If I continue to write entries after midnight, it's all good.

Uneventful day, woke up around noon and went to work at three. It was supposed to be a busy day today, but we were well staffed so no pressure was felt. I wore the Buy Nothing Day logo in my nametag but nobody noticed. I had a few hours to shelve total, so I got about a sixth of the way through fixing-up my computer section.

Living in Tianjin, I bought a lot of CDs and I didn't have time to listen to all of them. Some I bought because I'd heard them before and knew they were good. Others I bought because it was a dry week, the selection was poor and I had a hunch they'd be good. Such was the Duran Duran CD which the CDDB calls the Wedding Album. It turned out to be an engaging and catchy album, full of dynamic tracks and memorable riffs. I've been listening to it quite a bit lately. Also, often on the turntable lately has been a record Shirley bought for me, Flower Drum Song. David Henry Hwang recently re-wrote the Rogers and Hammerstein musical to a completely different story, using the same songs but sung by different people in different situations. Probably the most recognizable song is I enjoy being a girl. I've downloaded the lyrics and find it quite fun to sing along.

Darn, forgot to blog before midnight.

Thanksgiving feast today with Dad's side of the family. The family packed up and drove to uncle Bob and aunt Karen's house. Uncle Bob enjoys renovating old houses, and aunt Karen enjoys decorating old houses. So they moved to a really old house in Old Whittier and fixed it all up in the last two years. It looks very nice now, with large wavy glass windows, dark wooden frames and a big fireplace. Pretty much all of the family was there except for Brandon in the Air Force, who is starting his jet training in a couple of days. He just got issued his helmet and oxygen mask. Aaron was also missing, because he's visiting Paris with a friend from Berkeley.

For dinner we had turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, gravy, marshmallow salad, stuffing, orange rolls and sweet potatoes. After dinner, there was pie: pumpkins, pecan and apple. Good stuff!

After dinner, we sat around and talked, and played Boggle. Uncle Bob also collects old phonographs, so I took over my 78 RPM records that I picked up at the antique shop in Tianjin and listened to them for the first time since I've been back in California: old Chinese opera and revolutionary songs. I also sat out on their porch and worked on my Christmas cards, which are almost done and will be sent out soon.

Back home, I sent out a bunch of emails replying to all sorts of messages. Hopefully that catches me up for now. Did I mention that David Coyle is coming home for Christmas? I'm very happy about that. One thing I'm not happy about is tomorrow's shift at Borders on one of the busiest shopping day of the year. I'm going to try and sneak a Buy Nothing Day logo into my nametag.

Stayed up late Wednesday night to fill out grad school applications. Haha, it's really happening this time.

Worked at Border tonight, nothing exciting happened. I saw Ritchie in there, Dave Coyle's friend. Dave, by the way, is coming home for Christmas. That is great news, I'm very excited. On Friday I'm slated to work 3 PM to 9 PM. I'm hoping that we will be staffed with many cashiers so that I get a chance to work on cleaning up the computer section. It's impossible to find stuff there.

Oh yeah, rumor from on high has it that we won't be hiring Christmas help this year. Hooray for publicly-owned corporate bookstores. Ugh. Also, the same source told me that McSweeney's is edited by the same fellow who did the non-Required Reading book, Dave Eggers. This is also the guy who just wrote a book whose text starts on the front cover and continues onto the paper pasted inside the cover (it's a hardback), and is only being sold in independent bookstores.

Last night at 3:30 AM I finished reading Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. My mother asked me if it was a good book; I said, it was OK but that I don't quite understand it. Elaborating, I said that I enjoy reading Japanese literature because of the challenge; Western literature I've read for many years, and I've grown comfortable with the themes, allusions, and literary devices, while Japanese literature is guided by a philosophy that is not bred within myself. So when I read a Murakami or Soseki book, I have to struggle and excercise my analytical mind to the fullest before understanding even the tiniest bit of it.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is certainly an enigmatic book to me. As with Murakami's other work, it contains both psychics and wells. But rather than a well leading to an underground lair, he uses the darkness in wells as a way of making the body disappear and leaving the mind to be observed in its newfound nakedness. As with all Japanese literature I've read (and maybe Julie can explain this), the resolution is not very satisfying to me. It's like the book reaches a development of 90% and then stops, leaving the characters and the reader 10% short a full understanding of the situation.

