Note: When you go to a Barnes & Noble, and it says ‘We offer wi-fi!” on a sign, it doesn’t mean free, and you won’t realize that until you’ve already got yourself situated next to an outlet and plugged in and everything. If my laptop’s batteries were working, I’d already be stealing wi-fi from my parents’ neighbors.

All told, however, it’s a better set up than they used to have. At least you can buy a two-hour block of wi-fi through the web page telling you that you don’t have access. It used to be that you had to buy an account over the web, despite being unable to use the web.

I have a perverse desire to open a coffee shop in this shopping center just so I can offer free wi-fi.

Ears still plugged with… something. I won’t be able to fly back to Seattle on schedule. I’m enjoying the quiet, but I want the loud back.

I think 2006 is the year Homer starts playing to his strengths. Maybe I’ll start listing them later.

In the meantime, I have a couple of wads of mucous living in my eustacian tubes. It’s kind of a relief not to be able to hear anything; I can’t hear the interstate a mile away, or my parents watching TV in the next room, but I sure hope these headslugs leave soon.

I’m eagerly awaiting that moment when there’ll be some frothy popping sounds, and then a final schlurp and my hearing will return.

Yay.