I got the chance to do a little product testing on a new Volvo, which was pretty exciting. I mean, I know Iraq is on fire, and that is a kind of exciting, but this was a little exciting. A friend of mine got given the car for a magazine piece, with the mandate to test it out for a two week period. So I got to put it through its paces, and we stopped occaisionally to take pictures of the action.

I also finished my boating training, so I think I am ready to re-read Herman Melville, to get in the spirit before I officially go out and drown in my little whaling boat. Actually, as long as I'm reporting minutae, I went and had some Bhutanese food, which would hardly seem like news, except I had some kind of fermented tea salad, which was delicious, and got my heart racing out of control for about five hours afterward. Which, I guess, is what you get for eating fermented tea.

In case you are wondering what fermented tea looks like, it sort of looks like green excrement.

Two nights earlier, I went out to dinner and had some kind of food called tree ears. It was Chinese food. I'm not sure what they tasted like, since they were in with a bunch of other ingredients. That dinner was before going out dancing, though first we hit a bar. The whole issue of going out dancing is one which really sounds better than it is, because by the time you get there, it rarely meets with your expectations. Even though I like the idea in theory, horrible people are invariably present in such places.