Lately, volume is my best friend. I'm having a great time lstening to things way too loudly. I love it. I also love postscripts, people who say coca cola rather than just coke, and the new store that opened down the street from here.

It's called Banzai 99�. (I am unreasonably thrilled about having figured out how to get that cent symbol in there. The name of the store is really impossible without it.) Hardly anything in the store is actually 99�, but $1.29 (the typical price of the store's items) is still an incredible price when you consider the things they sell. I guess they call it Banzai 99� because they think it will draw people in, but I'd actually prefer it if it were called Banzai $1.29. It would be nicely awkward. Or even just Banzai 129. It sounds complicated, like they've been refining the store and are on the hundred and twenty-ninth version. I haven't even mentioned what they sell yet. They sell everything. Housewares and stationary supplies and toys and beauty products and food and everything. Most of the things they sell are really pretty and cleverly designed. I've never in my life seen such a wide variety of great chopsticks. Especially the ones meant for kids that come in neat carrying cases. My hands are fairly small, so those work well for me. Everything in the store seems to be Japanese or Korean, so the packages are exciting, some unidentifiable. I went with Jackpot on Sunday night, and he knows enough Japanese to figure most of it out, but it was more fun when we had to guess. It's not a typical Queens 99� store; everything is neat and well-organized and brightly lit. While we were there it was full of people walking slowly around the store and looking at everything with glowing eyes, picking things up and examining them carefully. The more I think about it, the more I realize how great it is. It's the sort of store that shows up in my dreams and leaves me sad when I wake up and realize I can't go again. Not while I'm awake anyway. I'm so happy that it's real.

Two nights ago I had a good dream. All I really remember now is that there was an exciting sweepstakes prize, I was happily painting furniture a terrible color, and there was a tiger in the bed with us. She was like a baby tiger in a full-grown tiger's body, and was having trouble sleeping, and needed to be cuddled between us. I'm not sure who the other half of us was, but it was someone familiar, I think. Someone I've been in a bed with before. Anyway, the tiger had super sharp claws, and would occassionally scratch one of us by accident, but we didn't want to make her sad by leaving her alone in the bed, and the scratches weren't very deep, so we just stayed in the bed and got scratched. We loved her.

Last night, probably around the same time I had dreamt the tiger the night before, I was up talking to someone who wasn't there. I'm enjoying how strange that sounds.

I have more to say, mostly quiz-related, but I'm out of time for now. I'll end with this CL Missed Connection post someone sent me a link to.

Isn't that sweet? I'd respond to that, if I were her.