While examining options for renewing a domain, I discovered that one of my existing registrars has a “Name your phone” option. So if anybody needs to get an SMS message to me without knowing my phone number, just point your browser here.

Every so often, I have occasion to see parking lots near Meydenbauer Center, and when they’re especially full, I wonder what’s going on. Today’s event makes me want to register and attend, if only because who doesn’t love convenience stores?

The book awards have been announced at ALA’s Midwinter Meeting. The big ceremonies aren’t until the main conference in June or so, but we can start complaining now. I read American Born Chinese, the winner of this year’s Printz award, and it wasn’t even notable enough for me to put it in my monthly reading roundup. Yeah, it’s ok, but it really didn’t strike me as the best of the year. Feh.

Of course you’re reading Jane Espenson’s blog on a regular basis, but let me underscore one of my favorite bits in yesterday’s entry: “And I love the fact that [Rome] pretty much assumes their audience is familiar with Shakespeare. Amazing. After all, there are shows that don’t even assume we’re familiar with the contents of the previous scene.”

In anticipation of the library awards season (middle of this month), here’s my favorite reads from the past year.

Teen:
Peeps
Outbreak: Plagues that Changed History
A Certain Slant of Light
Mummies: the newest, coolest & creepiest from around the world

Adult:
Assassination Vacation (on audio)
Extraordinary exhibitions: the wonderful remains of an enormous head, the whimsiphusicon & death to the savage Unitarians: broadsides from the collection of Ricky Jay
The Areas of My Expertise
Psycho Ex Game
Walking In Circles Before Lying Down
World War Z
Kampung Boy

Furthering FP’s historical squirrel research:
Delaware Weekly Advertiser and Farmer’s Journal; January 31, 1828; Issue 20; col B

Mr. A.S. Bugbee, of Northampton, has contrived a method of turning to account the natural activity of the common grey squirrel. “He has,” says the Northampton Post, “a common cylindrical cage with wire bars, about three feet in diameter, to the axis of which, (four feet long) are connected some small brass wheels which move the machinery of a coffee and pepper mill. Three squirrels are usually employed in the labor of this novel tread-mill, though we have seen a single one turn the wheel with apparent ease. The power of each squirrel in the wheel is estimated by Mr. B. at sixty-five pounds, and in an hour they grind a pound of coffee, pepper, allspice, &c. The expense of the machine was about $300, and the cost of the subsistence of each of the little laborers is about two cents a week.”

We haven’t explicity plugged Overheard in New York (featured in Stuff We Like), but it’s frequently treatful, and I found one of today’s quotes terribly sweet.