Coworker: I have a bunch of sick days saved up.
Me: Yeah, I have some too. Maybe I should start pretending to be sick so I can use them.

*A few hours pass*

Me: My throat kind of hurts.

Dammit Karma, I was joking.

How did that happen? I'm still thinking wistfully about the Christmas holidays. You know what's more fun than working? Sitting around eating Christmas cookies. (Incidentally, last week a lady at work asked how I'd lost so much weight. The Christmas cookie diet totally works ( Read more... )

Whoa. Did you know it's the middle of December? I did not, judging by the library fines I've run up. Also, I think maybe I forgot to sign up for November this year. Or something ( Read more... )

If you are into book covers (and who isn't?) this is pretty excellent.

Unlike most major retailers, I have not yet moved on to Christmas so I feel it's still in keeping with the spirit of the season if I tell you about a fabulously creepy book ( Read more... )

What happened to the weekend? I thought the extra hour would make it, you know, longer.

Also, I cut through the mall today and saw one of the shops putting up their Christmas displays. Is it December? Did I black out or something?

( Read more... )

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters starts off with Nancy working in her family's oyster house and constantly taking the train to the music hall. She has a crush on Kitty Butler, who performs dressed as a boy, although it takes her a while to realize this. This is Victorian times, I should tell you, before strange boys in bars tried to talk you into ( Read more... )

Silk by Alessandro Baricco is a slim, elegant book that reads like a fairy tale. And I do have a weak spot for fairy tales. It's about Hervé Joncour, who is in the silk worm business, travelling to Africa to buy eggs because of an epidemic ravaging European hatcheries. Then disease spreads to Africa and Hervé Joncour's wise, mysterious friend ( Read more... )

Of late I've had my nose buried in The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager. Those of you who are Chemistry geeks will know of the Haber process (Haber-Bosch process as it is, perhaps more fairly, called in this book.) For those of you who aren't Chemistry geeks, it's the synthesis of ammonia and it looks something like this:


( Read more... )