My boss and I checked into the Doubletree Downtown and the ad agency people took us to dinner at Sel De La Terre by the aquarium. Back at my room, I miraculously got WiFi as soon as I opened my PowerBook without needing to fuss with signing up. The hotel not only boasts about its wifi, but they've remodeled the place with new carpeting and pillows embroidered with "sweet dreams." Woo hoo.

- mike lee - boston

What I read on the plane today:

- 50,000,000 hot dogs are consumed every day in the States...5,500 miles worth if in a line.

- We eat 210 million eggs a day...if laid in a neat row, it would be 6,600 miles long.

- Enough pavement (2,750 acres) is laid every day enough to make a seven-foot-wide path from Los Angeles to New York City.

- 2,700 miles of licorice twists are eaten daily. A line of them would reach from San Antonio to Miami and back.

- And if everyone who brushes their teeth were to squeeze out the paste one day onto a bike path, the thin white line would stretch from coast to coast, plus a little bit (2,928 miles).

From the July 2006 US Airways Magazine blogged in route from D.C. To Boston

I arrived home alone today after work as the rest of the fam was out and about. The phone rang, and I picked up to hear breathing sounds in response to my "hello." Then I heard my mom's voice in the background and realized the my daughter Cianna was playing with grandma's phone and hit "redial" to connect to our home number. Cianna finally handed the phone over to my mom. My 2.6-year-old daughter's first crank call reminded me of a story in Wired:

"Among his other activities, Woz [Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer] collects phone numbers, and his longtime goal has been to acquire a number with seven matching digits.... After more months of scheming and waiting, he had it: 888-8888. This was his new cell-phone number, and his greatest philonumerical triumph.

The number proved unusable. It received more than a hundred wrong numbers a day. Given that the number is virtually impossible to misdial, this traffic was baffling. More strange still, there was never anybody talking on the other end of the line. Just silence. Or, not silence really, but dead air, sometimes with the sound of a television in the background, or somebody talking softly in English or Spanish, or bizarre gurgling noises. Woz listened intently.

Then, one day, with the phone pressed to his ear, Woz heard a woman say, at a distance, "Hey, what are you doing with that?" The receiver was snatched up and slammed down.

Suddenly, it all made sense: the hundreds of calls, the dead air, the gurgling sounds. Babies. They were picking up the receiver and pressing a button at the bottom of the handset. Again and again. It made a noise: "Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep."

The children of America were making their first prank call.

And the person who answered the phone was Woz."

- mike lee - wheaton, md

...from working at the same office. After almost five years at Giant Nonprofit Organization, the last two of which we were directors in the same business unit, my wife is moving on to a new job on Monday. I'm staying on to start the climb up an ambitious mountain of new web initiatives. Today was her last day, and there were the appropriate farewell festivities. The first pic is of us on the top floor of the Chop House with various bosses and staff just off frame. The next pic is of us in the elevator carrying bags of desktop detritous home. The last pic is of yet another logo'd t-shirt appearing in our hamper.

- mike lee - washington, dc

We're at the Riverside Park pool watching the start of Fluid Movement's water ballet, "It's A Wonderful Species."

- mike lee - baltimore, md

I was pleasantly surprised when I came home last night to find an early Amazon delivery of Professor John Maeda's new book, The Laws of Simplicity - Design, Technology, Business, Life. It's still listed as pre-order for release in a few weeks on September 1.

Reading from John's book on the train this morning gives me a useful piece of "daily bread" as I prepare for a day of making the world more complex.

Of note is a mention in the book that MIT Press is planning a series of books on the theme of simplicity. Wired Magazine reporter Jesse Scanlon is working on The Value of Simplicity, which will focus on simplicity in modern business. The companion web site for this book series will launch on September 1, 2006.

- mike lee - washington, dc

We drive by this insane Comcast antenna farm at the corner of 14th and Florida Avenue on most week nights on our way home. I can't imagine that the developers of the adjacent condos will allow them to stay.

- mike lee - washington, dc

A bedtime ritual exclusive to daddy is playing the Nintendo DS interactive experience called Electroplankton. Cianna likes poking at the touch screen to make the various animated plankton jump in different ways while shaping the electronic music. She quickly gets drowsy, and that's worth more than the price of the game.

- mike lee - wheaton

Cherry's tired of doing nice cheesecake scenes. She wants to be a bad girl!

- mike lee - wheaton, md

Second costume of my retro-glamour shoot with model Cherry Valons and stylist Nikki V.

- mike lee - wheaton, md