Your literary quote of the day:

There was something distinctly intimidating about her stare. It seemed to come from a one-woman mob, separated only by time and chance from her knitting bag and a splendid view of the guillotine. -- JD Salinger, "Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters"

Somehow I never noticed this book on our shelves before. So I'm reading it on the tram now, and it's brilliant.

My new crusade: ALL words in book, movie, or song title should be capitalized. Leaving small words like "the" and "and" uncapitalized only leads to confusion. Why not just capitalize them all?

Yesterday we met up with my internet-cum-real-life friend who was in town visiting with his sister. This is the third continent we've met on (previously we've met up in Atlanta and London). Had a great time showing them the city and our neighborhood. He works for Apple, so I got my first look at an iPhone and was wowed. To my surprise, given all the hype and my previous distaste for most things Mac-ish. That is one sexy gadget. Want.

Arthur Dent never could quite get the hang of Thursdays.

For me, the problem is Sunday nights. Back in Atlanta, it used to be "wing night", where I'd go out with a group of friends, usually to Taco Mac, and basically just try to extend the weekend for another night.

I have no big friend group here, and no proper spicy wing to speak of. But I'm left with the stubborn refusal to go to sleep on Sunday nights. Last night was typical. I started drifting off to sleep on the couch shortly after Marjorie went to bed, around 10:00pm. But instead I woke myself up on purpose, and stayed awake watching a soccer game I didn't care about, until after 1:30.

It starts the week off all wrong for me; I yawn through my Mondays, and have to play catch-up the rest of week on sleep. But what really bugs me is that I can't fully articulate my reasons for doing it. Yes, it has something to do with holding on to my free time, to not being a slave to work, to the feeling that days are slipping away. But it feels like there's something missing in that explanation, something not in my front-brain, and and not really in my control.

I got a new phone last weekend, and gave Marjorie the old one. The old one was a Motorola C261, which is a good phone, and has a camera, but unfortunately has no way to download the photos you take -- you can only send them to someone else. So today I've been sending all the photos I took with the old phone to my new one so I can download them. The quality of them isn't great, but what do you expect from a phone camera?

Remember my soccer injury from the middle of last year? Here's a shot I took of my face immediately afterwards.

And here's a photo of a standoff that took place on a walk around Albert Park Lake. I really don't know who would win this. Swans is mean.