One of my earliest and vividest memories is the time I sneaked out of bed and into the dim hallway with a box of crayons. The flickering television screen in the adjacent living room cast just enough light to let me see what I was doing. I chose the blue and red crayons and set to work on my vast canvas of a wall. On one end there was grandma's house in the United States, and on the other our new apartment in Germany. Between the two I drew a series of squiggly lines depicting our recent journey. In my view it had been a very long, confusing trip, so the more squiggles the better. Cars had been involved, and planes. And trains. And lefts and rights and straight aheads and circles and who even knows what else.

I added more squiggles for good measure.

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I’m about to get a new phone, you guys. A smart phone. I'm so close I can taste it. And it tastes like... beryllium and lead and zinc, with a dash of brominated flame retardants!

God, it tastes delicious.

[sheepishly removes old phone from mouth]

[wipes off screen with sleeve]

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I have a problem.

I like to steal glass and ceramic wares from restaurants. I couldn't even bring myself steal a pack of gum with my cousin when I was a kid, and here I am sneaking crockery in my bag.

My biggest weakness is for bar glasses — especially cocktail-style. I have been known to take other things, like a ridiculously tiny vintage-looking plate for which I can't ever imagine myself having a need. Yet I don't even need to use them. I just like to think about them. And therein, my friends, lies my downfall. I’m a sucker for things that make me think of other times and other lives. Illicit tokens of nostalgia, if you will.

Far and away my most nostalgic piece of dishware is a mug. It formerly lived a life of hard, greasy service at Chuck and Jane's restaurant in Port Austin, Michigan.

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When I was six, my parents and I moved back to the U.S. after being stationed in Germany for three years. What followed was a sincere attempt on the part of our extended family to reassimilate us into American pop culture, where we rightfully belonged. My aunt actually used her brand-new camcorder to film my parents watching television in the living room of her suburban New Jersey home, as if they were the subjects of an anthropological study of people raised in cultural isolation. I saw the footage years later: "Here's a car commercial," my aunt narrates off-camera as a classically 1980s car commercial featuring a loud, obnoxious voice personality appears on the screen. "Huh," my mother mutters, arms crossed on the couch. My dad looks on in bemusement. And six-year-old me is writhing around spastically on the carpet in front of them, pulling every amateur acrobatic trick in the book, because OMG, I have an audience and look at me look at me watch.

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On Saturday I went out with friends for an early birthday dinner at an Argentinian restaurant. We'd finished eating and were lingering over drinks. Suddenly, a flan with a candle jammed through the top appeared in front of me just as the band broke into the familiar strains of  the Happy Birthday song.

The bandleader, a large man in a gray ponytail and a Panama Jack hat seated behind a keyboard, called me "Liz."

Whoever Liz is, I hope she wasn't pissed that I got her birthday flan.

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I was supposed to be leaving. It was already late afternoon and I was facing a long drive back up the coast. But instead of heading west on the 10, I reflexively hooked a right. East.

I exited once to take some pictures of a derelict sign and stopped in a ramshackle antique store. I bought an old Pepsi glass. Maybe I should have turned around then, but I had to keep going.

I drove out to where the Inland Empire tapers off and the windmills line up and stretch into vast fields, which for me has always been the point where L.A. finally ends and the desert begins.

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We have a big 'ol TV. Big 'ol. TV. It is HD. It is flat panel. Did I mention it was big?¹

We inherited this thing via Beau's parents, who somehow did not have a need for it anymore. And we have been pleased. Greatly.

But lately it's been in a Bad Mood. TV has decided the red channel on the RGB picture feed is not its friend. Result: people appear jaundiced and/or exceedingly overtanned. Food looks unappetizing. We tried replacing the HDMI cables; no luck. If anything, it's only gotten worse. Sometimes it just flickers back and forth between red, no red. This hurts my brain.

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