Tidbits.

In recent years, I have become a person who skims more than I really settle in and read something. But this guy's undertakings, which he writes about on his web site, kept me reading every word. Barry Stiefel is a California computer guy who, among other things, has managed to visit all 50 states within a 9-day period. Cool, very cool. Thanks to the always great Kottke for pointing out Barry's site with a link!

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I saw a post on one of my favorite web sites, Apartment Therapy, in which a person organized all of their books according to the color of the book jacket or cover, creating something of a rainbow effect. I'm planning to do it! I need something to make my bookshelves look less disorganized.

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"Quality," rather than "quantity," would be the word used to describe my blog traffic on the average day. But yesterday, something odd happened and I still haven't gotten to the bottom of it. A few Octobers ago, I posted a cool picture by a photographer named Kay Westhues, giving her credit for the photo in a line underneath it. Yesterday, for a reason I have not yet determined, everyone was frantically Googling Kay, leading them to my blog and resulting in a 10-fold increase in my blog traffic. I Googled Kay myself to see if she was in a new story or something, but I wasn't able to find it, or any other explanation for her sudden popularity among Google searchers. I even posted a plea at the old post for the searchers to let me know what caused them to suddenly look for Kay, but so far, I have had no takers. It's a mystery!

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Sunday night was quite odd. I had planned to drive to Houston in the afternoon, but work and other things conspired to keep me from leaving until dinnertime. I arrived in Houston around 10:00 p.m. or so, and was immediately presented with a lovely glass of wine by my friends. We spent quite a bit of time noodling over the possibilities of their newly-purchased loft, which will be combined through wall demolition with their current loft. What fun! More time was spent peeking at my Hawaii pics and talking about shoes and ships and things. The friends then went to sleep but, even though it was quite late, I could not sleep. So I took advantage of the "found" time to book flights for my Chicago (April), New York (May) and Maine/Vermont/New Hampshire (August/September) trips. I didn't stop there--I made plans with a friend to see Liev Schreiber in "Talk Radio" while in NYC, booked a rental car for the fall trip, and planned other related details. (My most proud moment was when I realized I could cut the cost of the 10-day price of the rental car nearly in half simply by taking a short cab ride from the Boston airport to an in-town car rental place, rather than renting at the airport--awesome!) I finally was able to will myself to sleep in the wee hours of the morning, only to awake to a very loud thunderstorm.