A long time ago I took a weaving class. This was in the same era I took a pottery class (slab pottery, not using the wheel, shockingly pathetic results), aerobics (ruined my knees forever jumping up and down on really hard surfaces), and a quilting class. While learning weaving, the teacher related that the best way to judge any woven item is by its selvages (the finished side edges of the piece, not the top or bottom), because this shows how skilled the weaver is. I thought of this today while folding my towels – they’ve worn well (bought from Lands End at least one bathroom color scheme ago), but the selvages are stretched out in some places, tight and bunchy in others. I suppose that after about 10 years of use this can be forgiven. And it seems a perfect reason to buy new towels.

I did not purchase any new towels last weekend, but I did buy two ill-considered wastebaskets. One is too small and girly (the fact that I found it in Target's children's furniture section should have been a clue). The other is an interesting, albeit impractical, design. It's made of a circular, solid silver-colored bottom connected to a set of spokes that are attached ro a rim at the top. The space between the spokes is open, facilitating discarded objects falling out of the wastebasket, as Rebecca predicted they would when I bought it. Some of the spokes are slightly wavy and have wire flowers on them, but the girly-ness of this one is not part of the problem. The real issue, far more of a problem than the trash-leakage, is that you can see the refuse from across the room. With other wastebaskets you can't see this unless you're right on top of them (infrequently) or they're overflowing (frequency is dependent upon how often I can coerce the kids into emptying the wastebaskets). I've taken to putting something in front of it to disguise the contents. Post-purchase dissonance is a wonderful thing.

Speaking of design, Edward Tufte wrote an amazing book called Visual Explanations that explores how the presentation of information can influence the perception of the meaning of that information. One of the most compelling examples he uses is the Challenger explosion - the manner in which the data about the failure rare of the O-rings at low temperatures was so poorly presented that it affected the decision to launch the shuttle despite the exceptionally cold weather.

Exercise: There is simply no good reason this says "nothing" again for today.

Books: I picked up the newest Janet Evanovich book from the library today after work. Her books definitely fall into the category of guilty pleasures, but they're set in the city I was born in and where my parents and grandparents both lived and worked for some time.

Music: Will these Lid Rock things from the movie theater be sold on EBay anytime soon?

Movies: MIB II. Despite having seen this movie before, I had no recollection of it. I must have been neuralyzed. Donnie Darko is on now. I would watch Jake Gyllenhaal (or his sister) reading a poorly translated instruction manual for assembling a water heater.

Cats: They are becoming used to their new diet food.

Dreams: Daydreams about living in Big Sur don't count, do they?