Have you ever seen one of Spencer Tunick’s photographs? He’s the guy who assembles massive groups of people to pose nude for the sake of his art. In the past, he has photographed 18,000 naked people in Mexico City and 7,000 people in Barcelona, Spain.

Now he’s looking for 800 people to pose for a group portrait in Miami Beach. So, if you happen to have a free lunch break and can be at the Sagamore Hotel on October 8 (in the buff, naturally), then you might just be able to make history…., or at least art.

The first house my ex and I bought had wood floors. They were absolutely beautiful, but we had a lot of trouble taking care of them. First of all, we had a big Greyhound and her nails put pits in the wood. Second, we were completely unaware that the entire time our live Christmas trees was up for the season, the tree holder had a slow leak. When we removed everything after the holidays, there was a terrible amount of black mold and water damage. We ended up needing to have the entire floor refinished.

In the house we have on the market now, we have Pergo floors in the front rooms. It also looks beautiful, but I was stunned by how much easier it was to care for on a daily basis than the hardwood. The dog did her fair share of prancing around on it and never left a mark. We didn’t even need to put pads under the dining room table and chairs, because the floors just didn’t scuff. I felt more comfortable using water to clean the Pergo Laminate Floors and having potted plants on them.

Now I am living in a house that is older and needs a good bit of updating. In all actuality, the carpets are in great condition, but my daughter and I both have allergies so a carpetless floor solution is best for us. I love hardwood, I really do; but when it came time to decide how I was going to replace the carpet laminate was my clear choice. With dogs and kids and allergies to deal with, I want what’s durable and easy. And, if an when it comes time to resell, it’s a popular feature.

If you watch much reality TV, you’ll notice there sure seems to be a high concentration of contestants from Tampa. I don’t watch that much reality TV at all, actually, and I have still noticed this trend.

What is it about the Bay Area that compels people to audition for shows that will inevitably be edited to make them out to look far worse than they could ever actually be in real life?

One of today’s local headlines says that Tampa girl Erin Gardner will be one of the ladies on the next season of The Bachelor. Will she be the one edited to look petty and jealous? Or, perhaps the one edited to look slutty and loud? Maybe even the one edited to look vindictive and perpetually drunk? Let’s hope that for the sake of Tampa, she just looks sweet and fun-loving.

I can’t say I have high hopes that she will be the one portrayed as intelligent and classy, as apparently in the first episode she tells the Bachelor about a “freak sports injury” in which “she broke her face.”

Tampa has a particularly strong history of ladies who appear on The Bachelor. Last season, Tampa’s Jeanette Alvarez was a contestant on season 10th edition, but didn’t make it past the first episode.

Tampa’s Mary Delgado, who was on the 2003-2004 season of the series and ended up winning.

Talk about a blast from the past. I have a MySpace profile and I mostly use it to reconnect with old friends from high school and college. I’ve been successful in finding a few folks. I’m actually surprised by how many people in my age group don’t use social networking.

Anyway, today I got a friend request and when I went to check it out, I found myself looking at the profile of a friend I had not seen since the tenth grade. She had dropped out of school to enter drug rehab and from there she and her family moved along to a new town, a new state even. I have not heard from her since at least 1986. When you have 21 years to catch up with someone, a lot of lengthy e-mails tend to be exchanged in a very short time. We eventually just ended up giving up on the e-mails and calling one another.

I would not have imagined in a million years she would turn out so beautifully, so happy and peaceful. She was a troubled girl. We had been friends since second grade, so we remained close in high school, even though she started to sink deeper and deeper into drugs, truancy and close calls with the police. I suppose always imagined she would end up a young casualty of a hard-fast life.

It turns out she is a real estate attorney, married and the mother of a young son. She is clean, sober, and so at peace with life that I felt residual bliss just talking to her.

Hurray for time healing wounds.

Ever since my classes ended in July, I have been living calendar-free. After approximately 22 years of using a daily planner like it was a life-support system, I was trying to allow myself a break.

All I did was prove to myself that using a calendar is a wise move.

1. You might miss an important appointment
If you try and depend 100% on your memory, you might miss crucial appointments and events. I missed my friend Christine’s birthday. I have known Christine for over 20 years and having to read about her birthday on her MySpace page just felt shameful. Of course, I looked at my day planner and there was her birthday all marked red, with a little doodle of a balloon. I have no excuse.

2. You could miss out on a free meal
My friend Lynn invited me to dinner for one night last week, but we made the plans over a week ago. She has a tight schedule and that was her first free evening. I was sitting home wondering why I felt so compelled to give Lynn a call and see how she was doing when the phone rang. It was Lynn. She was waiting for me at the restaurant! Yikes. I admitted my hair-brained oversight and jumped the car to meet her. Thank goodness my mom was able to watch Gigi, because Lynn was buying dinner and who doesn’t love a free meal?

