diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 6eae6a5..00ac6a4 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -2,3 +2,4 @@ pom.xml
 *jar
 lib
 classes
+*.dat
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aefc7da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+# clj-msgpack #
+
+This is a Clojure wrapper for the [MessagePack](http://msgpack.org/)
+library.
+
+It allows you serialize and deserialize simple clojure objects to and
+from  a well-defined binary format that is portable to many other
+programming languages.
+
+## Example ##
+
+Put some objects in a file:
+
+    (require '[clj-msgpack.core :as mp])
+    (use '[clojure.java.io :only [output-stream]])
+    
+    (def data [nil true false {"yo" "dawg"} ["foo" "bar"]])
+    (with-open [f (output-stream "./temp.dat")]
+      (mp/pack-into f "Hello" 23)
+      (apply mp/pack-into f data))
+    
+
+Pull them back out somewhere else (eg: ruby):
+
+    require 'msgpack'
+    u = MessagePack::Unpacker.new
+    u.feed( File.read('./temp.dat') )
+    u.each {|ob| p ob}
+      "Hello"
+      23
+      nil
+      true
+      false
+      {"yo"=>"dawg"}
+      ["foo", "bar"]
+    
+
+## Why? ##
+
+Why would you want to use this instead of, say, JSON, or Java
+serialization? Honestly, I'm not sure yet :) The serialization format
+is portable to many languages, and it's quite compact, especially if
+you are serializing a lot of numbers. For stringy data, it's probably
+not much smaller than JSON. At some point I'll do some benchmarks to
+see how small and/or fast this is compared to some of the
+alternatives.
+
diff --git a/test/clj_msgpack/test/core.clj b/test/clj_msgpack/test/core.clj
index 0610249..428da28 100644
--- a/test/clj_msgpack/test/core.clj
+++ b/test/clj_msgpack/test/core.clj
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 (ns clj-msgpack.test.core
   (:use [clj-msgpack.core] :reload)
-  (:use [clojure.test]))
+  (:use [clojure.test])
+  (:use [clojure.java.io :only [input-stream output-stream]]))
 
 (defn- round-trip [obj]
   (let [ba (pack obj)]
@@ -33,7 +34,17 @@
                {23 "a" 44 "b"}
                {23 ["x" "y"] 44  {"a" -7}}
                {23 ["x" "y"] nil {"a" -7}}
+               ; lists come back as vectors, but still compare as equal
+               (list "foo" 28838272 (list {"blah" "bloo"} nil))
                ]]
-    (prn obj)
-    (prn (round-trip obj))
+    ;(prn obj)
+    ;(prn (round-trip obj))
     (is (= obj (round-trip obj)))))
+
+(deftest test-pack-to-file
+  (let [data-in [{"yo" "dawg" 147 [true false]} "kldjfld" "kdajfkd" 37447]]
+    (with-open [f (output-stream "./temp.dat")]
+      (apply pack-into f data-in))
+    (let [data-out (unpack "./temp.dat")]
+      (is (= data-in data-out)))))
+