Half-pints

I love beer. And I love going to bars that have lots of different beers. And I love drinking many of those beers. Unfortunately, my threshold for consuming multiple pints of beer is lowering as we speak.

Luckily, a few beer bars understand this and offer the half-pint.

Most notably, The Grey Lodge (not coincidentally Philadelphia's best beer bar) offers half-pints at exactly half the price of a full pint.

Also, The Swift Half Pub at the Piazza at Schmidts offer half-pints, but I believe charges more than half the price of a pint (which feels like a rip-off to me).

I'm also aware that many old-man-bars (most memorably Krupa's at 27th and Brown Streets in the Art Museum area) also sell small glasses of cheap beer that need constant refilling and cost less than a dollar, but that is a different story.

Beer bars of Philadelphia, please offer this aging man the half-pint he needs before I am forced to go to go back to Krupa's. Or before I am forced to share every pint with my wife.

Support Your Local Library

To paraphrase "The Wire"-"You know what the most dangerous thing in America is, right? A 13-month-old with a library card".

I love my local library; so does my 13-month-old daughter who just got her library card. In addition to the books (which are a great thing) I regularly check out CDs and DVDs, of which there is a great selection at our local branch or available through inter-library loan. Even those of you who live in the suburbs, I know many places have inter-library loans within their counties, so do not assume that you will have a limited selection. Also amazing is that I can manage inter-library loans online, so I don't have to list my myriad of selections to the librarian. In addition to cost-savings by not buying books, CDs and DVDs, I am also not encumbered by keeping these items in my house.

As a music fan, I am able to check out a ton of CDs for free (and legally, as opposed to illegal downloads) especially from genres and artists that I would not normally have bought (e.g. jazz, classical, folk, foreign music, film scores, weird stuff, etc).

The iPod might be one of the coolest inventions ever, but combine it with the library's resources and it becomes absolutely amazing.

Despite being a music lover, my iPod has very little music on it and I do not add or delete music very often. Instead, I primarily use my iPod to catch up on my favorite NPR shows via podcasts and for audiobooks. The library is a great source for audiobooks. In addition to the audiobook CDs available at the library, many library websites have downloadable audiobooks which can be directly imported to your iPod. Although easy to download audiobooks, it might be tricky the first time and I'd be happy to help if you have questions.

With a long commute in the morning, I have been able to listen books by Malcolm Gladwell, Stephen Hawking, Michael Pollan and several other pop culture books that I did not get a chance to read. (Strangely, I find fiction difficult to listen to).

If importing from actual CDs, there will be dozens of tracks and they might disrupt your music playlist if using iTune's random function, but you can correct this and can find some other helpful hints here.

Lastly, if you set your iTunes import setting to "spoken word", audiobooks will take up almost no room on your computer or iPod.

Now go out and get a library card!