That is ten kinds of awesome. I'm not usually one to wax nostalgic for my childhood (most of my nostalgia is for my mid-late twenties, which is weird since I'm only 31), but every great once in a while, I have an experience like that, where on little thing someone else brings up drags out a bunch of interesting/cool/whatever memories from way back when... this is a good thing. Also, I so want to ride one of those things now...

"Reading makes you a smarter and better person than not reading. And that's a fact!" QFT. Just don't buy into that nonsense about it needing to be the classics to count. Every generation has their Dan Browns (I'm look at you, Charlotte Bronte), and while not every generation has their Shakespear, we do have our Cervantes, our Dumas and our Dickens. You might have to dig around a bit to find them, but that's half the fun, isn't it?

Most awesome. If I make it to PAX this year, I'll go as Sparks. It will be awesome.

As a meat-eater and soup-lover, I second this. Both Better Than Bouillon and No Chicken Base make for excellent flavorful soups, and I use both for cooking purposes on a semi-regular basis.

PAX was awesome. Good games, good friends, lots of fun. Felicia Day is super-nice and somehow manages to be even more beautiful in person than on screen. Wil Wheaton is shorter than I expected, but I really should have known better than to project his towering King of Geeks presence onto his physical stature. The line to his table was quite long, but I caught him standing about listening to music and he handle the way I rudely interrupted him to gift him a die very politely. Sorry again for butting in like that Wil, I hope you at least get some use out the die, even if it hasn't got numbers on it.