Geek heaven: Last night while the girls were busy watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks in honor of Halloween (Kiki’s Delivery Service was already checked out), I assembled a pair of speakers I built back pre-parenthood but had never gotten around to wiring, and hooked them up to an ancient, cranky vacuum-tube amplifier I had in the closet. Nothing makes music sound better than a brand-new pair of homemade speakers and the smell of burning dust.

After three hours the amplifier developed a short and blew its fuse (which made an awesome melting-wire noise in the middle of a Mos Def song). But what a great three hours!