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Am I crazy, or does this message read like porno spam?

I have a 3 bedroom apartment that I rent out. Right now there's only one guy in the apartment renting one bedroom, because I had some tenants vacate the apartment in the middle of their lease term. They left me kinda high and dry. I had trouble finding 3 people who wanted to sign a lease together. After many prospective tenants asked me whether I'd just rent a single room, I decided to offer the bedrooms for rent individually. I hate doing this, and won't do it again if I can help it. I'd rather just have one lease signed by all the tenants.

Anyway, because 2 bedrooms are empty, I advertised them in the "Rooms and Shares" section of Craigslist. I've gotten a few responses, some weirder than others... Am I crazy, or is this message really reminiscent of those suggestive quasi-pornographic spam emails?

From: Raeann Rose
To: "fakeaddress@craigslist.org" <fakeaddress@craigslist.org>
Date: Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 6:55 PM
Subject: Interested!!!!

Ciao!

My name is Raeann Rose and i am a student at the University of Pittsburgh school of nursing....I am also a young professional banker....Nursing is my second carreer path. You can look me up on facebook under Raeann Rose I am an impressionistic artist, who loves to cook, loves sports, and is a lot of fun:) I'm looking to rent ASAP for the time you have specified. My family is from Germany and Slovenia....I speak a decent bit of German....I am very neat, love the sciences....and am really looking forward to meeting you. Give me a call if you might be interested!

a presto,
Raeann Rose
412-nn-nnnn

Art celebrating whiskey

Design consultancy Johnson Banks has developed this stunning exhibit of art from whiskey barrels that was designed to celebrate Glenfiddich Single Malt. My favorite is the piece designed for the 30-year-old single malt, an age-darkened barrel lid that states, "I will wait for 11,000 nights."

Wonderfully, the designers have shared posts (with photos!) revealing some of their process and inspirations. An unexpected Friday treat.

Aside: I love the term, "the angel's share."

No more farmshare

I canceled the farmshare yesterday.

I enjoyed the vegetable boxes I got in the summer. They had an interesting variety of produce, and sometimes contained more than I could eat. The winter boxes have been disappointing, containing a reliable supply of dirty potatoes and weird prepared foods (I mean -- a ziploc bag of sauerkraut? Really?), and there's less in the box even though they're charging me more.

Last week, Daniel and I were doing our weekly grocery shopping at the Market District Giant Eagle, and while we were buying our apples we noticed a display of turnips, a root vegetable that had been included in a recent farmshare box. "Hm," said Daniel, giving me a significant look. "99 cents a pound."

The turnips were lovely, fat and firm and gorgeously purple and white. The ones in the farmshare box had been whithered and fading, still edible but in their last hours of viabilty. A vision of those flaccid, dirt encrusted turnips taunted me. They and their similarly undesirable brethren (moldy onion, wrinkled beets, and rotten potatoes) had cost me $19.50 the previous week. I looked at Daniel in disbelief. "I'm getting raped."

"I didn't want to say."

"Why not? I kept asking you if you thought the farmshare box was worthwhile!"

He shrugged. "I wanted you to draw your own conclusions." I gaped at him. "It's your thing. I didn't want to tell you whether to keep doing it."

I glared and turned back to the bin of turnips. They fairly glowed there on their bed of plastic moss. "Well, I want to support local farms," I muttered.

Daniel spun the plastic bag of apples to close it. Turning toward the produce scale, he said, "These are local."

Thus it came to pass that the farmshare operation made me feel like a fool, whereupon I cancelled my subscription.