Free Republic

With temperatures dropping back below normal, lakes and ponds across Minnesota will be taking on new ice, some for the first time this season. But ice fishing, skating and snowmobiling will have to wait. "We're in limbo right now," said conservation officer Lloyd Steen of the Department of Natural Resources, who helped rescue a couple of canoeists marooned in their campsite by newly formed ice last week in Voyageurs National Park, on the Canadian border. "We've got anywhere from half an inch to 2 inches. It's starting to freeze pretty hard, but you can't do anything on it."

It boils down to this: This afternoon I bought the ticket to go on vacation down to Colombia this December. After buying it on Travelocity, I had to confirm the purchase by phone for some reason. When the phone call got through to the customer service center, I was greeted by a guy named "Frank", whose actual name might be Kumar or something like that, because he spoke with a badly disguised Indian accent. It was a litany of bad English and multiple "come again?" and "say again?" utterings over and over. Fortunately, the guy didn't screw up when he...