Morning Roundup: Happy National Dog Bite Prevention Week edition

Good morning, Houston. Another day, another ranking: This time, Houston is the second most dangerous place in the U.S. for letter carriers — at least in terms of dog bites. According to the U.S. Postal Service, 94 mail carriers were bitten by dogs in Houston last year, putting us slightly behind Santa Ana, Calif., which logged 96 bites. The safest city in the country: New York City, of all places. Who knew? The USPS released the stats as a prelude to National Dog Bite Prevention Week, which kicks off today. One surprising fact: Nationally, there are more emergency room visits for dog bites than for skateboarding, inline skating, baby walker, all-terrain vehicle and horseback riding accidents combined. We may never leave the house again.

>> Kids + backpacks = mayhem?: In an effort to keep things quiet in the final days of the school year, HISD is banning backpacks at 25 of its campuses from now until summer vacation begins. Though the district insists the ban isn't the result of any specific threats or problems, officials apparently figure they'd better hedge their bets: "If a kid is carrying a backpack, there's a potential that he could hide something dangerous in that backpack or something disruptive," HISD spokesman Terry Abbott said. "If we simply ban the backpacks on the last few days of school, then our chances of having something happen are that much less." And just to make sure nothing untoward happens as classes let out, HISD will have all its 170 uniformed police officers on campuses the last day of school. Ah, innocence.

>> Checking out Anna Nicole's diaries: A California auction house has released 60 pages of Anna Nicole Smith's diaries to the AP, and they reveal a woman with a variety of emotions: titillation about sex, fear of an ex-boyfriend, frustration with her mother and concern over becoming pregnant. "I'm so scared!" Smith wrote upon finding out she was going to have a child. She added that her boyfriend "will hate me. he don't want kid. Can't do it!" (Smith often took a carefree approach to grammar, punctuation and spelling.) In another entry, Smith wrote that she was "a very sad person," a notation she illustrated with a drawing of a weeping face. "My mom hates me so much," she wrote. "She is so jealous of me. ... I love my mom but I cant handle it anymore." The diaries from which the pages were taken will be put up for auction.

>> Today's weather: Sunny, with a high of 81 and an overnight low of 60. In other words, absolutely perfect weather for a happy hour, we think. See you there!

Mmm, beer. Mmmmmm ...

... oh yeah, headlines. Mmm, headlines.