Hello from rainy Oakland! My east coast trip was cut short due to the impending Snowmageddon. And it’s a good thing I changed the flight, as 5,000 flights to and from the eastern seaboard have been cancelled. While I am sad I won’t be spending the weekend with the fantabulous Greg Taubman, I’m quite happy I won’t be spending it chattering on an Amtrak train, or stuck at Newark.

I was able to snag one of the last seats on Virgin America Flight 002 from DCA to SFO, and if you’ve ever wanted to see modern day bloodsport, I was a captive audience to an overhead bin land grab. Luckily, the VA staff were as amazing as always, no fisticuffs occurred, and we all landed back in San Francisco.

Amazing headline and lead image: The strange life of Q-tips, the most bizarre thing people buy.

Need a weekend project? Why not put together a bookshelf from a guide containing the greatest sentence of 2016? "Books are ace. Just like reading on a Kindle, but with a souvenir at the end!"

And finally, “Jewish Cowboy” Jeffrey Cohen had possibly the best obituary of all time: in addition to “woo[ing] his wife Carol by singing her cowboy songs on his Martin guitar,” and the fact that “he had a great smile and all his teeth were still his,” the end is the clincher: "Jeffrey would ask that in lieu of flowers, please do not vote for Donald Trump."

Stay warm and dry, east coasters!