kirabug’s idea files

It’s just after noon on the day after Christmas. The sky’s white, and the wind is cold, and a small dog is sleeping next to me on the sofa, with her nose tucked in under my knee.

I have much to do. The router needs rebooting. There’s work in the second bedroom to be done before January when visitors and snowstorms will both guarantee occupation at some point or another. There’s a kitchen to clean, gifts to put away, and we need to find a place to put the tree until next year.

Instead, I read. Bradbury. Quicker than the Eye. I’m transported from this place to that - a farmhouse in Massachusetts, a library, the old roads below the highway, Dog’s funeral. And my own bookshelf, where books read and unread mingle, and swell in ranks.

We received another bookcase for Christmas - a blessing - and I look forward to tearing all the books off their shelves again and moving the books stacked on the floor next to the shelves and at the foot of the steps to proper places. Usually, my husband rearranges them quite clinically, sorted by type/subject and alphabetized by author, one step short of enforcing the Dewey Decimal System.

If he’s not careful, I’ll beat him to it this year, and rearrange them in a more meaningful manner: Read, Unread, and Not The Type You Read Straight Through. Maybe even make it complicated: He Read, She Read, They Didn’t Read Yet, and Reference.

The house is cool and dark. From the porch it looks deserted, the family inside having gone out to celebrate Boxing day or such. In truth, it is deserted, for I am far away along the Martian canals (having switched books), my feet swishing through their dead skin like dried leaves, wondering about the conflicts of Earth, so far away.

*heavily edited*

Okay, let’s try this again.

The Christmas pics are up, if anyone’s interested. Click the pic!

I hope all of you are having or had a happy holiday. Now we just need to get to New Year’s unscathed

It took almost all night but all three boxes of cards are addressed and ready to be stamped and on their way. I apologize in advance for anyone I missed, and for anyone I sent more than one card to. It’s been that kind of day.

I’m still waiting on 3 shipments of gifts, which haven’t even shipped yet.

I’ve also got gifts here in the house to wrap.

But only one day of work left this week - that counts for something, right?

Look! A work-safe article about how your brain processes swearing!

And for those of you who aren’t at work, a definitely not safe for work Flash presentation of the old Monty Python skit on the origin of the word fuck.

… because now that you know how your brain’s using it, you might as well give your brain some exercise

Nighthawk points out this article on offbeat Science tales of 2005.