I didn't pick up on the intricacies, "the subtleties of the sport of NASCAR racing...it's like a chessgame," she says. Also, she says that I "slept through one of the largest Super Bowl events in history and missed it."
3. I am not a "person of excellence." (I assumed that this would just go unstated and understood) "A person of excellence doesn't have friends betting on how many times a month he showers. A person of excellence doesn't make their own 2-for-1 sales at Wal-Mart." She's joking, of course. Nobody bets on my shower habits anymore, and I haven't shopped at Wal-Mart in a long time.
4. Okay, this last one is inappropriate, so I'm going to leave it alone.