A recent visit East provided the welcome chance to catch up with old friends, and removed any doubt that might have lingered that Fall is indeed in full swing. Noteworthy dining experiences included visits to Yankee Doodle (home of the buttered grilled donut!) and Louis' Lunch (mouthwatering medium-rare burgers born of cast-iron vertical flame broilers, served on white toast sans catsup .... Mmmm, good!). My visit also included a bit of ritual fire-bringing, as I upgraded a friend's iBook to Panther and hooked him up with the iSight that has since provided a whole new way for us to keep in touch... It feels great to see people enjoying the results of all the work that went into Panther, including the occasional rave about some feature I'd almost forgotten was new. Go team! :-)

Moviegoing Update: I thoroughly enjoyed and heartily recommend Master and Commander. Pretty top-notch performances all around, and certainly the most riveting up-close portrayal of ship-to-ship combat I've yet seen. Worth catching on the big screen IMHO.

Rentable-classics-wise, the TV recently discovered for me the 1954 Sabrina (headlining Humphrey Bogart as Linus, Audrey Hepburn as Sabrina, and William Holden as David), which entails enough plot and time period differences relative to the 1995 Harrison Ford remake to make it worth the watch, even if you've seen the latter. Highlights included some characters and fine bits of comedy that had been omitted from the remake, including the egg-cracking antics of Sabrina's Parisian cooking school instructor, and the elder Oliver Larrabee, with his classic line: "20th century? I could have picked any century out of a hat and got a better one!" :-) Add to that the stellar cast and it's quite a treat...

With some much-needed vacation time in hand, I'm enjoying the opportunity to take walks around the neighborhood, cook a decent meal, read, and pick up the guitar again. Thanks to encouragement and a flashcard training app provided by a friend, musician, and Cocoa developer, I'm attempting once more to slay the music theory dragon that has eluded me many times in the past. This time I'll get it! :-)

Current listening: Norah Jones & The Peter Malick Group - New York City; Fleetwood Mac - Rumours; 2raumwohnung - Kommt Zusammen remix album

Current reading: The Aquariums of Pyongyang