5 Really Great Things About Sandusky, OH (That Aren't Amusement Parks)

1. Meijer: It's the only "big box" store I know of where you can get Thai basil, a hunting bow, Chilean red wine and white lithium grease in the same trip. Not that I ever took advantage of that. Why Pay More! (Yes, it really uses that unfortunate punctuation.)
2. Amazingly good take-out Thai: The OK Wok hides its heritage behind that Generic Chinese Restaurant Name, but the owner, his nephew and his daughter run an amazingly tight ship ("9 orders? 13 minutes."). That ship also produces consistently great food. I still can't believe that I've had meals that cost twice as much at white-napkin restaurants that didn't get the loving attention that this little strip-mall joint gave its Catfish Curry, or its way-too-good-for-North-Central-Ohio Pad Thai.
3. The Lake Erie Islands: Specifically, Kelleys Island and Put-in-Bay. Each could easily warrant its own list, but let's break it down: Golf carts can be rented and driven as legal street vehicles; Kelleys has beatiful ultra-small-town scenery, while Put-in-Bay is one crazy, island-sized weekend party; Both give you dozens of "Lost"-esque questions to ask oneself about living on a lake that freezes over ("How do they keep milk stocked? What if the power goes out? Who plows the roads?")
4. "Members Only" clubs: Left over from the benevolent associations that were once the center of industrial town life (the Knights, the Orioles, etc.), there's still a few places in Sandusky (or Perkins) where you need a card to get in, or the owner has to buzz you in. Weird and potentially discriminatory? Yeah. Cool Prohibition-era feeling every time you walk in? You bet.
5. Ranting about the street layout: Every 'burg has its share of What In The Name Of God Were They Thinking intersections, but only in Sandusky can you say it was a Masonic conspiracy and not get laughed at.
   Why? Because it literally was a Masonic conspiracy. From Wiki:
   

   Downtown Sandusky was designed according a modified grid plan known as the Kilbourne Plat after its designer. The original street pattern featured a grid overlaid with streets resembling the symbols of Freemasonry. Hector Kilbourne was a surveyor who laid out this grid in downtown Sandusky. He was the first Worshipful Master of the Sandusky Masonic Lodge.

   The result? Multiple 5-way intersections in a city smaller than most suburbs, axle-straining 25-degree turns and dozens of useless triangular parks. And a sense of awe at what could've happened if the Knights of Columbus had gotten their hands on that street plan.

5 Cooking Lessons I Learned Moments Before Guests Arrived

1. Green beans should be trimmed before you cook them (Real-time: Guests tried sympathetically telling me that stems were "good for you," while picking them out of their teeth).
2. If "sushi rice" has instructions on the side, you should probably read them before chucking it all in an electric cooker (Real-time: I had told a gourmand friend that I would be the "sushi master" for him and some friends, including two chefs. I shudder a bit every time I think about it).
3. Lamb loin should be pink or light red on the inside. (Real-time: 35 minutes after I had said dinner would be ready, the guest got char-broiled, vulcanized [and expensive] carbon matter).
4. Always take a quick peek a spice before you use it -- especially if it's been on the shelf a while (Real-time: Didn't happen to me, per se, but guests coming to a dinner I was helping with never found out about the colony of bugs that had been living inside the paprika. Every mention of the spice brings back images of devil-red crawly things, living what I would think must be a painful life in hot spice).
5. Don't forget to cut summer rolls in halves before putting them out (Real-time: I've had some pretty juvenile people over for dinner, if you catch my drift).

5 E-Z Pass Hacks I'd Really Like to See

1. Voice-activated feature tells you what eateries are at the next rest stop; more importantly, how long until edible food shows up again ("Roy Rogers and Sbarro at next island. Police notified. Engagement imminent if entry attempted.")
2. "Go" lights in the stalls converted to full LCD displays; every toll collection in Upstate shows driver exactly which NYC route they're helping to keep smooth.
3. E-Z Pass tag gets Bluetooth capability. Like most Bluetooth apps, serves no real purpose other than to make owner feel great about themselves.
4. Squeezing two opposite edges makes it squirt vinegar toward passenger's seat. Not useful, except in testing friends' intuition and recall skills
5. Police stopping a sports or high-performance luxury model can engage "broadcast" mode, in which passerby can pick up a feed and display that driver's minimum fine.

5 Terrible Personal Web Page Ideas MySpace Is Helping To Bring Back

1. Endlessly tiled images as backgrounds: And you thought they'd run out of places to put all those Scarface pics.
2. Embedded music files that play on page-load: The last thing your office neighbor heard before they realized you were a complete waste of space probably involved trance music.
   
3. Animated GIFs: And lots of them. Otherwise, people won't know you're just always, you know, moving.
4. Proof that seeing "dawg" on the Internet is nearly as bad as hearing it said aloud: Insert "brah" here, depending on collegiate progress.
5. Irrefutable evidence that Strong Bad could see the times a-changin': Funny, right? Wrong. Compare this and this; rinse eyes with undliuted bleach; repeat until everything is monochrome.

5 Reasons I Gave In and Started A Blog

(besides sheer, naked vanity ... does vanity ever get dressed up?)

1. I already missed Web 1.0, and I'll be damned if 2.0 is gonna get by without a stern talkin'-to.
2. I liked Merlin Mann's idea so much, it would be unproductive not to steal it (and we all hate productivity killers, no?)
3. I needed another way to kill my productivity.
4. Marriage, career, home ownership ... what do any of these mean if you don't have your own RSS feed?
5. The counselor my employer provided said this was a healthier outlet for my insecurity than demanding that co-workers put "comments" on every Post-It note on my desk, screaming "UPDATED!" every time I wrote a new one, and asking my office neighbor to keep track of how many people read them.