It turns out that this is the week my brother Josh was coming to visit — Matt and I spent Wednesday night introducing him to Burnout 3, one of the greatest racing games ever, and he's probably on his way back up north right about now.

Yesterday night Josh and I saw Stardust, which I knew for months only as "the Neil Gaiman movie." It was very good, with great characters and an old-school fantasy feel that reminded me a bit of Willow. Judging from the attached previews, magic and wonder are all the rage right now.

(I probably would never had seen Stardust had Josh not suggested it, but I'm still a bit frustrated that I have one less Ideal Date Movie in the can. I don't have too much expertise in Date Movie Theory, but I think this would have entertained any sufficiently awesome girl.)

((If you're completely unfamiliar with the discipline: in Date Movie Theory girls are classified d1, d2, d3, etc., by how many dates you've been on. Movies are likewise classified d1, d3+, d5, etc. That's the basic framework, but in the academic journals things get much more complicated.))

Afterwards I took 36 east instead of west from Oakdale, and by the time I had realized my mistake we were on Main Street in some random town. It was there that I finally learned what an ass-move jaywalking can be: a guy decided to hold up all the traffic behind me while I waited for him to cross.

I read an article on sleep the other day and I've been trying to follow some of the advice: basically, cutting out the computer and television late at night and reading instead. I'm reading some well-written contemporary fiction at the moment, and it's amazing how even just a small dose makes me feel like I'm coming out of a stupor.

Sci-fi novels — or really any novel that's not in some sense about the prose — do not have nearly as powerful a rejuvenating effect.