The new car (at last), Katie came to visit, minor elective self-surgery, stuff, bits, and a pair of Thanksgiving photos...

BLOT: (06 Dec 2011 - 08:50:43 PM)

The new car (at last), Katie came to visit, minor elective self-surgery, stuff, bits, and a pair of Thanksgiving photos...

It's been a week overdue, but I have this picture of the new car, dubbed Mushroom, a Hyundai Elantra 2012 in Sky Blue Metallic:

It's got no super fancy features, but it is fancy enough. And it gets great gas-mileage. Still a little bit surreal because this is by far and away the most expensive purchase we have made (outside of education, and that is more collective in its costs). While taking that picture, Katie stopped by and I got to take this picture:

What else is up? Well, a bit of things. For the first time in my life, I cut a piece of my own skin off, on purpose, for a purpose. I say first time but that pretty much can't be true, can it? At any rate, I had this little [note: Katie and Laura might want to skip the rest of this paragraph and just move along] skin tag on my neck that was kind of a pain and embarrassing and then the other night it became an actual pain. Just started hurting. So, in a fit of Bolden tenacity I disinfected the spot, dobbed some pain numbing bits on it, and then whacked it. I assumed it was going to hurt and bleed. It mostly just bled. Had I knew that was a legit option a few months back, I wouldn't have been bothered by it this whole time. Well, the more you know.

I have found out that work is a little more stable than I originally thought, but that is not to say it is guaranteed in the way that gravity is guaranteed. The overall function I participate in is being weeded down, new functions are being extra slow to develop, but at least there are two big consolations. First, the changes we've enacted over the past year have been heavily embraced by the students and our on-site numbers are booming. Second, in the Spring I am going to pick up a couple of new official duties and they are exactly the kind of experience that have more minorly than I should. These are both good things.

Outside of that, the only big change is that I am going to be doing afternoon work two additional days a week and will add to that time-at-library prior to shift. I will spend this additional four hour non-shifts reading, "studying", writing, and so forth. The past few months have been a constant brain sludge and it has gotten harder and harder to concentrate due to the general un-need to concentrate any harder. I'm intellectual by creed and so I will force a bit of intellectualism into my weekly schedule. I have a feeling that eight hours will lead to more. Sort of a seed.

And in celebration of my newfound desire to do things more mentally challenging than sorting Doctor Who continuity (not that that's not challenging) and compare various portrayals of Sherlock Holmes from different eras, I am going to set up a slightly crazy book reading goal: 20 books by the end of December. Amittedly, one of the planned is a Who novel, and two are Holmes, but screw it. No cold turkeys, right?

Finally, speaking of cold turkeys, here is a shot of Thanksgiving Day. At one point, I think I had a plan to take more but I was busy cooking and then busy being tired of being busy:

For those so inclined, and adventurous, you can click that to see a picture take shortly before, that might be described as "the mise-en-scène"...

And with that, good night, ladies and gentlemen.

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: December 2011