Of course, I could be wrong. Tomorrow I will search for a critical review of this book.

I scattered bookmarks throughout the book as I read it, marking interesting passages. The first is Toru Okada's first experience in the well, and a good piece describing the mind bringing the body into its world.

Now I was enveloped by a darkness that was total. No amount of straining helped my eyes to see a thing. I couldn't tell where my own hand was. I felt along the wall to where the ladder hung and gave it a tug. It was firmly anchored at the surface. The movement of my hand seemed to cause the darkness itself to shift, but that could have been an illusion.

It felt extremely strange not to be able to see my own body with my own eyes, though I felt it must be there. Staying very still in the darkness, I became less and less convinced of the fact that I actually existed. To cope with that, I would clear my throat now and then, or run my hand over my face. That way, my ears could check on the existence of my voice, my hand could check on the existence of my face, and my face could check on the existence of my hand.

Despite these efforts, my body began to lose its density and weight, like sand gradually being washed away by flowing water. I felt as if a fierce and wordless tug-of-war were going on inside of me, a contest in which my mind ws slowly dragging my body into its own territory. The darkness was disrupting the proper balance between the two. The thought struck me that my own body was a mere provisional husk that had been prepared for my mind by a rearrangement of the signs known as chromosomes. If the signs were rearranged yet gain, I would find myself inside a wholly different body than before. "Prositute of the mind," Creta Kano had called herself. I no longer had any trouble accepting the phrase. Yes, it was possible for us to couple in our minds and for me to come in reality. In truly deep darkeness, all kinds of strange things were possible.

I shook my head and sturggled to bring my mind back inside my body.

In the darkness, I pressed the fingertips of one hand against the fingertips of the other--thumb against thumb, index finger against index fingers. My right-hand fingers ascertained the existence of my left-hand fingers, and the fingers of my left hand ascertained the existence of the fingers of my right hand. Then I took several slow, deep breaths. OK, then, enough of this thinking about the mind. Think about reality. Think about the real world. The body's world. That's why I'm here. To think about reality. The best way to think about reality, I had decided, was to get as far away from it as possible--a place like the bottom of a well, for example. "When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom," Mr. Honda had said. Leaning against the wall, I slowly sucked the moldy air into my lungs.

In the next excerpt, Okada has been picked up by a mysterious woman at a park who takes him out every few days, buys clothes for him at expensive boutiques and then takes him out to eat for no reason that he can see:

This reminded me of several so-called art films I had seen in college. Movies like that never explained what was going on. Explanations were rejected as some kind of evil that could only destroy the films' "reality." That was one way of thought, one way to look at things, no doubt, but it felt strange for me, as a real, live human being, to enter such a world.

Funny, that summed up the way I felt about this book. The "explanations" of the explorations of the mind that Okada experiences are vague and convoluted, to the point that they were incomprehensible. Sort of like an art film.

My last excerpt is from the dialogue of a nervous and talkative underling of the evil Noboru Wataya, whose name is Ushikawa. I noted it merely because I wasn't aware of the meaning behind the band's name:

"But to tell you the truth, Mr. Okada (and I knowyou're the one person I can really open up to), not even I know what you're doing in that place. I do know the people who visit you there are paying an arm and a leg. So you must be doing something special for them that's worth all that money. That much is as clear as counting crows on snow."

So there you have it. And in the manner of high school book reports, who would I recommend this book to? Not your average reader, and it's a bit long to be a first introduction to Haruki Murakami's fiction. But definitely a hallmark of his style, and an essential read for somebody doing a survey of his work.

I forgot to mention, I've rearranged my availability at Borders to start tutoring Spanish-speaking kids at Laurel school on Mondays and Wednesdays. I'm pretty excited about that, I've discovered that I really enjoy tutoring and this is a chance to help kids who really need it. Of course, it's not nearly as noble as my friend Taiyaba Husain, who is teaching in downtown Los Angeles. But please let me have a moment of pride in my spoonful of charity and goodwill.

Today I packed up and left on a road trip. The first destination was Fullerton College, where I applied, was accepted and enrolled all in the span of 10 minutes. Beat that, Georgetown.

