Brainwaves of Sken

“Better late than never, right? Regardless of your feelings on said mantra, the United States of America has finally passed a law barring stores from selling incandescent light bulbs after 2012. ‘Course, the EU and Australia have already decided to ditch the inefficient devices in the not-too-distant future, but a new energy bill signed into law this week throws the US into the aforementioned group. Better grab a pack of the current bulbs while you still can — soon you’ll be holding a sliver of history.” – link

How strange. I don’t entirely know how I feel about this, honestly. I want to know the details. I presume you must still be able to buy the old bulbs for, say, historical context.

Currently, I use white-light incandescent in my entire house. LED light bulbs are still too expensive and they haven’t come up with a good solution for diffusion yet, so I guess it’s compact fluorescent or halogen.

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I updated my Christmas photos with a few from Christmas Day, but I was mostly too busy opening presents to take pictures. :)

I’m pretty geeked with my loot, and I think my mom was fairly pleased as well. Whew! We had “The Breakfast Dish” for both breakfast and lunch – have I mentioned it’s one of my absolute favorite meals, ever?

I work in the morning, naturally, which would be more irritating if my boss wasn’t gone for the rest of the week. In fact, it’ll be much of a graveyard at work.

I’ll be with Lucy’s family on the 29th, doing the holiday party thing, and that’ll be some fun – they play games (board and card), which is totally up my alley.

I have a sweet-ass (though somewhat small) flat-panel HDTV, which takes the place of my old TV which was large but nearly entirely unusable. I also got a tiny, tiny, TINY video camera that records onto SD cards. It’s smaller than some of my wallets! Speaking of which, I have an awesome new wallet, too.

One thing I totally forgot to post when I came back from Denver: The Denver TSA people are absolutely the nicest and most friendly TSA people I’ve ever encountered in any of my flights. Perhaps it was because it was in the middle of the week, nearly dead, or my santa hat, but it was really great to share a few laughs on the way to the plane.

Merry Christmas, folks.

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From Christmas 2007

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What an interesting few days.

In good news, that sharp pain in my throat is gone. Bad news, it’s been replaced by a dull throat ache, the kind of very slow nose leak that leaves you with crusties in the morning, and general head-cottoning. I spent the entire day at home, mostly watching TV and playing Zack and Wiki (a present from the Lucy).

Meanwhile, I also went to a few parties. I helped Anne and her family put up Christmas tree ornaments, which was nice ’cause I haven’t been that close to a real tree in forever.

There was one in Lansing, which gave me the opportunity for some cuddle time, and the one at SarahKate’s house, where we played The Talisman and watched girls chase each other around the house, threats of cleavage-snow levied.

I’ve been pretty pleased with the holidays so far, sickness be damned. I got some fun Christmas cards, and I’ll probably tape them up and leave them around until April or so ;). When I start to realize that I feel grateful for feeling happy even when I’m sick, I can’t avoid how fantastically self-generating we are when it comes to our moods. ‘course, people are awesome, and that doesn’t hurt, either.

Relating to my days of late, it seems to me that the problem with not having any discernable circadean rhythm is that if I don’t have a reason to go to bed at a reasonable hour (like the threat of being fired), I just … don’t. Maybe I’ll sleep in the afternoon, or maybe I’ll go to bed at 5 am. The nice thing about going to bed next to someone (when I am so lucky) is that 90% of the time, it convinces me to get off my butt and make the effort to go to bed.

Happy hoho, folks. Christmas Eve will be fun at mom’s place, just her and I (unless we get any surprise guests).

My usual Christmas Day Evening is hanging out with Jeska and fam, but she won’t be in town until the day after, so I’ll be in Berkley, probably looking to crash someone else’s holiday or receive a visitor or two. ;) If you’re in the area or want me to come visit, just call.

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Check here for my post on blue_lucy‘s awesome gift to me this Christmas.

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From Fort Collins …

So, Lucy and I went to Fort Collins over my little vacation to spend time with one of her oldest and bestest friends, Megan and her husband Michael.

I didn’t die at all, thanks to Nedochromil Sodium, which is a ridiculously expensive new drug that keeps my lungs from squeezing down into tiny balls whenever I’m around cats. They had three cats and I spent four days there without much distress, which is very impressive.

I won’t lie, we spent loads of time playing Rock Band. Such fun! Mostly other people wanted to do lead guitar, so I was happy to stick to Bass for most games, but I found I really dug it for a number of songs – the bass line in Orange Crush and Here It Goes Again (OK Go) were totally sweet. I played on medium, which is pretty good for me considering I’d never played a guitar before, and I did really well. The muscle in my forearm that controls my pinky got majorly sore after a few hours, though.

I also sang a little! I really like singing with a program like that, it’s so useful as a matter of direct feedback.

We also took some time to drive up into the mountains, where I took plenty of pictures, and we went into town so Lucy could get her new jewelry (tiny plugs). The guy I talked to there was really cool – I don’t often get a good vibe from tattoo artists, I think the ones I’ve met often just seem … uninterested.

Anyway, I drank beer! I know, seriously. But it was free, from New Belgium (makers of Fat Tire), and they had a Sour Brown that I liked – it was almost like not-beer.

Lucy and I were able to sit together on the flight home, so she passed out on my shoulder while I played video games and finished my book. I should have taken a picture, it was very cute. We completely missed the Detroit-area snowstorm. Honestly, it’s kind of a bummer – one of my favorite sights is heavy snow falling through the glow of a street lamp.

Since getting back, I’ve mostly been working, shopping, and wrapping. My boss is gone today and all next week, so I’m sorta doing his job as well as my own, which means I’ll be here until the last page is loaded. I’ve got a gathering to go to, but like all early Friday gatherings, I’ll have to be late. Now if I can just stay awake …

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I was out late, I haven’t gotten much sleep for days, only going to get, at most, 4 hours tonight, plus I’ll be working late, plus a long drive and a holiday party.

I’m bushed just thinking about it.

In fact, I finally finished wrapping things (‘cept mom, I can wait on her), so, TO BED WITH ME!

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Short of a MacBook Tablet (doesn’t exist, as far as I know), I covet this something fierce.

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Tags: covet

The amendment basically says that congress can’t vote itself a raise – any compensation increase must take effect after the next election.

We, as a country, completely forgot about it until a law student in Texas found and revived it.

It passed in, I believe, 1982, and has done exactly nothing since then.

Why? Because our wonderful congress doesn’t consider Cost Of Living Adjustments to be compensation. So they’ve continued to vote themselves raises.

I’m not exactly fiscally conservative, but that just annoys the crap out of me. It takes 20 years for someone to turn around and realize the minimum wage hasn’t moved an inch, but our representatives have a solid eye on their own bottom line.

*mutter grumble*

I think what keeps me so very cynical about governmental politics is that it never, ever seems like public service.

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Alright, people, I’ve been in Denver since Thursday, how come all you people are posting about this “snow” thing without putting up pictures?

I want evidence!

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