And I usually like red

Starbucks is doing this Red campaign thing where they donate $.05 for every eligible drink you buy to combat HIV/AIDS. But they're pitching it as some reason to get more coffee than you usually would. How about you just donate your $2-4 to a decent HIV foundation or NGO instead of buying extra coffee?

I think the train is going to be nuts this evening. But I got my lecture done and mailed out for tomorrow, so I can just relax and read magazines.

Victory!

Seats opened up on an early evening train tomorrow, so we get to goof off tonight as late as we want and still get home at a reasonable hour tomorrow!

This means I better work on that lecture, though...

Saturday already?

Thursday was pretty much the usual family craziness. A lot of eating and drinking! We were all at Joe's parents' house for Thanksgiving, and for Christmas we'll go to the shore.

Yesterday Joe and I went out around 2:30, and it was still pretty nuts at the centers of shopping. I feel like when we went out last year to the outlets, it was dead because everyone went super early. I got some presents for the boy (which he pretty much saw/brought to my attention in the first place), but the deals weren't good enough yet for personal shopping. We came home and then went out to dinner at Villa Mannino, where we ordered our usual vodka rigatoni and eggplant parm. So delicious.

I don't know what we're up to yet today, but I'm sad we have to leave so early tomorrow morning. I checked the trains last night to see if we could switch to other options, but the entire middle of the day is booked, and everything is much more expensive than what I paid for the tickets. It's okay, I have to finish up a lecture for the proposal/project class for Monday, and it'll be easier to do it at home than on vacay.

I can't work when it feels like vacation, whereas the boy can poke at his dissertation whenever he has five minutes (which he usually stretches to ten or more, as I wait around). That's either healthy or tenure-killing.

In da Jerz for turkey day

The train was pretty awful last night... we took the last one out, and it was 2 hours late into the station, but they switched engines fast so we were only ("only") an hour late out, so we got to Trenton by 2 am. We pretty much instantly collapsed upon reaching home.

Today we went to Mastoris and then did very little. I even took a nap.

This stuff in India is very bad.

I think tomato pie is on the roster for tonight.

Counting down

I can't wait to go to NJ tomorrow night and have some vacay!

Today went by fast, since I had meetings straight through until 2:30. We're searching for a new chair (maybe... the search includes the current chair, who retired from the PHS, triggering a new chair search, because bureaucracy is awesome), so today and tomorrow there are meetings with the candidates and their job talks. Today I also gave the first half of my scintillating wisdom on survey design and implementation. Busy days are good because they move me quickly to vacay!

Tomorrow I'm going to try to shlep to the Comcast place up in Rockville so they stop charging me for the cable box I'm not using. It requires all sorts of transit.

I had to stop watching Hardball tonight because it's become all about the depressing economic situation. The election was way more fun!

Go Harvard! Beat yale!

1) I'm sad to miss the H-y game. This is the first season I didn't make it to a football game.

2) Then again, 23F feels like 14F? Maybe I'm not that sad to miss it. Jameson can only do so much.

It's cold here in the DC area too (although still about 10 degrees warmer). I think today is going to involve staying inside under the electric blanket and tomorrow I'll go out shopping when it's warmer.

I guess I should also finish my slides on survey methods.

Today is annoying

My bus never came, as far as I can tell (I was late, but there were people waiting there when I arrived). The long bus came and promptly ate my $5 that I tried to add to my SmarTrip card that will have $30 whenever the transfer from my old broken card happens (after which I have to do some magic incantation at a Metro stop machine to get it into the card). Then the bus sat at the stop for ages.

Comcast raised the DVR price just a month or so after I ordered it. They also started charging all kinds of crazy fees that I think must be because I haven't returned the old box because I don't have an easy way to get all the way out to far out Rockville (public transit take like a half hour from work, I just discovered). They're charging me like $6/month for the box to sit in a corner collecting dust.

It's effing cold out and I'm tired.

Shows

Pushing Daisies is great and I really don't want it to get cancelled.

The Office... oh! So cute! I have such life stage congruence with that show right now.

Fixed my chair!

A week or so ago, I set out to determine why my office chair was so damn uncomfortable. The seat was all pitched forward, and I couldn't get it to move. Today I opted for the brute force step-on method, and it worked! Now I don't have to scheme how to make this chair blend into a conference room when I swap it for one of the nice chairs there.

Bureaucracy

I need a computer that is not only way more functional than this clunker on my desk but that is also filled with delicious statistical software, so I can, like, do stuff. Research office folks say that comes from finance; department chair says it comes out of my startup funds, which research office is currently holding in an unknowable status.

I'm determined to push this paperwork through the system! I finished it a long time ago!

In other news, my office still has no ceilings, but I've started to be able to tune out much of the surrounding office chatter. It remains absolutely freezing, however. I hope today's faculty meeting is in a warmer room. I'm going to have to bring my new electric blanket into work.

I got my blood drawn Tuesday for a variety of tests, and all was normal except that I have high total cholesterol. Five years ago when I was participating in the diet study, I had totally low cholesterol. It's gone up like 70 points! Then again, I am a lot fatter. But I've lost weight since I started incorporating like 3 miles of walking into my commute, right? False. I'm not eating any more than I was, as far as I can tell. It's bs.

I just found out today that the Prez might possibly maybe give us feds the day after Christmas off. This would help a lot in my pusuit of 2 weeks away from the office with only 4 accrued vacation days. I'm excited to go to the Jerz for Thanksgiving next week, despite my disbelief that it's already next week!

This just in: As of tonight, all USB storage devices aren't going to work on any of our computers. Awkward. I don't know why DOD cna't put us on our own network so we can act like a University.