Second destination was Pasadena. In her last e-mail Dr Wei didn't sound as enthused about writing my letter of recommendation as she had before, so I decided to make the trip up there to talk with her personally. Her Chinese 4 class started just before got there, so I walked over to Caltech (where I was parked) and looked around. I scouted out the new Biology building. It certainly does look modern, but not too garish or out-of-place. The Ticket Office had a bulletin out for the new season of performances at Beckman Auditorium, so I dropped by and picked one up. A couple performances next year look nice:

Rick Miller in MacHomer--"The Simpsons" Do Macbeth.

Rick Miller performs this one-man vocal extravaganza, featuring over 50 voices from TV's favorite dysfunctional family.

Capitol Steps

Who put the "mock" in democracy? The Capitol Steps, of course. no one is immune to their bipartisan barbs and song parodies. Don't miss their "spin" on current events.

Milikan library provided a good spot to work on my Christmas cards, and I stopped by the bookstore to pick up a Christmas item.

Tutoring was packed tonight. I'm really satisfied with the progress some kids have made; many who came in for tutoring a few weeks ago are now able to help other students. I saw a couple of kids who I haven't seen in a while from the math class I subbed in. Noah was doing some catch-up for a few days he was absent, and he absorbed the lesson very quickly. He's a bright kid.

I stayed up late last night watching a little TV before heading to bed with my Harumi Murakami novel. As the time approached midnight, Elimidate went to commercials (one of the two shows worth watching on network TV) so I playfully flipped the channel, scanning the minor channels. What to my wondrous eyes should appear, but HEY HEY HEY MUSIC CHAMP! I was under the impression that it was no longer showing here in Los Angeles. My all-time favorite Japanese show, I started watching it in high school and loved it because it served the dual purpose of introducing me to new Japanese music and teaching me to read kana and kanji quickly as I struggled to keep up with the lyrics to the songs.

So I was ecstatic that I've rediscovered the show. Sunday nights are drama nights, and Monday nights have now become HEY HEY HEY nights. Last night's show features several artists that were new to me: RAG FAIR, w-inds (talking/tasting foods they hate; and by the way, they are a k-pop imitation group), Psycho le Cemu (weirdness cosplay music group). Besides that, they played the Mujik Mikusu-Apu (music mixup) game with a couple of Morning Musume groups (how many licks does it take... how many Morning Musume spin-offs are there...) and the Brilliant Green, who won. I've wondered how I would do on that kind of game, and I also wondered why MTV doesn't pick up on this and do a similar show.

Anyhow, an entire single entry on that topic because I'm so excited. How silly.

I'm running out of things to do, which means it's time to visit the district office againt he demand that they give me more subbing work.

Today all I did was e-mail a few people, investigate how I will make up the economics classes that Georgetown is asking me to take, buy Christmas cards and work at Borders for 3 hours.

Today I started putting together a scrapbook for my year in China. There are so many photos, receipts, postcards, maps...

Apparently, McSweeney's is a publication that all the hip East-Coasters read. We sell it at Borders. I will have to check it out.

Either I've been very insulated for most of my life or some of the writers I've read in the last few years overly dramatize real life. I can't believe how critical, pessimistic, emotional, bitter and just plain hostile some of these characters are.

Oh well, I finished The Best American non-Required Reading and for the most part it was an enjoyable book. Particularly good were Eric Schlosser's piece on natural and artificial flavors, Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good from the Atlantic Monthly's January 2001 issue; and Gary Smith's story of a black basketball coach at an all-white Amish high school, Higher Education, originally published in Sports Illustrated.

My pick for next book is Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Sijie Dai. I'm thinking of picking up some poetry, too.

Hooray for Saturdays! I accomplished absolutely nothing today, except for reading a few more chapters of The Best American non-Required Reading. I forgot to mention that I got expanded hours at Borders next weekend due to planned post-Thanksgiving sales. This coming Friday I'll be working 3-9 PM, meaning I'll miss the mom's-family thanksgiving get-together. Hopefully that will give me time to finish primping the science shelves, and start the computer book displays and re-stocking.

So I actually exerted a little self-control and got to bed on time last night, meaning I woke up at 8:30 this morning! I finally made that trip down to the district office, only to find out that Barbara Kleinsmith (the lady in charge of substitute teachers) would not be in today. Darn her. Why don't they call me? I also made it up to the high school and talked briefly with Laurel's counselor, Ms Garcia. She's a nice lady. She offered me a post tutoring Spanish-speaking kids on Mondays and Wednesdays at Laurel school, which is cool because I see it as a chance to show some initiative and have some volunteer work to put on my resume (always nice). I just need to re-arrange my schedule at Borders to fit it all in.

