Update #1 for the New Year

The Bad News: I've been bad lately, in just about every area but cleaning. I haven't studied much, I haven't blogged much, I haven't produced much! I hope you'll forgive me, internet. There's just been so much to do that I had put off all semester. We rearranged our furniture, I set up computers, I played video games, I cleaned... It's felt great knocking things off my to do list, though.

The Good News: The holidays went well, despite being stuck in Brooklyn. Alicia and I were grounded when flight ticket prices skyrocketed. Rather than spend approximately $1,200 to fly home, we hunkered down and spent the holidays in New York. It was sad, sure. But we were on the phone as much as our families would bear talking to us. We even managed to enjoy each other. To be frank, we were lucky. Weather in Minnesota would have almost certainly ruined our trip home. Who knows what would have happened to our flight.

To enjoy ourselves, we went to the grocery store and ate very well. We watched the neighbors cat, finally paying him back for watching our cats during the Wedding. Overall, it was a decent holiday. We'll be back to Minnesota next year, though. Absolutely.

The Great News: My classes are done for the year. They've been done for a few weeks now, but I really haven't mentioned it here. Grades were almost perfectly average, which lifts my spirits. Next semester, I'll be teaching a Saturday morning course at 8:30am. It'll be strange, but I'm excited to have extra time off during the week. I'm hoping it'll really help me keep a good sleeping schedule. I'd have declined the class, but it's Pre Calculus, the most interesting course I've ever taught. They tend to be the most interested students, too. So I'm excited.

What I've Been Thinking About: Technology. I've finally gotten time to set up our electronics in a nifty way. We've got Alicia's laptop hooked up to the monitor in the living room. I've hooked up the Xbox to the bedroom television, which is finally getting some good use. I've even installed Windows 7 on our homemade computer, so I can play around with that. I'll have a lot more to say about this in a later post.

What I've Enjoyed: Reading. Reading is actually one of my New Year's resolutions. Not just reading, but enjoying reading. It's one thing to force yourself to sit and read a book. That isn't fun, and I rarely finish what I start. For 2010, I'm hoping to actually enjoy reading. I want to want to sit down with a book and hammer through it.

Alicia's been a big inspiration lately. She can finish a book in one to two days. I forget that it's possible to read a book that fast. In my head, especially thanks to Math text books, books last weeks to months.

So far this year, I've read SuperFreakonomics and Lord of the Flies. Let's hope the trend continues!