I went to visit a friend in Oakland, and all day long all I wanted to hear was REM's "Losing my Religion". So now I have "Out of Time" on, which has my favourite REM song "Shiny Happy People". Not sure why I wanted to hear an REM song all day though.

My brother called me tonight, and he is just the greatest and sweetest brother a girl could have. His birthday is on Tuesday, and he's sending me some Hawaiiana stuff for my kitchen because he knows I'm collecting that kind of stuff. He was the sweetest kid as a child, and he hasn't lost any of his sweetness.

He started his own appraissal business, and thank god he is making money. I was worried that he wasn't going to be able to make the business work. Him and his antiques though. He said he just bought a $1,200 antique bed that reaches to the ceiling, like a king's bed or something. What a riot!

My friend and I went to the Alameda Point Antiques fair this morning. It was do dang hot in Alameda. I'm not much into antiques, but my brother would have loved it. The first car we saw while pulling into the lot, was a truck loaded with a pile of furniture. You can buy a ton of old stuff at this place. One guy was just selling old telephones.

I don't know. I really still like very new functional furniture, although some of the better and more expensive pieces of antique furniture has the kind of work you just can't find anymore. I think the best thing to get there was old painting, and maybe old jewelry from the flapper era. It was hard to tell though, because after an hour I was on sensory overload, and just was barely taking everything in. Plus it was so darn hot, that it was hard to concentrate.

The antiques fair is only once a month, and I think I want to go again. My friend had never been and neither had I, so we just wanted to look at everything and get a feel for prices and to see what people were selling. It was much for fun that Ebay because you could actually see the stuff you were purchasing. I did see a nice print from the Meiji era, but I saw better prints at the Asian Art Antiques dealers show last year.

I think if you know what you want and what to look for, you can find good deals. The whole thing reminded me of "Th Antiques Road Show". I used to be so addicted to watching that show, I had wean myself off. I just was so fascinated by the stories the dealers had about all the pieces. The history was more interesting than the pieces themselves.