Speaking of Borders, this is the sweetest job. I found a book called The Best American non-Required Reading edited by Dave Eggers, a collection of contemporary short stories published in The Village Voice, The Onion, McSweeney's, etc. So I picked it up, checked it out with a manager and brought it home. Just like that.

After work tonight I went out to A&W with my parents for dinner. Had a burger, and a large root-beer float. Root beer on tap can't be beat.

A new book means that'll I'll be reading two books simultaneously, since I recently purchased and am enjoying Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Why do I enjoy his books so much? On the one hand, they seem so pointless: the main characters are unmotivated and lack a clear vision of themselves. They are so detached from the world around themselves. But at the same time, they express a child-like wonder at new things they discover, which is what I aspire to do. And they speak their mind, often bluntly, and it doesn't seem to get in the way of their interacting with other people amiably. Consider:

"I've got a relative with six fingers on each hand. She's just a little older than me. Next to her pinkie she's got this extra finger, like a baby's finger. She knows how to keep it folded up so most people don't notice. She's really pretty."

I nodded again.

"You don't think it's in the family? What do you call it... part of the bloodline?"

"I don't know much about heredity."

She stopped talking.

And yet he gets on fabulous with this girl. I don't get it, but I like it.

On the MP3 front, somebody is handing out an entire day after tomorrow CD over at the Definite Asia forums. Hopefully it's the one with Hello, Everybody! on it.

I need to meet someone who goes clubbing so they'll go with me when I hear about stuff like this:

1. Ladytron's Reuben Wu , Nov 23^rd at The Echo.
2. Lazy Dog (Everything But The Girl's Ben Watts), Dec 5^th at the Wiltern.

Oh, and by the way. From Yahoo, Which countries have nuclear weapons?

Apparently, Russia, the United States, France, China, Great Britain, Israel, Pakistan, and India all have stockpiles. And possibly Iran. Of course, there's a fair amount of secrecy and double talk about exactly who has what capabilities.

I've seconded somebody's request for Hello, Everybody! on the Definite Asia forums.

Well, at least I can listen to it in RealAudio.

Updated my Home & Away page. When I used the iBook to look for Japanese drama stuff, it was like getting a new pair of glasses: so much more comes into focus. There is sooo much information out there. Unfortunately, 100% of it is in Japanese, but I can make out most of it, in between reading the kana and putting my mad Chinese skillz to work on the kanji. For example, check out this page with a schedule of the dramas showing each day, their theme songs, and links to buy the CD's. And the best part is, I found the song I'm looking for! Super BeMAX's Toei Karaoke tells me that it's another song by the same group day after tomorrow called Hello, Everybody!. Well, that means back to scouring the drama message boards. At least I have a title now.

Reporting on two fronts today: On the practical side, I got a few things done today. I will now take out my To Do list and cross stuff off.

• wrote the letter to Beth Gorden; waiting for address confirmation.
• emailed Dr Wei about dropping off the recommendation packet.
• e-mailed Kartik about editing my essay.
• visited Dr Douglas and dropped off his packet.
• dropped off papers for the correction on my Social Security card.
• picked up the slide prints at Walmart.

The only thing I put off is related to somebody Christmas present, so I can't write it here. I'll pick it up tomorrow. On top of all this, I spent a couple hours tutoring kids at the high school. It was quite busy when I got there but emptied out quickly. I posted a photo taken near the end on the photo weblog. I gotta remember to take the camera out with me more often.

I got a password to a huge jpop MP3 repository today, hopefully it'll have some good stuff. If only they would show Hey Hey Hey Music Champ here in SoCal.

The good news: the Definite Asia message board came through, introducing me to the Streamload file sharing site, and letting me download day after tomorrow's my faith.

The bad news: my faith is the theme song to the dorama Home & Away, but not the song they play during the opening! ARGH. That's the song I really want, and I have no way of knowing what it is. I'll just have to:

• start asking around on the dorama message boards.
• use our Japanese-capable iBook to surf the official Home & Away website, and see if they mention it there.

Update (Oct 2003): For all those folks who search for Day After Tomorrow's My Faith or Hello Everybody, try my Freeshell site.

Racing to get this in before midnight...