3. You might leave your kid stranded
I got Gigi ready for school today, packed her bathing suit and medications in her backpack and reminded her that her daddy would pick her up from school today, take her to her swim lesson, and then she would be at his house until Monday morning. Then I came home and got my errand list ready. I was on my way out the door to accomplish a list of things that would have had me out of the city until well past dinnertime when my sister called. She asked if she could pop by after school so the cousins could play together and I told her Gigi would be at her dad’s. “Why?” she asked, “it’s only Wednesday.”

Holy cow. I had been living the entire day like it was Thursday and had my sister not called; I may have stranded Gigi at school. Of course, they would have called and all would have been well, but I would have been mighty red-faced.

Back when I was married, one of the things I had to get used to in the beginning was X being called in the middle of the night to run to the office and put out virtual fires in the server room. Things would overheat or shut down for no reason, or sometimes just stop running certain processes. I’m sure one of the guys lower on the proverbial totem pole should have been the one to take off in the middle of the night, but X was a micro-manager and a terrible delegater.

By the time someone would realize there was a problem with the servers, it would be to the point where it took hours to bring things back up to running condition. It would have rocked to have a product like the Temperature@lert USB temperature sensor back then. It’s a little device you plug right into a USB port. It keeps tabs on the ambient temperature in the room and if temps go up or down too far out of range, it sends alerts to one or more email addresses. And, it keeps a log of the temperature stats in the room. This would have cut a lot of long nights out of the picture.

Technology just keeps making life easier.

Water conservation is a serious issue. Clean drinking water should be our absolute first concern when it comes to deciding how to use water resources.

Nonetheless, a 70-year-old woman in Orem, Utah was arrested after being charged with failing to maintain her landscaping.

A state investigation found that the arresting officer acted properly in arresting Perry after trying to get her to cooperate. I’d have been a little miffed too, if an officer came to try to force me to water my lawn.

I’ve blogged often in the past about how the lawn of my prior home was the brownest in the neighborhood. It was in OK shape, but not lush and vivid green like everyone else’s. Why? I adhered to the once weekly watering restrictions set forth by the county. I obeyed the law and the lawn got a tad thirsty. Everyone else watered about every other day.

The woman in Utah had her water turned off for about nine months, at her request.

It seems to me that if she wanted to live without water and her conditions were sanitary, so be it. Water has become a precious commodity, especially in hotter months. Who are we to force people to waste it on something ornamental, like a lawn?

As an educator, I have to say that plagiarism has become harder to chase down in the age of the internet. Students have access to a vast variety of research materials at the tip of their fingers. While all of this information is a blessing, it puts more temptation in the hands of the students. You have to teach your students why plagiarism is wrong, but you also have to show them how to avoid unintentional plagiarism. Sometimes we read something and think we are merely feeling inspired, only to carry over entire concepts, ideas and opinions into our reports and essays. You have to be careful to keep the ideas your own.

I am not a fan of students purchasing term papers in order to turn them in wholesale, but I find it interesting to examine the motivation of people who purchase term papers written by companies and other people. Do they intend to provide the background research and ideas? Perhaps a student pays someone for what is essentially technical assistance. Is that OK? Is it any more than some tutors will provide? I suppose that would be best addressed on a situation by situation basis. It feels like a potentially gray area, although educators are expected to issue judgment on a black and white basis.

Sites like custom-writing.org write custom term papers and appear to attract a large number of clients. We can assume that their services are widely used. Do students turn these papers in “as is”, or do they use them as launching pads? My guess is that we may be seeing a little of both, and degrees in between. I think it’s a topic worth discussing more in the future after I have talked to a couple of people who have used such services.

I wrote earlier today about the student who was Tasered at the University of Florida after asking John Kerry questions in a public forum.

Ironically, I was flipping through a copy of Business 2.0 magazine this evening and came upon a story about Tasers, or more specifically the Taser International company. (Using the word Taser to refer to a stun-gun must be akin to using the word Kleenex to refer to a tissue.)

Taser International, in the past, was plagued by lawsuits from people who have been stunned by their stun guns. And, they’ve had horrific accounting issues. Nonetheless, the company managed to WIN all 52 of their product liability cases and now they are running strong than ever.

Why? It is partly thanks to their core customer base: law enforcement agencies. In the 2nd quarter of this year alone, sales to customers in that demographic rose a stunning (tee hee) 59%.

If the 59% more law enforcement professionals out there are going to be given Tasers, then their superiors may want to take the time to better train the officers and make sure they fully understand what warrants the use of the weapon.