I assume that if you are reading this post today, that you were not afflicted by the Conficker computer worm, also know as the April Fools Day virus.  We have taken precautions, including posting this post on the 31^st, before midnight.  We’ll be powering down after this is posted and will wait to see what tomorrow brings and what some fool has wrought.

I enjoy a good April Fools Day joke, but certainly not anything as malicious as a computer virus.  In fact, I played one at work today, before I left.  I am taking a calculated risk that none of my friends from work read this post, before the joke is sprung.  The joke is called the Mouse Trap.  I took Scotch tape and place it over the eyes of a few of my friend’s optical mice.  When they try to use their computer, the cursor won’t move.  I wrote “April Fools” on the tape.  I hope that they all take the joke as that, just a joke.  It is an old joke, so it might not work at all.

Years ago, I played an April Fools Day joke involving tape, police tape that is.  I had biked in the Park that morning and while passing the police stables, I noticed a trash can full of yellow “Do Not Cross” police tape.  Since it was in the can, I figured that it was fair game.  I cut my ride short and got into work before almost everyone else.  I placed the tape at the entrance to four of my co-worker’s cubicles and waited for the results.  The first three people took the joke in good humor.  The fourth person to arrive did not.  I have learned to be more selective of the people, on who I practice my humor.  Tomorrow we’ll see if this is really true.

Both the picture with today’s post and today’s header are of a house that I saw last week.  Today’s header shows some of the detail around the front windows.  I was biking in one of the many nearby historic neighborhoods when I saw it.  It seemed at once to me to be a Frank Lloyd Wright house.  There are two in Saint Louis listed on the registry and this was not one of them.  As an aside there is also one in Ann Arbor and another four in Okemos.  Here is the list.

Today on the way home I decided to drive by the house again.  There were two guys talking to each other across the street from the house, so I stopped and went over to speak with them.  I asked them if this was a Frank Lloyd Wright house.  One of them, a neighbor, said “Well yes and no.”  Explaining that it was one of the first homes built in the neighborhood, just a couple of years after the 1904 Worlds Fair.  Wright was a rising architect, but still not established.  Wright also had a history of philandering.  He later left his wife and children, but at this point in his career, he could not afford to be so brazen.  He designed this house for his mistress.  He had a local Saint Louis architect front for him.  Wright later left this mistress and his wife for another woman.  He never acknowledged the property as his design.