Right now I'm eating a positively delicious chicken and pasta dish that my mom made for dinner, which I reheated in the microwave. It's got a light sauce seasoned some herbs and spices. Of course, the clincher is that it has bacon. I'll say that anything with bacon is delicious.

I accomplished a lot today. I wrote letters to my recommenders about how to write and deliver the letters, printed out a sample essay, photocopied the essay and my transcripts down at the 24 Hour Photocopy Club, mailed off Dr Lee's packet, called Dr Douglas to chat and ask for a recommendation (got it!), and made it to work 10 minutes early. After work I looked for presents for people at Borders to use my forty percent discount, but a combination of lack of inspiration and guilt at giving my money to the corporate giant that is BINC kept me from buying anything. Support your local independent merchants. I don't think Brea has any left.

I think I found a way to get the MP3 for Home & Away. I'll update this if I get it.

I'm still looking for an MP3 of the theme song for the Home & Away drama, which is Hello Everybody by day after tomorrow. Sadly, there is no good mp3 sharing program for the Mac, so I'm stuck doing fruitless Google searches. Melodybomb runs the Daily Asian Pop MP3 weblog where you can download a new MP3 every day or so.

Next post on the productivity blog!

Today I finished the first version of my grad essay. Hooray! That means I will send off the packets of forms to my recommendors tomorrow morning. If you would like to read/comment/edit it, send me an e-mail (micah@earthling.net). Actually, I made up two versions because different schools asked for essays of different lengths. The longer essay uses more color expressions and flowing language, while the shorter version tries to pack more information into less space.

That's pretty much what I did today. In the evening, I watched the fifth episode of Home & Away, which I taped this afternoon. For my comments, see my comment on the KIKU TV message boards.

Today Julie wrote an entry about chapters in Karen Tei Yamashita's book circle k cycles being in Portuguese and Japanese. I remember reading a couple books by KT Yamashita. They didn't make a very strong impression on me, obviously, because I can't remember much about them. I was cooled out to learn that Sigur Ros sings in a made-up language. It's a way of removing the meaning of a song's lyrics without upsetting the balance between the voice and instruments. Minimalist, in a way.

I think this blog is good for my productivity. I like to brag about the things I got done on here. As long as I don't show my still extensive ToDo list, people who read this will actually think I accomplish a lot. Today I popped open the spray-bottle of Armour-All, grabbed some rags and a power-vacuum from the garage, and headed for the Volvo. After an hour or so of heavy duty cleaning, the inside is sparkling. I tried to get Shirley to do something with me tonight so she might notice it, but she is busy writing a big essay for school. It's that time of the semester again. Too bad they pile things up over Thanksgiving, it looks like she won't even be able to go to the Garbage concert next Saturday. Also, I'm working on paring down my grad essay; I reviewed the questions I'm supposed answer and found that some answers are unclear, so I'm having my dad read it and suggest edits. I usually disagree with what he says (like with many of my physical possesions, I'm very territorial about my writing), but at least I'll have an outside opinion. Maybe I should have Julie read it too. Nah, she might bill me and I hear that her rates are through the roof.

I sent out an e-mail to Amy, Julie and Kartik to the effect that, surprise of surprises (the mother of all surprises), Taiyaba Husain is teaching English at the same school as my dad, Drew Middle School in Los Angeles. It turns out that Amy had already made contact, but I haven't yet so I'll e-mail her soon. Which reminds me, I've yet to actually make physical contact with Quan Hai. Hmm, another item for my ToDo list.

It turns out that this page was majorly broken in Netscape 4.7, which Julie and Eric use. So I redid the CSS, and now it works! (with the minor addition of a Container DIV to the HTML.) Note to self: NN4 does not do background position, nor clears floats.

It's a new day, but still counts as Friday because I posted so late last night. I say we take Julie's suggestion and make the blogging day roll over at 4AM. Looking down at the last post, I guess that still wouldn't have remedied the situation.

