I was waiting to give my 26th unit of blood yesterday, when I saw something I don't see every day: a blimp.

Watching that dirigible fly around the sky while I was giving blood helped keep my mind pleasantly occupied. Afterward, I was walking back to work and got a better look at the aircraft -- it was for Outback Steakhouse.

Now, I didn't go and get a steak dinner. But I thought about it. And that's more than I can say for every other form of advertising I've been bombarded with lately.

Pirates Seize Ship Carrying Tanks, Ammo

It's not often you see news stories involving the following actors:

• Pirates
• The Ukraine
• Tanks

Seriously. Now it's going to be even more dangerous to sail off the coast of Somalia -- because the pirates are going to be armed with tanks!

Since my wife started her new job as a Assistant State Public Defender, we've been working on getting used to a much earlier schedule.

This has forced us to do several things, in the spirit of making the 5:30-5:45 AM wakeup period as automatic as possible, including:

• Streamlining the bathroom
• Adding new bathroom shelving
• Reorganizing drawers in the bedroom
• Pre-making coffee and tea (a lifesaver!)

Still, since we've been at it only for a week, we haven't quite gotten in the groove; I end up getting in her way taking showers, etc.

So, it was a little bit surprising to me when this morning my wife started laughing while the alarm clock was not-so-pleasantly waking us from peaceful slumber. It turns out she had a very elegant, parallel solution to the morning "bathroom problem."

Use the second bathroom.

It's really a shame that it took two people with advanced degrees in law and nuclear engineering a week to figure that one out. :)