On the stove: my coveted brand-new 5 1/2 quart Le Creuset cast iron French oven (color: dune), which contains about five quarts of mmmmmm homemade chili. Dinner tonight, and lunch a couple times this week.

I am slowly teaching Brian to cook. It’s gonna have to happen now that I can’t just wander into the kitchen at 5 to get dinner started.

Didn’t fall into bed until two a.m., so today I am totally exhausted. The show last night was very good, but last year when we saw the Mountain Goats at the Independent in SF, we had a much much better vantage point, and had a better time because of it. But it was still fun. Before the show we had dinner at Mediterranean Express on Broadway, then had excellent coffees at Caffe Vita.

We went to Costco and Best Buy today to look at TVs. Brian, being a dude, wants a big HDTV flat screen with “1080p” or something. I still can’t conceive of a TV that costs over $1000. But I guess that’s normal now if you aren’t getting a cube-shaped television.

We didn’t buy anything yet, probably in a couple weeks. I told him that if we get this fancy tv, we can’t buy another one. For a long time, anyway. I guess that goes for anything else expensive we are investing in. Except that a TV is never an investment and will depreciate massively within six months. Oh well.

Ok, show’s about to start. One more thing:

Happy Birthday Dad!!!!!