Jimmy Buffett "Fins To The Left"

You know, being thoughtful and creative isn't only for naming your band.

You can really screw yourself by being creative, but not fully thoughtful, when coming up with your email address.

When my girlfriend had become my fiancee about to be my wife, we started combining things, like bank accounts and bills and such. And just as we had our own shower curtains and knife blocks and copies of Jeff Buckley's "Grace," we had our own email addresses.

But while the extra copies of that other stuff could be sold in a yard sale, we decided to start fresh on the email front, and create a combined address.

We ran through various permutations of our combined names, but either it was already taken, or it was too weird or too hard to remember.

Then we struck on the idea of a play on my last name, "Finn." And we both like Jimmy Buffett, so, hey!

"Fins To The Left"!

Fun Buffett song, terrible email address.

It only took a couple of weeks to figure out that it's a pretty long email address to have to type and re-type.

And not much longer than that to figure out that a sentence, as an email address, is really hard to explain over the phone, to say, a customer service person. Particularly if they don't know the song. Or that MY Finn has to N's.

And it only took a little longer to realize that we were kind of stuck with the silly name, unless we wanted to change our online bank account, cable account, mortgage account, phone bill, and any number of multiple mailing lists we're on.

We are, and for the foreseeable future will be, Finns To The Left.

I know how The Goo Goo Dolls must feel.