The problem with wanting to learn everything is that everything I learn makes me want to learn more of everything else.

I picked up some paperback Homer, both Odyssey and Iliad, at the big library book sale this year. Then, somewhere, I stumbled across a book called Homeric Moments: Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey and the Iliad. (I think I was just poking around in the library's online catalog.)

I really, really enjoyed reading Sue Hubbell's A Book of Bees, so I picked up A Country Year at the library.

I'm about two-thirds of the way through - partway into the "Winter" chapter - and I keep putting off reading more, because I don't want it to end.

Sue is such a lovely writer. Her voice is at once no-nonsense and filled with awe and delighted humility at the wonders of the natural world around her.

I had the great pleasure of seeing Sweeney Todd at ACT this week. It was actually my second time - I was so amazed the first time that I wanted to see it again. I'm glad I did (although I had a better view the first time).

Last weekend was was one of my personal holidays - the annual Big Book Sale put on by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.

I like to go on the final Sunday, which is dollar day - every book is a buck.

Past years, I've sometimes hovered around the $200 mark, which is a lot of books if you live in an already-book-filled apartment.

I had a chance to visit the Hungry i exhibit at the San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum recently. I really like the PALM - I saw "Kronos at 30" and "Maestro!," and I really wanted to see "In Character - Actors Acting." It's one of those terrific, almost hidden treasures you find in great cities like San Francisco.

The audio and video stations had some real finds - terrific songs, many by artists I'd never heard of, like Stan Wilson.

I stopped going to the movies a few years ago. Sure, I made exceptions for the Lord of the Rings movies, but for everything else, I've had no problem waiting for things to come out on DVD.

Going to the movies had become unfun.

The commercials were the worst - up until the phenomenally annoying MPAA propaganda bits; between those and the ads, I spent the first half of every movie in a state of profound annoyance. Mix in the cell phones ringing, the rude people talking throughout the film, and the prices, and I found the whole thing unpleasant.

Wow - I am really enjoying this book.

I've been a fan of Andy Hertzfeld since the early days of the Macintosh, and it's great to see the roles he plays in this story, and to get acquainted with Mitch Kapor, someone I hadn't known much about. (I love that Lotus was named for the lotus plant, a nod toward Buddhism.)

I've developed a lovely evening ritual.

Before falling asleep, I read

• a Billy Collins poem (I'm reading through my six Billy Collins books, in order)
• another poem or two (currently from the Garrison Keillor Good Poems anthology; I'm not a huge Keillor fan, but I like this collection)
• a short piece of prose (right now, that's a chapter from The Flight of the Iguana, which I am really enjoying)

I am a huge Tom Stoppard fan. I can't wait for the day I get to see all three parts of Coast of Utopia. (I have the published plays - they're wonderful.) I've seen Arcadia four times. I love re-reading his work.

So I was really looking forward to Ira Nadel's Tom Stoppard: A Life.

A luscious napoleon from the fabulous French bakery led me on a click-fest through Wikipedia. Reading about mille-feuille pastries, I saw a link to the Galaktoboureko pastry. My mind on the mille in mille-feuille, I wondered whether the "galac" part of galactoboureko might mean "many" or "million", something like the "mille" in my Napoleon.

So off I went to the OED to get a good grasp of the etymology.