I collect coins. I have a weak spot for odd and strange coins. Foreign. Arcade tokens. Unstruck coins. Strange fantastic coins of uncertain provenience. I'm not sure why I do this.

I love making chai. Homemade. Lots of spices. Ginger, cloves, cardamom, pepper, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, with some very strong tea and milk and honey.

I love very brisk days when I get to wear pullovers. I have a favorite pullover that I bought 15 years ago. It's a bit ratty on one sleeve, but it's the most comfortable article of clothing I own. I feel more myself when I wear it than I ever do otherwise.

Usually, when I get home from work, the very first thing I do is take off my pants.

There are few things more emotionally satisfying than lying down to take a nap and having all three cats curl up with me to take a nap with me.

Ok, this is a shoutout to Saul Stokes, who is all kinds of hella cool. I wrote him an email about my computer woes, and he totally sent me all of the Blipdrums samples that I lost when my harddrive went bellyup. He even included some that I hadn't bought. Which is cool. In other words, not only does he craft amazingly beautiful analog synths (which I covet as lustfully as you could covet something with knobs), and make incredibly beautiful electronic music, AND make interesting and inexpensive electronic drum samples, but he's also a really nice guy. Which is more than you can say for a lot of much less talented electronic musicians, IMHO.

Yeah. Lots of good karma for Saul.

OH YEAH, and I also finished An Abundance of Katherines, by John Green. This was a great book. At one point, I was reading it in bed, and my very pregnant wife got really annoyed because I was laughing so hard I was waking her up. And I couldn't stop laughing. It's not just the fact that I kind of identified with the main character, or at least identified him with someone I used to be or know. It's the fact that it all seemed so real. You need to read this book. I've never really been into young adult or teen books, before, but this one author has me reevaluating an entire literary subgenre. You mark my words. This is an author to watch.

Ok, rampant fanboy mode off. Sorry Saul and John.

Disaster! My laptop died, and my PC was apparently struck by lightning. That's the bad news. The good news is that I bought a new laptop, a Gateway CentrinoDuo. It's quite nice so far. Unfortunately, barring minor technological miracles in the form of help from friends, I fear that I have lost all the old files on my old laptop's harddrive, it being deader than roadkill.

I finished putting together the dresser in Jack's room today. Quite happy about it. Unfortunately, I still seem to be a dunce when it comes to such things. But eventually I figured it out.

Oh, here's a little article talking about the possibility that Aleister Crowley might be Dubya's maternal grandfather. I thought Mike might get a kick out of it.

Also, I know mashups or bootleg remixes or whatever might be SO 2003, but here's a link to DJ Earworm's site. He does mashups, and they're cool.

I added more links to friends and other blogs on the right, by the way.