11:34 p.m. I tend to go overboard on things. When I find something I like, something that I really, really like, I tend to get a little too excited about it. Up all night, round-the-clock total immersion until the fever breaks.

Quite a few years ago, before we had personal computers, I discovered rubber stamps. I went a teeny little bit wild ... ordered every catalog I could find ... maybe fifty of them ... and I made an error in addition, so that when the first check for .50 bounced, it cost me $20 in service fees, brought down the next check, another $20 in service fees ... and you might as well do the math because if I could have done the math I wouldn't have owed nearly $3,000 to the bank for a few measly pamphlets.

I think it's always the endless new vistas and the unlimited new possibilities that get me so caught up in the thing.

For a person with very limited drawing skills, rubber stamps meant that suddenly I could acceptably design my own things without having too much talent. I could stamp and color and make my own writing paper, which I did. Christmas cards, which I did. Eventually, I discovered that I could even buy the woodcuts and the hot machine and the slabs of rubber and actually make my own stamps. I could go into business and make my passion my livelihood. I could rule the rubber stamp world! There was no end to my ...

... until I discovered coupons.

Having become newly bereft because of the rubber-stamp fiasco, I was very receptive to new ways save money. I bought a book in the supermarket called Coupon Queen and I tell you, I stayed up all night reading it. It was a real page turner.

Did you know that if you did it right, you could actually walk into the market with a few dollars and a wad of coupons and walk out of the market with two loaded shopping carts? If you were really dedicated, you could even walk out with extra cash.

Now, for argument's sake, we're going to ignore the people behind you in line who are shaking their fists at you as you carefully lick your finger and peel one glossy tissue-thin coupon away from another. And we're going to try to be patient about the growing piles of empty containers that clutter every inch of the kitchen, laundry room, and dining room.

Wet cardboard doesn't smell that bad when it's drying on the radiators and sometimes the bathtub has to be full of plastic bottles soaking so their labels come off more easily. Family members can put up with a few inconveniences for the sake of saving a few pennies ... including using the stairs to store the flattened containers alphabetically ... but the final straw was when I batched several boxes of some kind of soup starter into one huge plastic container with a tight-fitting lid.

You see, "coupons" is a misnomer. If you want to save money, you've got to collect a certain number of boxtops and the little proof-of-purchase squares from the backs of the excess packaging and mail them in by a certain date. So, that's what I did.

And then one day I went into the pantry and opened the lid on the big container and I just about keeled over and passed out from the smell. The chemicals had begun to mix and mingle and the true horror of what I was trying to foist on my family in the name of thrift became clear.

So then we went on a health-food kick.

That lasted about a month. Have you ever really looked at the people who shop in health-food stores? Especially in the old days, when it was still somewhat outré -- the perspiration would rise like pungent incense as the long-haired guy in the drawstring drawers and hemp sandals reached into the communal bin for his two scoops of raisins.

Nope. I'd found a new Mecca of bad breath and underarm aromas in our local computer swap-shop meets.

It was a thrilling time. Page layout was just being invented, and we were there, writing the manuals. Mail-merge was being perfected and we were in the basement with the inventor. In fact, I was downright calm about computers and their possibilities for many years, until ...

... the Internet. Mosaic. The Louvre. CERN. Good 'ole Mozilla. And that weird kid from Swarthmore who got in line with his stash box for Ollie North to sign. Then he put the picture of it up for all the world to see. And then there was that porno shack place that was always crowded and Rheingold's psychedelic sneakers and Scarfatti and that's about it ...

... until eBay, but that involvement is still too recent, too raw to talk about. I thought I'd gotten over the internet and the all-night stare into a computer screen ... and then eBay opened up shop and my passions flared up on me like a bad burrito.

So now we come to today, to tonight. To this page, this site, this concept. This new obsession is wider, deeper, and more compelling than any that has come before it. Worse, it seems to grow slowly and steadily, burning like a tire fire instead of a barn. Hmmmm.

Online journals. Every night I get stuck in one of them, unable to get out. Just one more page ... just one more pretty picture ... and then I look up and it's once again 3 a.m. and even the moon has gone down. Fascinating people pretending to live ordinary lives. A cocktail party of the mind ... and no water rings on your furniture.

Last night it was Steve's Late Night Snacks. I warn you -- don't go there unless you plan to stay for a long, long time. You will not be able to look at just one entry, one picture, and leave. Trust me. Doors open into sunshine, windows glitter with fragile rain, and there are these two little stuffed animals that have more personality than most of the people on my block.

It's amazing what this little computer monitor can do for your life. I can see my words as I type them. You can see them as I'd hoped. No money has been exchanged, and yet we are both so much richer.

I think about people I've never met. I think I know people I've never met. I even have friends I've never met.

Who would believe this, except those similarly obsessed?