Kim and I just got back from a very pleasant trip to see my family in Nebraska over Christmas, which means that it's time for me to buckle down and work hard for a few days. I've got my mid-tenure review portfolio due on the first day of class: the results at this point are purely for my information, but doing a good job so I can get the best ( Read more... )

I first heard this song by Tim Minchin last year a bit before Christmas, and it's become one of my favorite songs for the holidays. It's not 100% applicable to me, but it captures a lot of the spirit and emotion that I feel in this season. It's particularly poignant for me since my family has wound up being so scattered about the country in the ( Read more... )

Kim and I are on a lovely trip to Los Angeles for Thanksgiving, staying with her mother and visiting lots of family on both sides. On our way here, we shared a plane from Detroit with a number of people heading to a family reunion in Baja California. They were all wearing bright teal T-shirts with "Family Reunion: Cabo 2010" on the back and their ( Read more... )

I'm not a libertarian. But there's still something oddly creepy when your local government gets into the business of regulating trick-or-treating in what seem like crazy ways. This year in Alma, the city's approved Trick-or-Treat hours are 5:30-7:30 p.m. on October 30 ( Read more... )

Kim and I had a fun Halloween, though a lot of it came together at the last minute. We started the festivities with a trip to "Halloweekends" at the Cedar Point amusement park in Ohio along with some friends from Alma. Some of the haunted houses there were pretty neat (Club Blood was well done with good atmosphere, and the Toy Factory was ( Read more... )