My cold was mercifully mild and short in duration. I felt well by Thursday afternoon. I'm still drinking the wild berry zinger tea, but that's just because it tastes good. And it's a hot liquid, which is nice when the days are cool, as they have been since midweek.

I bought a Scrabble board yesterday afternoon, and played a game with Mike and Anant last night. I managed to play hyssop on a triple word score, which made my day. I enjoyed playing, as I think Mike did. It seems Anant is less fond of Scrabble.

I visited amazon.com this morning to look up information on a few recently released books. It's amusing to see Amazon's recommendations. I thought the software might recommend Quicksilver, the new Stephenson book, but instead it suggested Moving Toward Stillness by Lowry and Elements of the Theory of Functions and Functional Analysis by Kolmogorov and Fomin. I suppose I can forgive the failure of Amazon's software to read my mind, since the recommendations are based on limited information and since it still manages to recommend books that I find interesting. And I do think both functional analysis and Lowry's essayson Japanese martial arts are interesting.

The recall election takes place in only a few days now. I will only listen to the news about it on the radio every once in a while, since otherwise I'm sure my eyes will roll right out of their sockets. It's a campaign of style over substance. I do not plan to vote for Schwarzenneger, but that's because I don't know his position on many issues, and because his rhetoric is ludicrous. I did not come to such a decision because I felt infuriated by the allegations of harrassment against him, nor because he might believe Hitler was an effective public speaker. After all, Hitler was persuasive; otherwise, he would not have been nearly the danger that he was. If anything, I'm irked by attack ads and quotes from people who probably doubt the accusations as much as I do.

I feel like I spent the week helping other people out more than working on my own tasks. I like to feel like I've been helpful, and I don't mind spending some time to provide assistance. But I'm glad that I have the flexibility to sometimes work from home, where it's much less likely that someone will knock on my door and interrupt my train of thought. And I'm also glad to have friends who will visit for dinner, and books to read, and other ways to take evening breaks from technical tasks -- my own and others'.

• Currently drinking: Black coffee