Hey, Ry — have you filed your taxes yet?All of you must take a gander at the fabulous new quarterly, Music and Ideas, published by our friends at the quirkiest classical radio station, 89.3 WCAL.

Medicine Wheel, the white buffalo born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in May of 1996 — the same buffalo viewed as a symbol of hope, rebirth and unity for numerous Great Plains tribes — was shot to death last Sunday.

It’s been a random thought kind of day (as if you couldn’t tell already). This afternoon I thought of those tiny metal tubes I used to buy in gas stations or drugstores when I was in junior high, containing some kind of pink toxic goo. You’d stick a dab of goo on the end of the straw that came with the tube, then blow. Voila! You’d have a toxic pink bubble which would harden and you’d do … hmm … what did you do with those bubbles? Does anyone else remember what I’m talking about?

And, finally, the answer is unequivocacally yes: one person can eat too many tropical fruit flavored Starburst fruit chews.

An interesting factoid for college Web site managers out there: A recent survey of 10,000 high school students found that college Web sites ranked third on their list of most important sources of information about a school, surpassed only by a campus visit and a conversation with a current student (Washington Post). The results were determined from the Web Site Effectiveness Study, a new research tool developed by Lipman Hearne and FastWeb.com.

Brunch: It’s not quite breakfast. It’s not quite lunch. But it comes with a slice of cantaloupe at the end.

Have you ever thought about doing something, and knew that you’d kick yourself and forever think “What if?” if you didn’t? And then actually did it and kicked yourself for doing it?

It’s that time of year again: Matt Lauer is preparing for his weeklong trip around the world — and not even Katie and Anne know where he’ll be (all right, that sounded like I’m being paid by NBC to write that). Anyway, viewers can now choose Matt’s final destination. Go ahead, send in your vote!

Whatever happened to the red ribbon?

Just one quick update before I run around for the rest of the day. Saw “Run Lola Run” last night: right up there with “Being John Malkovich” as my favorite movie of the year. Too bad I can’t cheer them on at tonight’s Oscar gala (at which I will thank God and my agent).

I’ve been weblogging for just about three months now. Sometimes I wonder why I do it. Is it for the benefit of others? Several times in the past few days I’ve heard, “Hey, you haven’t updated your page in two days. What’s going on?” Somehow, these random thoughts from my head seem to have relevance to others when they’re logged on a web page. Or, am I finally fulfilling my perpetual New Year’s resolution to “journal more”? All I know for sure is that I don’t want to stop.

Sigh. Sometimes the worst thing about going away is coming back home.

Today, I was once again reminded how tiny this world really is. Tweny-four hours ago found me in a bar in Reykjavik, Iceland (a night which will forever be remembered as the “Icelandic Night of Infamy”). Twelve hours ago I was soaking in the Blue Lagoon just outside of Keflavik. And tonight I’m back at home pecking away at the computer and life will continue as normal tomorrow. But I won’t spoil the whole story here … there will be pictures posted to this site … soon …

Happy St. Patrick’s day! As you’ve probably noticed, I created my web site with the holiday in mind. Hooray for everyone’s favorite classical radio station, 89.3 WCAL, which will publicly launch their streaming audio on Monday! You can now listen to Steve, Melissa, Bill, Marty, Karl and the rest of the gang across the Netwaves. (Yeah, yeah, so streaming audio is nothing new, but we’re still pretty darned excited around here.)

An open letter to my favoritest blogger, Jason Kottke:

Dear Jason,

Now that you’ve been nominated for a Webby Award, I’m sure you’ll need a date for the fabulous awards ceremony in San Francisco on Thursday, May 11. I’ve cleared my calendar and would be delighted to attend with you. You know how to contact me.

What lame-o updates I’ve had in the past few days. Too many things keeping me busy: a show at the Guthrie, mom and dad in town, buying more clothes than I’m selling, juggling two freelance projects, not to mention settling into this whole new job thing. Which, by the way, is going very well thank you.Countdown to Iceland: five days. Elizabeth: enough with the Luther studies. He’s dead already!

Milk sucks. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has launched a new marketing campaign called “Got Beer?”, urging college students to drink beer instead of milk. (This morning on the Today Show PETA’s PR guru told me that drinking milk was bad for me and encouraged me to consume soy alternatives. No thank you.) The campaign has Mothers Against Drunk Driving up in arms (do you blame them?), calling for PETA to pull the advertisements. Kinda wonder what the Got Milk? people think of all this.