State of the Moose

Summer break, woo! It was a couple of crazy quarters there, but now it's over. Three weeks with no students, and now that the various meetings that cap the whole thing off are done I can actually relax.

Unfortunately, we don't actually get three weeks off. When I tell people I work at a college and that summer break is started, they tend to assume that I get three weeks of vacation, but no such luck. I am, however, taking a week on my own -- tomorrow night, I fly to Boston, from where I will finally make the pilgrimage to Ben & Jerry's (and cross Vermont off the list of states I haven't visited! Which will finish off New England, at long last) and then spend a few days hanging out with amybang and anzubird -- we're planning on a visit to Provincetown, if the rain doesn't wash it away, and other fun stuff. I get back next Tuesday.

Let's see, what else... the poison oak has almost faded, although I'm still peeling in places and have to fend off the occasional itching fit. I got a new keyboard to replace the one that died a couple of months ago -- it was getting old anyway, I think I bought it in 2000 when I got my G3 tower, but spilling a Diet Coke on it pretty much sealed its fate. Sadly, pretty much no one is making natural-style split keyboards for Macs anymore, probably because PC keyboards will work on a Mac now. So I got an MS Natural. It seems weird to be enthusiastic about a Microsoft product, but the shape of their natural keyboards works pretty much perfectly with my RSI issues, and the keys are incredibly responsive. I have one at work, too, so I knew I'd be happy with it. But I couldn't get it to work the way I wanted, so I bit the bullet and upgraded my OS to Leopard. On the plus side, the upgrade seems to have finally fixed my flaky wireless; fingers crossed that keeps working. In other technology news, I became an iPhone widow on Friday. T ordered it the day they were announced and started counting the hours, and it has gone above and beyond his expectations. I confess that seeing his in action has only increased temptation for me, but for now I'm still holding out.

In the media world, I finally got around to restarting Phoenix Wright 3, which I half-gave up on in the middle of the third case. Now I'm into the fifth case, which is awesome, but I can't talk about why without spoilers. So for right now, I'll content myself with sharing this fact: Diego Armando? Is HOT. As for books, right now I'm reading The Fall of Kings by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman; it's enjoyable, but I have no idea how they wrote it before The Privilege of the Sword without having mapped out that entire book first. Finally, I watched the first two episodes of Merlin, thanks to bottle_of_shine's rec. I enjoyed it, although it took me most of the first episode to get past the expectation that the characters would conform to standard Arthurian canon. I knew going in, of course, that Merlin was Arthur's age, so I didn't mind that at all, but there were enough other differences that I found it jarring at first. Fortunately, by the time I watched the second ep, I was able to sit back and relax into the characters as they were. I think Guenevere is my favorite so far, but only two eps in is a little soon to be making predictions. I'll keep watching for sure.

I guess that sums it up for now. I know I haven't been very visible here lately, in terms of posting or commenting, partly because of the poison oak and partly from work stress, but with luck this break will be just what I need to straighten my head out and spend more time being active and less time spacing out.