Wow. Sleeping with a good pillow makes a tremendous difference to how well you can stay asleep. I may have found the cause of my mysterious "why have I needed 7-8 hours of sleep the last few weeks?" puzzle. Will wait a few more days before passing final judgment on this one, but wow.

Sometimes, when I'm reading the blogs of my friends, they'll write something that's just so... much... them - there's a brief flash of their presence as I read, and then it goes poof! and I go on with life a little happier for having had that.

I went home to Chicago this weekend for my dad's 50th birthday. It's nice to briefly stay in a huge house with a big kitchen with a dishwasher. (It's almost like living in a restaurant! You don't have to scrub your plates, you just put them there and then they're clean!*) Also, even after 22 years, my parents happily surprise me sometimes.

*I am easily excited.

Someday I will have to sew up this big hole in my backpack. Someday I will have to learn to sew. Someday I will borrow a needle and thread from someone else to do so. In the meantime, nothing's fallen out yet.

Fried spinach is delicious. Retro kitchen appliances can be extraordinarily ugly (also, pink bathrooms from the 60's? Eugh). Clothes irons are more expensive than anticipated. I miss the piano in my parents' house. Leaky gel pens make interesting - what is the handwriting equivalent of a typo? Ooh, clock radio. Why is there a drawing of a watermelon here? I'm thirsty. The potentiometer controlling this ceiling fan has a crooked plate behind it. I wonder if my brother actually needs two saxophones. What happened to my toothpaste?

Oh god, my mind is turning into the Random Article link on Wikipedia. I really really need to go to bed.