Raves for Faves

Brought to you by Fridays, Coca Cola, Snickers, the letter K, the color blue, the number 7, and a few more of my favorite things.

Favorite former employer: Today's Health & Wellness magazine, which brought home both gold and silver medals from last night's MMPA Awards. X-treme high fives to art director Nancy Eato (gold: best use of visuals), news editor Kelly Rice (silver: best regular column/department), and El Queso Grande Claire Lewis on the well-deserved honors!

Congrats also to Jen Buege for her Cooking Club e-newsletter (gold: digital media) and Grassmaster Amy Sitze for Gardening How-To's bronze medal (best use visuals). I'm proud to know you all.

Favorite guilty pleasure: washing down leftover Halloween candy with Bass Ale. Hey, it's a great way to toast my friends' accomplishments.

Favorite TV show I never saw: Firefly. Thanks to the Miracle of Netflix, I'm able to watch in full, without commercials, every episode of this addictive sci-fi/western series. I didn't see it during its short broadcast run, since I don't get that channel, but once Senor Editor convinced me to see Serenity, the movie based on the show, a few weeks ago, I had to have it. I've been enjoying regular doses of Captain Tightpants and his motley crew ever since. Shiny!

Favorite new music find: The Twin Cities' best-kept secret, Four Shadow. This a cappella quartet can be found performing at the Valleyfair amusement park during the summer and touring the Midwest during the off-season. Their sweet sound, sharp arrangements, high energy, and less-is-more approach to vocal percussion push them toward the top of my playlist. Plus, the guys are cute. I hope to catch them in concert sometime this winter. In the meantime, go visit their website and download the free songs they offer there. I especially recommend "Breathin'."

Favorite new — make that new favorite — mystery writer: Sujata Massey, who's not new to the scene at all, only new to me. (Yeah, like everything else on this list.) Sixty pages into her 1997 debut novel The Salaryman's Wife, featuring a Japanese-American woman living in Tokyo, I already know I'll buy everything else she has written. Wit and vigor keep Massey's lessons on Japanese culture from seeming preachy.

Favorite geek crush: sci-fi writer Cory Doctorow. Doctorow is just about the most accessible author working today. He podcasts himself reading from his very interesting works, so I've listened to some of that. Salon.com is currently publishing his novella Themepunks in serial form, so I've been keeping up with that, too. Salon.com also published his short story Anda's Game, so I checked the archives and read that. (50 points to the first person to tell me why that's a very clever title for a sci-fi short story; 100 if you've read it and can expound.) Visit www.craphound.com for literary coolness.

Perhaps the coolest thing, though, aside from Doctorow's excellent stories, is his firm belief that his work should be freely accessible to anyone, anytime. So if you go to this page, you can sign up for an RSS feed that will magically supply your RSS aggregator with a daily chapter or three from his unsettling novel Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. He calls it a "cool remix." I call it totally awesome. Tap into the glory that is Cory.

Favorite news commentary: Broadsheet, a new feature at Salon.com. Broadsheet offers savvy commentary on current events written by and for smart women — and men.

Favorite thing about being on vacation, even if this is my last free weekday before returning to work: I'm writing today's blog from the comfort of my bed, iBook on my lap, cats at my feet, tea at my elbow, music playing softly in the background. The only reason I got out of bed at all today was because I needed to use the bathroom. I've thoroughly enjoyed my month of sloth, which has passed much too quickly.

"What? Where's your Protestant work ethic?" you cry.

Dude. I am so not Protestant.

Everyone deserves a chance to relax and simply be, without hurry or obligation. I'm glad I've had one. You should try it — and everything else I've mentioned here.

Today around the world: November 4 is Constitution Day in Tonga.