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: )

So I slept for 10 hours apparently. I woke up to a pretty stuffy head, looked at the clock and was a bit surprised it was 10:20am. I usually wake up at 8 when I don’t teach. I guess lack of sleep due to grading and stress this week really caught up to me. I’ve been feeling mellow all day because of it.

And, of course, I turned on my computer only to see the terrible earthquake and Tsunami in Japan (with another quake a few hours later). Just terrible images coming out of the region. And that nuclear reactor is not helping. I’m offering all good thoughts to the universe. (On the random note of irritation – my father was watching Fox News report on Japan, since he unfortunately watches Fox News to my general distaste, and they were reporting on the situation in Japan in a very irritating panic inducing apocalyptic tone. Really, Fox News, if you are going to pretend to be a news channel, can you at least report in a normal tone of voice.)

We have a guest coming tomorrow (a husband of my mother’s schoolmate who is visiting his daughter from Miami) and since he will be staying in the computer room, he will be sharing my bathroom. So I cleaned it very thoroughly today. I also finally got off my behind and bought a new shower curtain too. But now my bathroom is all shiny which I like.

So for years now, for my birthday, Bear takes me to a musical of my choice. So far we’ve seen “Wicked,” “Spamelot,” “Avenue Q,” “Lion King,” and “Fiddler on the Roof.” (We’ve been to other musicals together like “Phantom of the Opera” in 1999 and “Cabaret” just last month but generally we go to the theater only on my birthday.) So this year I wasn’t sure what I wanted to see. The only one I was interested in was “How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying” and only because Daniel Radcliffe is in it so I heard about it. But today I was reminded that creators of South Park and the writer of Avenue Q just opened their musical “The Book of Mormon.” It is a religious satire and it sounds like exactly the type of thing both Bear and I enjoy. So I think this is what I want to see. My birthday is in June but now is the time to buy tickets so the timing is actually pretty good.