One of the perks of working at Amazon is that we get to meet some of the authors and musicians whose works we sell on the site (as part of the Author Fishbowl series, not to be confused with Amazon Fishbowl with Bill Maher, which stole the internal fishbowl name). Last Friday, I got to meet Douglas Coupland, author of Generation X and Microserfs. He was on a book tour promoting his new book, JPod. (We got free signed copies! Woot!)

Very interesting guy. Very strange guy. The eclecticness of his novels -- he will occasionally take a break from the story and just fill a page or three with random words and phrases in varying sizes -- is not some cute act; he is like this in real life.

I don't know what to compare the experience to. Maybe it's like meeting a crack addict who is just coherent enough to lucidly convey the train of thoughts that are rushing through his head.

Not much else to report. I was the primary on call last week, which meant I got very little sleep. Tamara and I went hiking yesterday on the Olympic Peninsula, this time up Royal Creek near the Dungeness River (which feeds Dungeness Bay near the old town of Dungeness, which lends its name to a species you've probably heard of, Dungeness Crab).