I noticed that four out of my last five updates where whines in some manifestation or other. So sorry, dear reader, that I haven't been able to write about anything remotely nicer. My existence has basically boiled down to working, sleeping, food shopping, cooking, dishes, and reading. Today's dinner was pad thai, a rather remarkable deviation from the norm in three ways. First, it employed none of my staple ingredients: tortilla, tomato, bell pepper, ground pepper, cumin, cheese. Second, it came (mostly) from a box. Third, it required more than one pan to cook. Also, it was the most Asian-ish food I've eaten since being here, ingredients being a little more inconvenient to obtain than at home.

Carless and bike-enamoured, I've become much too dependent on Whole Foods, with its huge variety of fresh produce and dried bulk goods only a literally two-minute bike ride down the street; occasionally, I hop a ride to Safeway with Ian and Serra. So, alas, I don't have my own plentiful reserve of shiitake mushrooms à la Roger; neither would I really know what to do with them. (I really gotta stop putting in links to people's websites whenever their names pop up. I just went back and undid the "a href" tag. Google's PageRank results must be going bonkers. For instance, try searching for "milkpan". Selfishly enough, I claim that that is at least partially my doing.

Midnight. Bedtime. Between the books and the letters and the Safeway-Whole Foods-Trader Joe's extravaganzas—yes, I have frequented all three within a 24-hour period—, I've not been so good about my self-imposed midnight curfew. I pay for it in hastily-assembled lunches and forgotten addresses for the post office. Sorry, yet another superficial update. Or maybe not. Well, here goes nothing.