People fluent in computer-speak know what a link is and although I am familiar with the term I didn't know I could actually create one.  For blog purposes, a link is useful in referencing something in a previous entry and enabling the reader to click on that reference and be taken in a new window to the entry cited.  A link can also be formed to take a reader to a different site if your reference is at a site other than your own.  I ran this by Son who used to be a Computer Science major and he brought up the interesting point that occasionally when he's sent to another site via link he finds the other site so compelling he never returns to the site that sent him there.  I thought this over and since my mother didn't raise any stupid children I will only be forming links to entries within my own site.

I bring this up because I am about to ask the indulgence of my subscribers to ignore the entries that arrive immediately after this one as I will be going back and putting links in two or three articles that were published before I knew how to do this.  I figured it out for the entry before last, the one titled Before The House Comes Down (see the link!) when I referenced Brooklyn Girls and put it in a link to Odds, Ends and Friends (another link here would be overkill) in the event that entry hadn't yet been read.

It turns out creating a link wasn't really difficult; it just required some concentration and 37 support e-mails from my blog host.  I sometimes wonder if the support staff at GoDaddy, who I have referred to in the past as StopMommy (just one more to show off), compare notes during their Snickers break as to who spoke to the most clueless customer that day.  At my last job, I sat at the desk in front of the tech support guy and his patience was astounding.  I would overhear him on the phone saying, "Now right click on that.  No, right click.  Use the right button on your mouse.  Now click on that.  No, you want to right click.  The other right click."  I would turn around expecting to see him with a gun to his head but he was just patiently speaking into the receiver while glancing up at his monitor.  On closer inspection it would turn out he was also perusing the Chinese takeout menu while talking which was totally appropriate because if he was giving this call his full attention he would have had to kill himself.

Yesterday I received my second moving violation in two weeks which is ridiculous considering I haven't had even one in the past ten years.  I was with Daughter and we had just passed the location my GPS had given as the restaurant we were trying to find and Daughter said it looked like the windows were boarded shut and so rather than hunt for parking I decided to circle around again to make sure.  The next thing I heard was her voice telling me I just went through a red light and I said "No way!" and then a police officer was standing by my window telling me the same thing.  My grandmother always said that if two people say you look sick, lay down, so I got out my license and registration.

The ironic thing is that I got my very first moving violation at 16 when I was driving with my friend to Bloomingdale's a few months after I got my license.  I had never even been to Bloomingdale's let alone driven there.  When the officer handed me this ticket I looked down to see how much it was and noticed the location of the infraction was Bloomingdale Road.  No Clinique bonus this time.

The ticket before this one came just last week when I was going to see the Wise Man where parking is sometimes difficult.  I saw a spot open up in the railroad commuter lot across the street from his office and I zoomed in.  A policeman walked right over and said I had driven in the exit and he had to give me a ticket because the railroad asked the police department to watch the area due to the high number of accidents reported.  I said maybe they should mark the exit better because I thought it was the entrance and if they're seeing a lot of accidents there that may be the reason.  He said that's possible and I could certainly dispute it in traffic court but here it was anyway and he handed me a ticket for $155.

I went upstairs to whine about it to the Wise Man who let me show him the scene of the crime which was directly across from his window.  He pointed to the exit and said, "You went in there?"  I looked out at the area I had driven through which had a Do Not Enter sign on one side, a One-Way Only sign on the other side and NOT AN ENTRANCE painted on the ground between them.  We stood there looking out the window and because he is a consummate professional and never breaks character, he said quietly, "That would seem to be an exit."  Which is kind of like looking at a mountain of elephant shit and saying you might be at the zoo.  It was classic.