In a continuing quest to get rid of daily headaches that have plagued me for, oh, 40 years or so, I was in San Francisco yesterday at Kaiser's Chronic Pain Unit. Interesting procedure: you see a psychologist, a physical therapist and an M.D.; they confer; you meet together and form a plan for treatment. I'd already been through this at my local Kaiser, but they have a more advanced program in San Francisco, so I had to do this all over again. Long day.

But in the middle of the day, after you meet with all three of the medical professionals, they send you off to have lunch while they confer. I had a good 2-1/2 hour break and discovered that, lo and behold, Green Apple Books was just a block and a half away. Green Apple is one of the best bookstores in San Francisco, carrying both new and used books, and I hadn't been in quite some time, so I had a picnic. Here's the ant-free haul:

I'm looking forward to reading Wizard of the Crow as part of my third-quarter project of reading works in translation. And I'm delighted to have found Charles Stross's The Jennifer Morgue in a first edition from Golden Gryphon Press, one of my favorite small presses.

Lots of good reading ahead.