Hello: Just two small updates for you today.

One is that I'm excited to be filling in a bit for Chicago Magazine's Whet Moser as he goes on paternity leave: I will be occasionally blogging for the magazine in the months to come. You can check our my first post, a somewhat withering look at "running with the bulls"-themed races, here.

Secondly, some of you may have noticed the little cent symbol at the bottom of my posts near the social networking widgets. I have partnered with a company called CentUp, which works a bit like the Facebook "like," but in thise case, if you appreciate something I wrote (including anything I wrote in the near or distant past), not only do you kick me (literally) a few pennies, but the profits get split between me and a nonprofit of your choosing (When you first sign up for the service you select a charity of choice, and charge a preloaded donation amount on your credit card.) You can learn a lot more about CentUp and how it works here. As you may be able to tell with your eyeballs, Zulkey.com is not advertised. I certainly did not get into this for the money but I am not averse to making a few (literally) bucks off the venture and am definitely not averse to people donating to good causes. It's a good idea and also not a retina-scorching endeavor. What would I like to do with the money I'll make from Centup? The following:

• Buy a new house
• Buy a new car
• Go on vacation and fly first class
• Get a really expensive pair of sunglasses and wear those while I do the first three things.

What will I actually do?

• Pay for my hosting
• Pay for my domain

I just wanted to be perfectly transparent with y'all. Anyway, we'll see how things go. If it's just a little button on my site that doesn't get used that much, that's OK. If I find it's been helping me out, I will show my thanks in ways that will impact your life significantly, like sharing the secret of my amazing guacamole recipe (and if you've had it you will attest that it's worth some pocket change if not your firstborn.)