They made it all out of books. Bedroom furniture, every last bit of it, constructed from discarded reading material. Where else but MIT during IAP? (via Yahoo Picks)

Five Years. I’ve been doing this for five years, the majority of it five days a week (more accurately, five nights a week). In that space of time I’ve worked for 3 companies, lived in 3 abodes, gotten married, moved to the state of Washington, and had a baby. But actually when I think about the greater hobby of writing, I’ve been doing that for most of my life. I’ve been journaling, writing letters (more email now), and generally messing around with words for a really long time. And that’s why when I looked back for a definitive weblog posting to feature today, I picked out this one that weaves together typewriters and Internet nostalgia (the links are all broken now but the sentiments stand). My parents brought me that manual typewriter recently and it’s on our dining room table. If the power ever cuts out, I can still keep tapping away, provided I don’t run out of ink and paper. As always, thanks for reading.

Look at all the flavors of Hershey’s Kisses out now. Two limited edition flavors, Strawberry Creme and Double Fudge, were available this past summer. And I still haven’t had Rich Dark. I’m curious to try Mint Chocolate, available during the holiday season. But I’m actually more interested in trying a Mint Kit Kat, which hasn’t appeared on their website yet but was advertised in this week’s Target circular.

The SF Chronicle’s Food staff has assembled what they consider the essential items for a kitchen. The list is a result of their task to outfit The Chronicle Cooking School. I’m missing a few tools from their list but nothing I consider essential, and of course I don’t have all the high-end brands. Oddly, I have yet to acquire a Chinese strainer (aka spider), probably because I rarely require one. And although I always gaze longingly at the Le Creuset dutch ovens, I can’t justify the cost for how rarely I would use one.

Iris Chang, author of “The Rape of Nanking,” committed suicide earlier this week. She was found in her car on a rural road south of Los Gatos, CA. Her book had opened to the world the atrocities of the Japanese invasion of Nanjing, China in 1937. In Chang’s NY Times obituary her husband revealed that her suicide note was “painstakingly written, edited and rewritten.” She was 36.

I overdosed on Andrew Lloyd Webber some time ago and lost interest, but an article on Minnie Driver’s singing career noted that she’s in the Phantom of the Opera movie (as Carlotta, not Christine) so I just had to take a look at the movie news. A new trailer was released on Yahoo this week and it’s different (and larger) from the one currently on the official site (it has actual singing in it; the movie site will post the trailer on Monday). By the way, Driver doesn’t actually sing in the movie. And while we’re talking musicals, the NY Times review of Brooke Shields as Ruth in Wonderful Town was rather nice actually.

I rarely saw orb weaving spiders as a kid in Connecticut, so they seemed special. Here in our Washington neighborhood they are literally everywhere, every bush, every nook. And, as my husband noticed, they are even helping us forecast the weather.

The New York Times’ “T Living” aka the Fall Style Magazine was edited by Amanda Hesser and is a foodie’s treasure trove. Short paragraphs (hmmmm kinda weblog-like!) abound on various food trends and discoveries, many accompanied by photos. There was a weird moment for me while reading “The Drinking Life” when the phrase “Wilton women in hair bands and shiny black pumps” popped up (I grew up in Wilton, CT). I know those women — are they really still wearing hair bands? Or is it a 1980s retro thing?

America’s Scenic Byways catalogs the 96 distinct and diverse roads designated by the U.S. Secretary of Transportation. America’s Byways™ include the National Scenic Byways and All-American Roads. The one I think of as “mine” is of course the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut.

The NY Times discovers tool lending libraries, Berkeley’s in particular. I’ve dug out from my Jan 2003 archive the links I had for online catalogs and updated them here: San Francisco’s seems to be in transition but may be open again soon, Berkeley’s tool library has a PDF list of tools, here’s Oakland’s list. The article also mentions Grosse Point and a new one in Portland, OR.