I'm a lousy shopper. Actually, I'm not just lousy, I hate it and I'm lousy and this goes through my head again and again as I walk through the megamall looking at one stupid store after another. I work myself into a frenzy this way and the longer I shop the worse it gets.

Today's visit to Providence Place for an important birthday present (my wife's) was outstanding. By the time I hit the third level I have must have had a look of desperation in my eye as I walked into yet another "unique and upscale" clothing store. The woman looked at me as if I was bleeding and said, "are you looking for someone?" I said "yes" before I understood that she meant was I looking for my wife who was lost. "No, I'm looking for something to buy my wife." She was helpful but by that time I was too far gone and everything just looked the same and way too small. I backed out, apologizing, and wandered through jewelry stores, stupid gifts, stupid heavy metal stores, and finally ended up at a place that sells stuff you might find at a local arts fest. By this time it was 5:59 on a Sunday and I had exactly one minute before the store would close. I bought a coffee canister for $65 knowing all the time that my wife would think it was "inappropriate". Oh well. I explained to her what happened and she really understood. I was thinking that maybe we could give it to someone as a wedding present sometime. Send me an email if anyone out there in web land is getting married and you need a nice coffee canister.

I once believed in existentialism, or at least my own, uninformed version of existentialism like a fanatic. I cut through everything in my life and really looked for what was real and tried to live like a Sartrean hero. I did this for three years and eventually I got lonely and decided that maybe one Other was okay. So I toned it down and met my wife. As I've gone forward in my life, I've come to believe in connections. I have a job and meet people -- even do cold calls and software consulting, but I've never lost that sense of disgust and disorientation when I'm in the thrall of something completely false.

Anyways, this evening I had that real existential moment thinking about what happened today. I felt like the guy in Nausea looking at the people going to church or the society people or the waiter. People that were just doing, but not in a real way. People substituting a made-up life for a real life. People that had just let society or someone else make them who they were and who weren't ever going to find who they were. I saw it and I felt and I just wanted to go take a picture of a mushroom.

It looks like I've misidentified my first mushroom! Russula mariae has a whitish or cream-white spore print and and whitish gills. My little purple friend below has a purplish gills turning rust and rust colored spores.

I'm cautiously optimistic that I've found a lovely patch of "Small Chanterelle" mushrooms or Cantharellus Minor. After mis-identifying the Cort I'm learning to appreciate the slogan: "There are old mushroomers and there are bold mushroomers, but there are no old, bold mushroomers."

I cooked up some Lobster mushrooms last night that I bought from Whole Foods. They were delicious. Even my wife enjoyed them, after first insisting she see the receipt to ensure that I actually bought the mushrooms and wasn't trying to pass off one of my collecting expeditions by putting it into a shopping bag.