All sorts of unrelated items today:

First and foremost, a huge post-Oscar "Congratulations!" to our friend Bahar, who was in Crash and in fact, was described by various entertainment reporters as a "star" of Crash. In the inevitable post-Oscar fashion commentary, a Newsday reporter wrote, "Bahar Soomekh of 'Crash' floated in lemon chiffon Calvin Klein...."

Holly and I have been pals with Bahar and her husband Clayton for a few years now, and we are happy to report that they are both incredibly well-grounded and down to earth, simply great people. One advantage of being pals with a movie star is settling arguments about the movie: Recently we had some friends over and we were arguing about what Bahar's character in Crash knew and when she knew it. In feat of near perfect timing, Bahar happened to arrive at our house and settled the argument (I was wrong, btw).

I was going to try an 'Oscar the Grouch' segue to the next topic, trash, but it didn't really work out. So with no transition, I will tell you that Holly and I spent the weekend in Mexico at the resort our company owns. We have had some problems with trash at our resort and sure enough, yesterday at noon, the trash from the previous night's outdoor wedding was not picked up. So Holly and I got trash bags and picked up litter ourselves. It was a good reminder for us as well as all the people who watched us (employees, restaurant patrons, golfers, etc.) that no one is above picking up garbage, especially not the owners of the resort. Judging from my e-mail in box this morning, I think it created quite a stir (as intended) among several of our employees.

I decided yesterday that we need to hire at least one person for full-time trash duty (we have 3.5 miles of beachfront after all), so hopefully that will happen soon.

And speaking of trash, I was reading a very interesting article about the subject in the Economist at 3:30 am today. Something woke me up at 3:10, and I started thinking about the impending "one year since Peter was killed" date. (More on that soon.) Sleep was impossibility by 3:30, so I got up and read the Economist....which had a story about San Francisco's bold initiative to convert dog excrement to energy. I am *not* making this up. I can't link to the Economist article, but I did get a chuckle by reading the coverage of San Francisco's latest nutty idea from the Alaska Daily News.