After a day a somewhat better day at the office (one particular hour notwithstanding), this evening was actually really quite enjoyable.

I took a nice evening walk through the neighborhood, stopping first at the local Olssons bookstore to browse the shelves and bullshit a little bit with the geeky, funky staff, who are always good at recommending new books I always seem to enjoy. This week, I seemed to impress all with being able to quote chapter and verse on the mentions of Womp Rats in Star Wars, as the original trilogy had been playing on a loop in the DVD section of the store for several days. This led to a discussion of the merits of the various expanded universe novels, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog, and how the science fiction section of the store is languishing because the manager believes the store is a “serious” bookstore; a belief that, given the predominant topics of conversation, seems rather misguided.

Anyway, this week’s recommendation (which gets added to my pile) is The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar; featuring a foreword by Neil Gaiman. Looks to be some nice droll Scottish urban fantasy; which is always fun.

After the bookstore, I met a few co-worker friends for dinner at Bebo Trattoria, a nice little italian place with a HUGE wood fired pizza oven, run by Chef Roberto Donna, a two time competitor (and one time champion) on Iron Chef America. Unfortunately, the proprietor was out of town this evening, so my pizze melanzane e olive (pizza with eggplant and black olives) wasn’t personally prepared by an Iron Chef…maybe next time. The food was, however, uniformly excellent, and not at all expensive. If you’re in the neighborhood, give it a try!

And that’s all I’ve got.