I am amazed nearly every day at what music gets put into commercials nowadays. Yesterday I heard The Magnetic Fields' "I Think I Need A New Heart" playing in an ad for Cesar canned dog food. And an Iron and Wine song has been in an M&Ms ad for months. I hate those stupid anthropomorphic candy blobs, so that ad makes me sad. Usually recognizing music in ads doesn't bother me, though; the artists are making money off of what they do.

I am in the middle of doing all of the various small tasks that must be done before a long-ish trip. I'm leaving on vacation this weekend for a 10-day trip to California. It's for a family wedding the weekend afterwards. My nuclear family decided to make a vacation out of it, and here we are, all ready to JetBlue over to Oakland airport Saturday morning, me and my parents, my sister and her husband, and my niece. The trip is divided into thirds: We're starting at Asilomar, then going to San Francisco, and ending up in a town near SF called Lafayette. Not all of the places we're staying have internet access, so I might be hard to reach. I'd love to post photos as I go, as I'm sure I'll be taking a lot of them, and of course they will be awesome.