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I love coming home from pub trivia to a house that smells like freshly-baked bread.

Whole Foods’ 365 gluten-free sandwich bread mix is the best mix I’ve baked so far. It tastes like real bread, and by that I mean it has a sweet aftertaste that FunkyPlaid immediately picked up on when he tried it. Most gluten-free mixes have a powdery, slightly sour aftertaste.

On another tactile note, I am testing out some new fragrances. Patchouli Garden’s vanilla sandalwood is enticing at first, but on my skin it evens out to what I can only term “old lady musk”, which is disappointing. Song of India’s sandalwood oil, on the other hand, is the perfect blend of woodsy sweetness. I am still undecided on the patchouli sandalwood.

Erik Larson’s Thunderstruck is excellently constructed and wholly absorbing, so I must go read it before I fall asleep.

I dearly wish I could crack my toes, but feet worry me so much that I avoid them all.

George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” is my favorite contemporary fantasy series, so I am both thrilled and concerned about the upcoming HBO adaptation.

A friend pointed out the “Winter is Coming” news and rumors blog and now I am well and truly excited.

This sort of meme makes me both crazy and happy. The instructions are as follows: “Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me because I’m interested in seeing what books my friends choose.” The list is in order of how I thought of it, not how I read it. Reply in a comment if you so desire. (Thanks for the tag, Jen!)

1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
3. The Bridge by Iain Banks
4. Justine by Lawrence Durrell
5. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
6. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
7. Demian by Hermann Hesse
8. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
9. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
10. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
11. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
12. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
13. White Apples by Jonathan Carroll
14. Black Wine by Candas Jane Dorsey
15. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

After writing like this for nearly eleven years, I have run out of titles, so I am recycling random things I hear that stick in my brain.

Brain, brain, brain: offline life has become a morass of the brain. First it was grad school applications, then the short story that took over my subconscious, and now an impending civil service examination.

Then there is the reading list: Enduring Love (Ian McEwan), Tricked (Alex Robinson), and more than a few others. Last night, we even watched a movie, “The Visitor”, so uncommon for us as we have devoted all our DVD time to “Battlestar Galactica” for months now.

Aside from writing, I have lost the urge to think creatively, and have not picked up a puzzle in months, nor have I started one of the myriad knitting projects my mother so thoughtfully sent me. My games lie fallow. I suspect this preponderance of linear thinking over non-linear comes from a sedentary lifestyle. Correcting this is my next order of business.

The details of two important events in my near future remain undecided — graduate school and the wedding — so I rely instead on the certainty that they will happen. For someone as obsessed with the minutiae as I am, this reliance does not come easily, but it comes.

I will close with a few online tidbits:

• Hunch: asks you simple questions, then gives you clear advice.
• F.lux: adjusts the color of your computer display to the time of day.
• unlibrarian: is my tumblelog, which is where you will find my random silliness.

After our “creative hiatus” of over two years, Matt is not rusty, but I sure am. In this episode, he is charming and funny, while I am bitter and annoying. My opinions on vampire novels are sure to alienate the whole family! Don’t miss this!