First and foremost, as of late night 23 April 2014, I have re-enrolled in Amazon’s affiliate/associate program. I will, over time, be changing past links to affiliate links, and calling them out as such. Except the Joy of Cooking link in this post which I did last night to test the new way of linking. In the future, other links to Amazon will also be affiliate links (and called out as such). As Bill and I explained in The Rules waaaay back in 2010, we wanted to try it. I’ve also updated the rules to explain how we we came to not be affiliates for a time, and to include the official language Amazon.com wants me to have somewhere on my site. It’s under rule number nine. Rule number ten is to be stricken from the record, here soon, as I’ve decided I loathe advertising enough that I never want any of it. I just haven’t really updated the rules overall yet. So, go see the official language there. Go see how the rules used to be. I am trying to decide how to re-write the rules for, seriously, almost four years of blogging later. Maybe I’ll work on drafting new rules to mark the anniversary of this blog’s starting. Which will be 31 May or 1 June, depending on how you look at it.

Secondly, and perhaps more immediately, Beer 2Up is SATURDAY. And I am ridiculously excited. We’re having 12 Chicagoland breweries pouring, 8 of which are less than a year old. We have astoundingly good prizes for just doing fun things, like wearing a fun t-shirt or playing pinball. If you’re in the area and available, please come in. Say hello to me, to my fellow bloggers, to these awesome brewers. Also, my friend Matt will be there taking illustration requests. So much fun. And he’s a fantastic artist, so I’m looking forward to what he’s going to see/do/draw.

Related to Beer 2Up, there’ll be a post up Sunday with the two winners of our t-shirt contest. We’ll be asking you, the wild, wild web to vote on who should be the grand prize winner. Voting will start on Monday and run for a week. So please check back Sunday and Monday, even if you can’t attend and tell us who has the best shirt.

Finally, awhile back, Aunt Katherine commented that she’d love to see more stories from my other readers about how they got their food start. While I think I’ll go ask a couple of food blogging friends if they might be willing to guest post as well, I am curious, would any of you be willing to and interested in posting a little about your childhood food memories, kitchen and what you did and didn’t learn there? I think those stories would be fascinating. And, yes, Aunt Katherine, I would especially love and appreciate it if you’d write something.