Retrieving menu parameters joomla

I'm more or less a beginner developer in the Joomla world but have been writing code for the better part of my life. I've been looking through Google (honest, I've looked on *every page* it suggested.. or.. naah) and various forums, and components, and so on. After a while, I put the pieces together by studying source code and asking stupid questions here.

So, with that over dramatic intro, here's what I wanted to say:

[Q]
OK, I create parameters for my front-end component and populate them when I add a menu link to my component; how do I retrieve them *in* my component code?

[A]
$menu = new mosMenu( $database );
$menu->load( $Itemid );
$params = new mosParameters( $menu->params );