Ah, vanity plates. Almost invariably, by the time you're old enough to get one, you no longer have the desire to announce to everyone behind you that you're 1H0T1 or MISSTHANG. I myself had always intended to get one, till I realized that if I were to commit some kind of crime, it would be easy for eyewitnesses to identify my vehicle.
 
Not that I'm planning any drive-by snowballings or bank robberies, but it did seem prudent to avoid being super obvious.
 
Anyway, a guy in Washington, D.C., where weirdly huge and stupid fines are de rigeur, did not get the memo. In addition, he chose a vanity plate that ended up costing him much more than the $50 the DMV requires. Like tens of thousands of dollars more. How?

Before I had kids, I loved using kitschy childhood favorites to decorate my home-space – Muppets, Hello Kitty, Raggedy Ann. It was good fun at the time, but since my extended adolescence finally ended with a “Push!” and then a “Waah!” three-odd years ago, it’s become a lot less appealing.
 
For one thing, SpongeBob appears on every available surface even if I don’t want him to. Hey, I love the little absorbent, yellow, porous fella as much as anyone, but enough is enough – I do like having décor that isn’t fuzzy, neon, or enhanced with googly eyes.
 
And yet: There’s something cheering about a home inspired by play. Emphasis on “inspired,” as in “I did more than just stick a Monopoly throw on the couch.” Here are some neat ideas that remind us, with a wink, that work is for work – and home is for fun.

Hey, billing errors happen. We’ve all opened a utility bill and said, “This doesn’t seem right,” and 9 times out of 10, it’s all resolved with a quick phone call. Even when it’s an aquarium-sized water bill for a three-bedroom house.

But what if that billing error happened, and you’ve authorized electronic billing? If you’re like one Chicago-area family, you could end up overpaying by more than a hundred grand for a month’s worth of electricity.

Oops.