Category: Odds & Endz

I bought a Pyrad.

It’s been six years since I’ve bought a mattress and the sack of newspaper I’m sleeping on now has had its day. If I drift too close to the center, it buckles and I end up like the filling in a taco shell. “When you sleep like guacamole,” my friend Laura said this morning, “it’s no good.”

So off I went to European Sleep Works in Berkeley yesterday. The store underwrites several programs on KQED and in their spots, recite a bunch of scientific who-ha about “coil depth” and “independencing sides.” I planned to gather some expert opinions and then shop around. I left with a rediculously expensive mattress and an elaborate justification: I’m investing in good sleep over the next 15-20 years and avoiding taco rest forever. If it means raman noodles for the next 8 months then, eh, it means raman noodles. With pepper if I can afford it.

They’re very good salespeople.

On my way home from work today, I started saying “Hoi Polloi” over and over again. What a fun couple of words. I think I learned about it reading the posts about Fray Day 5, which I attended this year, but I’m not sure.

So that’s the word of the day. Hoi Polloi

In book news, Jenny Egan’s new novel Look at Me was nominated for a National Book Award this morning. Her first novel, The Invisible Circus, was a favorite of mine. She’s also a very nice person. Congratulations Jenny!

Oh, and V.S Naipaul won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I called him a jerk in my last column. Now I guess he’s a Nobel jerk.