Thanks to all of you for your well wishes -- I plan on having a great day today! Also, it was wonderful reading the random facts you shared of yourselves over the past 2 weeks: so great seeing a more complete image of what each of you are like. So thank you -- getting to know you was a great gift.

And speaking of gifts: Marcus was feeling pretty stressed about picking a number at random. 'It's so much pressure,' he whined. So instead, he consulted The Oracle, also known as a random number generator. After undertaking detailed calculations resulting in the total number of commenters from July 1st - 15th, and carefully inputting the values into The Oracle, the winner of the framed Chookooloonks print is ....

Kristine, of notes from the laundromat!

So ... Happy Birthday, Kristine! I'll be contacting you offline to make arrangements to get your print to you. And thanks to all of you for participating!

As for my birthday, it's going to be pretty low-key: a little shopping today, a small dinner with friends tonight. But tomorrow, Marcus, Alex and I jet off to San Francisco: Marcus and Alex are going camping in the woods with my brother-in-law and his kids, while my sister and I are going to hang out at a little conference called BlogHer. I'll surely take tons of pictures, which you'll be able to keep up with on my flickr account; however, I thought I'd try to keep the posts to this site to portraits of some of the participants. So watch this space.

And if you happen to be at BlogHer, please do stop and say hi. We can compare stories of Homicidal Axe Murderers hiding in the dark recesses of closets or debate the proper way to hang toilet paper.

Thanks again, my internet friends.

Song: Wild, Wild West, by Will Smith