Bearshorty's musings

Happy New Year to everyone! I hope the New Year will bring only good things.

I’m back to posting and being back online consistently – it was nice to take a short break although I did still check email and watched videos online. I also just caught up to posting the last week on my journal. I didn’t want to overwhelm anyone’s reading pages so I posted them just on my journal, in case anyone wants to read it.

But here is a short summary of my Christmas/New Year/holiday week: I had a very nice Christmas with Bear’s family where I got four books among my presents (yay), including Stephen Fry’s latest autobiography, and a pocket watch so I could pretend to be in Doctor Who universe. Then Bear and I went to Montauk for a nice relaxing vacation with hiking every morning and even time at a spa! And in the middle of this vacation on a beautiful Waking Dunes hike, Bear proposed with a lovely ring, which I thought was just perfect for me. It has an art deco design on the sides. So I got to be a bit giddy and girly.

( 2011 A Year in Review in a list )

Today itself was a low key day. While Bear set up his laptop in my room and was doing some work I read Karen Armstrong’s article “Homo religiosus” which I will teach next semester. I do love her stuff but she is dense and complex. The students will certainly be challenged.

I did go outside to go to the bank with Bear but otherwise I stayed home and read.

Of course, in the evening I had to get ready for our holiday celebration. It was just my parents and Bear but since it is New Year, we all dressed up – with yellow and orange themes since next year is the year of the Dragon. So I’m wearing an orange shirt I got for my birthday, a black skirt and stockings with make-up and everything. I look more like a tiger. Mama made a delicious table of holiday food including a chicken and we took our annual holiday photos with the tree.

I hope 2012 will be a good year. That is the best part about the New Year celebration a hope of a new beginning.

( Some pictures from the last week: )

( Leverage S4E5 )

( Torchwood S4E4 )

For the last few weeks my upper right teeth have been bugging me. Not enough to cause too much pain to see a dentist right away but enough to be annoying. If this continues by Monday, I’d have to see a dentist which is not a favorite thing.

“Ghost Story” has arrived! Yay. I already skimmed it for main plot details. I really like the ending and where the story will go in the next book. Now I can settle in and slowly savor the book.

From Cracked article : “Purim is a Jewish holiday, and as such, it celebrates the same thing all Jewish holidays celebrate: narrowly escaping genocide.” Hee.

Agh, Amazon. Where is my “Ghost Story”? Papa pre-ordered it with his gift certificate and usually pre-ordering a book mean it arrives on the day it is published. But Amazon didn’t even ship it yet and it can arrive anytime from Aug 1 to Aug 15. That is ridiculous. I wrote an email to Amazon complaining about this. I don’t expect much of them – they will probably blame the shipping options but I was mad about this. We waited longer for this installment and I want to know what happens next and then give the book to Bear then Papa.

Battlestar Galactica Baltar is much more interesting the second time around, still sleezy but more interesting. This rewatch should be interesting.