11/21: Received this year's annual gift from Business Innovation: service and a receiver for Sirius satellite radio. Kind of a funky piece of work, but mostly of interest to me for the breadth of NBA coverage.

11/19: Visited Dita and Matt's for the first time to get emasculated in a poker game.

11/16: Attended my first Wednesday evening meditation and dharma talk at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center. The talk was one in a series on self-knowing by Larry Rosenberg.

11/14: After spending nearly a year printing 14 stories relating our Black Idol story arc, in DargonZine 18-7 we have reached the halfway point. The cursed idol has just arrived in the city of Dargon, so look for the implications of that to be depicted in future issues.

11/11: I was given the opportunity to teach a facilitation training to the guys at Business Innovation; I enjoyed it and think I did a pretty good job.

11/10: Visited the excellent Federal Wine & Spirits for the first time for an outright amazing scotch whisky tasting. I came away not only with the Bruichladdich 12 that I'd meant to buy, but also an incredibly rare (and expensive) 21 year old cask strength Port Ellen! Full writeup here.

11/9: Completed my study of the famous Buddhist ruler with John Strong's "The Legend of King Asoka: A Study and Translation of the Asokavadana".

11/8: Went to a talk by Ajahn Brahm, author of "Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung?: Inspiring Stories for Welcoming Life's Difficulties" and abbot of the Buddhist Society of Western Australia, whose entertaining and insightful weekly Dharma talks I've had the pleasure of hearing via podcasts.

11/5: Attended the Pan-Mass Challenge check presentation for the first time, which was a very proud and inspiring moment. A full writeup appears in my cycling journal here. Then I proceeded over to the Dana-Farber to check out the PMC Bridge for the first time, as well.

11/2: Created a new Pan-Mass Challenge community on LiveJournal for PMC riders, volunteers, sponsors, and supporters. Then had dinner at Chili's with Jeanie on the eve of her departure for NYC and then back to Austin.

10/29: Spent my birthday watching Boston's first snowfall of the year, then dinner at Addis Red Sea and free birthday ice cream at Ben & Jerry's with old friend Jeanie and her associate Bernie.

10/27: Brought a Highland Park 12 to my first of Fallix friendly Scotch nights, sampling a number of fine whiskies and meeting a bunch of cool people, including our happy hostess Becky the Kalap.

10/25: Having heard rumors of an Indian emperor whose rule was consistent with the precepts of Buddhism, I began my investigation with "Asoka Maurya" by Balkrishna Govind Gokhale.

10/22: Played my first game of Hold 'Em at Jer's and came away richer after just missing winning it all by the turn of a friendly card.

10/18: Caught distinguished gender theorist Judith Butler at a poorly-planned, umm-filled, and singularly pointless and rambling lecture put on by the Harvard Book Store.

10/15: DargonZine's ongoing Black Idol story arc continued in DargonZine 18-6, continuing Jon Evans' "Idol Hands" and beginning Dafydd's "Darningfly Caper".

10/14: Read "Design of Everyday Things" author Donald Norman's new book "Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things". The first half was truly an interesting discussion of the importance of the visceral and subconscious in design, while the second half seemed to be a ludicrous polemic on the importance of imbuing robots with emotions.

10/10: Even though rain kept me from riding it for a week, today I brought home my new pride and joy: an all-carbon fiber, 61cm 2006 Specialized Roubaix Expert Triple, and promptly gave it the name "Plastic Bullet" after a Shriekback song. Time to go: my ride's here!

10/8: Read Claude Steiner's long-titled contribution to the body of Transactional Anaysis literature, "Achieving Emotional Literacy: A Personal Program to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence". Not bad, but again it wasn't quite what I was hoping for...

10/7: Went to a Lowell Lecture at Boston's Museum of Science to a very interesting talk given by art critic and "Father of the Fractal" Benoit Mandelbrot.

10/5: Had a very successful business trip to scenc Goshen, New York...

10/3: Just a few days after seeing very popular fantasy humorist Terry Pratchett speak at Harvard, I read his most recent paperback, "Going Postal".