If you're like me

You got temporarily distracted from Lord of the Flies by Journey Through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics. Along the way, you learned about transfinite numbers and how they used to have math-offs in the Italian Renaissance. You also picked up a new book by one of your favorite authors: Spook Country, by William Gibson. As the jacket says,

Spook: Specter, ghost, revenant. Slang for "intelligence agent."

Country: In the mind or in reality. The World. The United States of America, New Improved Edition. What lies before you. What lies behind.

Spook Country: The place where we all have landed, few by choice. The place where we are learning to live.

Last, but certainly not least, a desire to deepen your professional awareness led you to begin a thousand page journey through a computer science textbook: Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools.

You have over twenty things checked out of the library. Five of them are the first season of Stargate SG-1, which you were surprised to learn is a true sequel to the movie. You have about fifteen CDs checked out, and today you heard Born To Run for the first time. You also listened to more Talking Heads songs than ever, a new Ozomatli album, and the latest Decemberists.

You took your first turkey out of the freezer on Sunday night and stuck it in a mixing bowl to thaw. Tomorrow, you will be dunking it in a five-gallon bucket filled with saltwater. Thursday, you will have your first Thanksgiving away from your parents and your in-laws.

Friday, you plan to laugh at insane shopping from the comfort of your living room, enjoying hot cider.

You've been playing the drums with your son lately. He likes rocking out on the xylophone. You have been listening to the drummer from Radiohead a lot. You also have been trying out guitar effects on the computer. You even played for half an hour straight at the guitar store, on your knees, with headphones with a short cord, just messing with one low-end effects pedal.

You brought homemade banana bread with chocolate chips inside to a Thanksgiving potluck at work, and every single person who tried it essentially asked you, "Chocolate in banana bread? Can you do that?" in between bites.

Yes. Yes, you can do that.

If you're like me.