Saturday, December 13, 2003

Hi readers.  I am over my cold/flu - at least I hope it was a mild flu, so I have some immunity from the monster flu that is going around this year.   I am no longer feeling so grumpy and compulsive.  My apologies for that last entry - I was truly, miserably, sick when I wrote it, and that sort of illness lends itself mightly to the desire to control every single thing within one's power.  In the interest of full disclosure, I am choosing to keep that entry up, even though it portrays me in a singularly bad light. I'm having a nice holiday season.  We recently acquired a beautiful, fragrant Great Fir tree, and I also acquired a bunch of very cheesy bubble lamps to place all over it, in keeping with our 1955 house.  Do you know bubble lamps?  They are a string of lights, each with a flared base containing a bulb, with a long tube extending from the base, containing a colored (blue, in our iteration) fluid. The lamp heats the fluid, which proceeds to boil and bubble in a festive (rather than Shakesperian, I suppose) fashion.  Well, the bubble lamps are terrifically cute, make me very happy.  Just last night, I decided I did not have enough bubble lamps, and went out and purchased another string, which I added to the tree.  I am really, really into Christmas this year.  So much so that my friends and family express continual amazement at my good mood.  I even spent about four uncomplaining hours at the mall yesterday, with my girlfriend.  Now I don't have to go back until next December.  Malls change a lot during a year - there were all sorts of new stores and stuff there.  I found this somewhat surprising, given the poor economic conditions. In many ways, this has been one of the best years of my life.  I hope next year is just as excellent. Readers, my apologies for that truncated entry (it's now two days later).  I realized, right in the middle of writing it, that I had to run out the door for a Christmas party.  I had a few other things to write about (potentially more interesting than my Christmas lights), but I am again out of time.  In one more week, I will be through with my year, from both a work and school perspective, and I plan to write more during my two-week vacation.  I may even give this journal the complete overhaul that I've been contemplating for about six months.  I've been writing this thing for a year now, which makes it my most enduring web project (although in many ways it is also my weakest, and least interesting).  I am hopefully behind the learning curve, from a technology perspective - for example, I recently acquired a Palm Pilot, but haven't yet sat down and figured out how to download my Outlook stuff onto it - I hope to address all that during the coming weeks.  10:19:53 PM