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Football, the Super Bowl and my dad
The Super Bowl has become indelibly linked with my dad in my mind. Four years ago tomorrow the Chicago Bears and the Indianapolis Colts met in Super Bowl 41. I saw exactly one play of that game, which was the opening kickoff to Chicago. For some reason, the ball was kicked right to Devin Hester (Chicago's amazing kick returner who by the way is a ( Read more... ) -
The week[end] the was
Last week was an odd week. The long weekend was great, but there was a big move of servers to a new datacenter at work thing that ended up having a big impact on my day job. The primary server that hosts VIREO (the administrative tool I use to manage uploaded theses/dissertations) had some issue with the datacenter move, so they reloaded all our ( Read more... ) -
Classic books challenge
I got the idea for this from this link to a reader's blog (which was linked from the Half Price Books FB page). It's a simple challege. Between now and June, read 8 classic books in 8 different categories. One of my goals this year has been to read a lot more of The Classics. Sure, there may be different ways of interpreting what is meant by The ( Read more... ) -
Words matter
Words matter. If they didn't, we wouldn't have language, we wouldn't use words to convey meaning of ideas and concepts. Writers make their livings on the meaning of words. When leaders use violent imagery to rally their followers, it has meaning. When they use that language over and over and over, it becomes ingrained, when they say things like ( Read more... ) -
A little run down
I'm feeling a big run down, and if I'm not careful, I may end up with a cold or something. I haven't been sleeping well the last few nights, and work has been quite busy because we had a tight deadline to get all degrees certified by 5pm today. After the first pass through the certified list (which took me all day Monday), there were a couple dozen ( Read more... ) -
All good things must come to an end
This would of course be my vacation I've been talking about. It was a mix of work and relaxation, socializing and hermiting, football and reading. It was all good, but in a mere few hours, I'll be going back to work, which means I have to get into my usual Sunday mode. The groceries have been bought for the week, I'll pack a lunch soon. I need to ( Read more... ) -
2010: the year that was
It seems everyone else is doing an end of year review, so I may as well. (No, if everyone decided to jump off a cliff, I wouldn't join them ( Read more... ) -
Books 45-51, some thoughts on this year in reading
I know I won't be finishing another book before year's end, so I can report I have finished 51 books this year. This was helped partly by reading some Tolstoy this year, but considering how long those books are, I think I'm justified in considering them multiple books for purposes of tracking books read.
45,46. Case in point, volumes I and II of ( Read more... ) -
Ghosts of Christmas past, present and future
I am home from a very nice day of going out and doing stuff with people for Christmas. I had planned to go to dinner with some atheists, but the introvert in me decided I needed to come home and have some quiet time. A friend on FB commented that Christmas makes her feel a little sad, and I can't help but reflect on the last several Christmases ( Read more... ) -
I'm in the groove, the vacation groove
I did spend about 2 hours this morning dusting, cleaning and vacuuming. But I'm now in full vacation groove mode. I'm seeing friends, I'm doing fun stuff. Had a wonderful brunch with Joy and Pat at Steeping Room. We haven't been there in forever, so it was like old times (except Joy had gone into Sur la Table before lunch, which is something we ( Read more... )