I always come back from the Society for Molecular Imaging meetings with tons of ideas, and this time was no different. While i'm temporarily occupied writing a short grant proposal by Thursday, i've given my postdocs a slate of new experiments to try out. It's good to be the king, no? I suppose, except for that "buck stops here" problem.

Got an advance of the new Franz Ferdinand album You Could Have It So Much Better. The single on the radio at the moment, "Do You Want To", didn't really do much for me, but i must say it sits well in the encouraging first half of the album. The second half of the record seems to drag a bit, but then their first album took a while to grow on me before i found it thoroughly mesmerizing.

I impressed V in Europe by being especially quick to name all the music we heard on the radio, including Hard-Fi, Doves, and others. For someone who gets routinely lambasted for not listening to any new music, i was definitely putting her to shame. Bwa ha ha.

I caught up on the recent Chelsea highlights today. Despite the fact that we have a 100% record in all competitions this season and that we've yet to concede a goal anywhere, we're certainly not playing with any particular verve or dominance. I keep reminding myself that the same was true last season before the squad clicked (sparked by the mid-season arrival of the previously injured Arjen Robben) and we began to impose our will. This season Robben's in the thick of things, but everyone seems out of sorts, including previous stalwarts like Frank Lampard. José Mourinho has shown significant savvy before in getting his squads to achieve at their maximum level, and i trust him to do it again. I just hope it's soon because i'm getting sick of reading the press's criticism of boring, boring Chelsea. On the upside, the protracted transfer saga and eventual steep price tag of Michael Essien looks to be justified by his rapid establishment in the Blues' midfield. Hernan Crespo again seems to be struggling to find his form in England, however Didier Drogba is quietly shrugging off his critics and consistently putting the ball in the back of the net.

Wayne Rooney sent off again today in Man United's lackluster opening Champions League draw against Villareal. All matured now, as he said before the season? Don't bet on it.

Writing about the novels i read on the plane during our trip, i realized my reading-for-pleasure has come to a complete standstill since returning to California. The lack of free time makes me pine for the days of reading on the T for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. To rectify the situation, i picked up two books on the history of science at Barnes & Noble last night. History of science, you say? Pleasure reading? Absolutely! This is coming from someone whose most-watched TV network these days is the History Channel.

Experimenting with the new iTunes (v5.0) i downloaded yesterday it seems more less like the last one (4.8? 4.9? I can't remember), with a slightly trimmed-down user interface (in terms of real estate, not function). My listening statistics script still works fine, although (it may be my imagination) i seem to detect it running a bit slower. Veronica became entranced with the new iPod Nano after seeing it on the internet while in Europe, and is more or less resolved to getting one to replace my old 20 GB generation 2 iPod that she'd been using. I must admit, they're dead sexy. However, at this point what i need is a bigger iPod (say, 250 GB? You hardware development types listening?) rather than a more aesthetically-pleasing but smaller capacity one.