It's brassy-looking, it's about the size of a quarter (shown below for comparison), and it's about the ugliest coin minted in my lifetime. A few of the state quarters have made my face wrinkle up, but they don't come close to this new dollar for sheer ghastliness. Washington looks like he's been constipated for at least a week, and the the back looks like a cheap anodized token from a casino.

I spent five of these around town today, just to see what kind of reaction I might get. Not much. Nobody asked what I meant by trying to pass these off as money. Nobody refused to take them. Only the cashier at the bookstore gave them a second look before she dropped them in her cash drawer with the dollar bills and made change.

We got a little more snow last night. Good thing, too. We needed more of that.

A rabbit exploring the patio caught my eye as I was washing dishes, so I grabbed my camera, but too late to catch the rabbit. The back yard had that weird beige sodium light over it, though, so I tried to catch it again with a snapshot. Mixed success with that, as always.

My kids grew up mostly in Aurora, Colorado, where it snows but not very often, and the snow melts almost right away. I still remember the first time I told them that, back in Wisconsin where I grew up, snow sometimes fell on the ground in November and didn't go away until March. I think that was the first time my oldest son thought I was flat-out lying to him.

At the Orpheum

Ripped from the headlines, or some bizarre kind of accidental haiku? Or both?