as my Ask Metafilter reading history:

• http://ask.metafilter.com/83669/Bad-pork-or-just-a-bad-smell
• http://ask.metafilter.com/83681/something-concerning-no-kids
• http://ask.metafilter.com/83689/Super-depressing-winter-murder-movie
• http://ask.metafilter.com/84685/I-do-declare-But-my-XML-doesnt
• http://ask.metafilter.com/83685/Does-this-guy-like-me-or-what
• http://ask.metafilter.com/84701/What-are-some-heavy-guitar-focused-triphop-albums-similar-to-Massive-Attacks-Mezzanine
• http://ask.metafilter.com/83656/allclad-or-bust
• http://ask.metafilter.com/83642/Im-a-bookish-introvert-stuck-in-the-advertising-industry-Help

The subway on the commute home was unusually subdued for a Friday evening. Maybe it was the crappy weather.

About halfway through the trip a perfectly normal-looking guy next to me said, clearly and distinctly, “Elephants.”

He got off at Harvard Square without saying another word.

A man and a woman, co-workers, in their twenties, are talking. The woman is pale, dark-haired, wire-framed glasses. She looks a little like me but younger and perkier. The man is lumpy, slouched, reeking of low expectations. He is clearly hitting on her.

“What are you listening to?” he asks. They are both wearing iPod headphones.

“Guster?” she says.

“Uh-huh.”

“What are you listening to?”

“The Swans.” He mumbles it.

“What?”

“The Swans?”

She’s nodding. “What are they like?”

“They’re kind of — goth?”

“Goth? I didn’t know that was–”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t know what was a kind of music. I thought it was a fashion thing?”

“Yeah, I don’t really dress like that, I just — I like the music. I like all kinds of music,” he apologized.

“Yeah?”

The bus rumbles along and then arrives at our stop. He starts again. “So are you liking the job?”

“Yeah?” she says.

“It’s funny because of the orthography.”

I’m not from New England but I completely belong here. I was happy to be sent to a conference in San Francisco because it had been five years since I’d seen my SF friends, but California makes me uncomfortable. It’s too big, there aren’t enough subways and I’m suspicious of season-less climates. On the other hand, five years is too long to go between Mission burritos. My other culinary requirement when visiting the West Coast is usually sushi but this time I did not get the opportunity.

My corporate expense report will include both a $25 in-room breakfast and a $3 slice of pizza from the club district in SOMA. That seems about right.

I’ll be back again next month, incongruously enough, for O’Reilly’s Foo Camp. I’ll miss my dog and probably won’t get sushi then either.

On the way home I read David Crystal’s The Fight for English, a response to Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss (which I found tiresome). Although Crystal is explicitly not a language prescriptivist, he did remind me that I use too many commas. I hope you enjoy this post which contains fewer of them than I would have included otherwise.

It’s 64F now, 8pm and still sunny. I’m on the deck drinking a beer (pictured). It’s a Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale. For dinner I had a regular burrito with black beans, rice, guacamole and hot salsa.

It’s quiet back here except for some squirrels rustling the trees, distant car traffic, and assorted birds. I have my laptop and a clear wireless signal. I had another perfect commute with my new bike, and when I got home I walked the dog for an hour and now she is very tired.

I got a notice in the mail that my jury duty service was cancelled. The sun is finally setting. It’s still warm.

This is galangal. I got it at Whole Foods, the first time I have seen it outside of an Asian grocery store. I bought it largely to take this picture.

That is all.

Even the coffee mugs in the office.

I don’t want one with a Bible quotation. I don’t want one that proclaims that I am “the world’s greatest” anything, especially “dad.” I don’t want one that has raised three-dimensional ceramic figures on it. I don’t want one that appears not to have been washed.

Some of them are too small, or too oddly shaped. The ceramic can’t be so thin that the mug is too hot nor so thick that drinking from it is uncomfortable. One mug is so cavernous that no matter how much coffee I put into it, it looks empty, and there’s so much surface area that the coffee cools too quickly.

I don’t like coffee mugs with gold laminate cursive writing.

There is a blue mug that I prefer but it is often dirty, and on my desk. It is good when I remember to bring my travel mug because that keeps the coffee warm while I do work or get on a conference call, and because it is normally filled with coffee from somewhere else, rather than from the office coffee maker which makes bad coffee.

In the Whole Foods produce section a man in his late 40’s is standing, inert, with an empty shopping cart. A woman of the same age, perhaps sensing prey, asks him if he needs any help finding something. “I’m just trying to remember a recipe,” he replies.

“Oh?” she says. “What kind of recipe?”

“It’s, uh, complicated,” he answers, in a tone that indicates he’s not interested in her cooking advice or anything else. Then, perhaps thinking he was too brusque, adds, “I’m a raw-foodist.”

“A raw-foodist.”

“Yes, I don’t eat cooked food.”

“People who eat raw food call themselves ‘raw-foodists.’” It’s not a question.

“Only to people who eat cooked food,” he replies sourly.

To me she says, “Welcome to Cambridge.” Then she pushes off into Seafood.

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Star Wars on a Banjo
01:42

This would be myself playing the theme music from Star Wars on my 1996 Gibson RB-3 banjo.

From: safetypants