I thought of Julie again today at work, when I passed the Tales of Genji on the bookshelf. The reason I was looking at books is that Borders is having Employee Appreciation Weekend through Monday the 18th, so we get forty percent off books and music, and twenty percent off movies. I didn't take full advantage, but I'll most likely do some Christmas shopping this weekend on account of it. I did end up buy Haruki Murakami's original acclaimed work The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle marked down from fifteen to nine dollars. All of his stuff I read in the past was good, and this looks like a nice thick book that should last me for a while. Not that I need more reading material: today in the mail I got my order of Madeleine Albright and the New American Diplomacy and Principles of Global Security from Amazon. I can't praise their used-book search enough, it's got every book I've ever looked for, and cheap. I also special ordered from Borders a cheap paperback of El Maestro de Esgrima by Arturo Perez-Reverte (I'm not sure if there should really be an apostrophe in his last name, Spanish people just have two surnames by convention). When I was in China last year, Julie brought me his The Flanders Panel in English, which I enjoyed a lot. With my Spanish flagging, it's about time I read something modern and entertaining in my second language.

Books I didn't buy, but considered:

• Shanghai Baby by Wei Hui; big hit in China but too sleazy, and got bad reviews.
• Tokyo: A Certain Style by Kyoichi Tsuzuki; fun to look at, but not to buy.
• The Feynman Lectures on Physics: The Complete Audio Collection, Volume 1 read by Feynman himself; at 14 volumes and $40 a piece, buying the whole set would bankrupt me.
• The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2002 compiled by Dave Eggers; only because I can't decide which anthology of modern American Lit to buy. Probably this one.
• Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser; ignorance is bliss.

Some of those are bound to end up on my bookshelf someday anyways.

I took the camera to tutoring tonight at the high school but I didn't get any photos because I forgot it was there, and the turnout was also less than stellar. I managed to get myself motivated and finish (well, 90% done) my grad school Statement of Purpose. It came out to about 1400 words, and needs to be in between 250 and 500. Haha. I didn't imagine I'd overshoot. But I like paring stuff down, it's the initial writing that is painful.

I posted a message on the Borders investor message board on Yahoo tonight. I managed to argue that since Jacob Nielsen doesn't want users designing user interfaces, neither should the Borders corporate people rely on customer focus groups to design the store layouts and shelving categories. It should be up to the booksellers, because we know what's good for the customers better than they do. After all, we spend more time observing customers than they do themselves.

Julie started her Christmas list already. Is that allowed? I'm feeling very anti-consumer this Christmas, I'm not sure I want much. All I can think of is a digital camera, but a nice one. And that's too expensive for any one person to get me. Also, I should be saving my own money for grad school. Hmm, maybe I'll ask Santa to get me into grad school. That's really all I want for Christmas.

NPR asks, are you yob? Take the yob quiz and find out.

I finally finished that RPL at work today, plus I stuck Laurel's digital camera in pocket and snuck a few pictures here and there. I wore the old WW2 army pants I bought at the Salvation Army store in Fullerton. They're made of wool so they itch like a mother, but they are swell-looking. Plus they have suspender loops. Suspender loops!

Other than that, I didn't do much. I emptied out the dish dryer, and that was probably the most productive thing I did today, which is depressing. I guess it doesn't help that my day usually start at 1 or 2 in the afternoon. I'd better get to sleep on time tonight. And Barbara Kleinsmith down at the district office better be saving up a big assignment for me. Not that I'm short on money, but another paycheck would be nice.

It looks like Julie may have found a job. Woo for her! (and that's a non-sarcastic woo.)

In this entry, I admit my weakness for reading the About page on people's weblogs. Everybody should have one. It's the first thing I click on when I come across a new weblog. People's lives are interesting to me. My About page is just OK.

In this entry, I also wonder whether it would be artistic or meaningful to have a weblog where all the entries are embedded in the HTML, and nothing actually shows up until you select View Source. It's probably a dumb idea, but I like it.

Slept in today and browsed the web for a while, the usual sites like Slashdot and Simon's site, which has a good blogroll for web-design related sites.

This evening I'm doing tutoring at the high school. Less people came than usual, so I covered my government book in a page of the Los Angeles Times magazine. I finished Beijing Jeep over dinner tonight, I should write a small review for my main blog. About tutoring, I forgot to turn in my timecard last month, I hope I can still get paid for it if I turn it in tomorrow.

A quick redesign.

Blogger is nice because it handles multiple blogs in one account. But it sticks a non-XHTML-compliant banner on the top of this page. I'll have to think of something creative to do with it (besides move it off-page with position: absolute).

"If your friends walked off a cliff, would you do it too?" my mother would ask me. Well, not exactly. But since so many people seem to be getting blogger/blogspot accounts, why not?

The title and description are courtesy of Alejandro Sanz, used without permission but with much respect.