I ordered an iPod Nano this week. I've kind of wanted one for years, but shrugged it off as one of the billions of fun-but-frivolous things that I don't really need--like a bed, or a nightstand. But it turns out that there is more to harmonious and comfortable living than what you need, and if you can afford to go there, it's well worth it. I love my new bed, and my nightstand, and I'm sure I'll enjoy the iPod, and the dresser I'm probably going to buy to solve the problem of not having anywhere to put my clothes (not that picking them out of a plastic storage bin each morning doesn't have its charms--no, wait, it doesn't). But soon I will be one of the cool kids!

I'm not quite to the point of spending $300 on a headboard, though. I will, but for now the pillows just don't fall off the bed that often.

I'm very much looking forward to three or four days slacking around a random campground out in the boonies next to the ocean. I'm pretty sure neither of my cell phones will work, though my iPod will, which is good, since it's likely to rain. (Besides the weather report, it's rained something like 22 of the past 29 days, with no end in sight.) Just books and music and ocean, plus the crowd of nutty abalone divers I've been assured we'll be there (a guy in my ceramics class invited me to join them). So I may end up being sociable part of the time, but I'm bringing steak and books and music and my Backpacker and firewood anyway. The guy who invited me was bizarrely enigmatic about the whole thing: I've been camping before, and with strange people, too, so unless there's animal sacrifice, I don't expect to be surprised. And even animal sacrifice would produce more of a "Hey, that's mean!" than anything approaching shock. I mean, come on. I had a hefty level of sang-froid before I moved to California and grew up.

Speaking of growing up, my hair is thinning on top! I just now noticed because I haven't cut my hair in a month or two, so while most of my head is sprouting wild curls, the seam where my hair parts (the part in my hair is defined by hair growing determinedly in different directions--apparently some people can actually part their hair differently using haircuts and combs and brushes, which I find alien) has thinner to no hair on it. It feels weird, but I'm so clearly getting older in ways more immediately obvious to me, I'm not really surprised or worried.