For Xmas, Leah got me Settlers of Catan and the 5-6 player expansion set, which is incredibly awesome, as well as a hardbound copy of the complete poems of Emily Dickenson, and the Greatest Hits I-III of Queen. Yes, my life is a good one. Also, my brother's already told me what he's getting me, but since I haven't received it yet, I'm not posting.  But just for the idea, he's the best brother evar.

Also, with Xmas money from relatives, I bought two large squared Moleskine notebooks, one for teaching notes and one for sermon notes (the teaching more active, the sermon more reflective). I'm looking forward to using them both.

I start teaching so soon!  Seriously, I begin teaching Comp I two nights a week starting January 9th.  That is a thing people call "soon."

I'm thinking of starting a blogger account for more formal essayish things, and translations.  Right now, though, I'm wondering how I should do the copyright on all those blogs and posts; I don't mind this blog being "all rights reserved," but I'd kinda like my translations to be public domain; my essays perhaps a limited Creative Commons-style license.

Class has been going alright I guess.  I'm doing the work but just not seriously enjoying the in-class period as much as the out-of-class period.  There's so much about Samuel Johnson that I'm interested in--the role of the author, the beginnings of copyright, the role of the press--but we mainly seem to be talking about everything else under the sun.  Combine that with the fact that it's hard for anyone else to talk because the professor's talking a mile a minute without pauses in run-on sentences with absolutely no topical coherence, and the fact that every day we get out ~5 minutes late with getting to work existing in that twenty-minute class-to-work gap.  I'm not having a lot of fun, but I'm learning about Samuel Johnson.

Work's good too, even though it's all super-easy.  The tedium is starting to get to me, though.  Every Tuesday a huge shipment of periodicals comes in--say, a 3 foot stack of newspapers and somewhere around 150 magazines and periodicals, and processing them with all the marking and recording and stamping takes pretty much all of one day and half of the next.  Other than that I've been entering in a ridiculously large list of numbers and titles into Excel.  Nothing requiring even one synapse of internal reasoning but drudgery, pure drudgery.

Of course, that's probably why I like it--I've had a job where I have to do creative work for minimum wage (webdesign for workstudy) and it's incredibly not-fun.

1.  My professor talks really fast and it's hard to keep up with him.
2.  I like my new job because they're paying me money to do somemthing that takes a lot of time and is very easy.
3.  I have a tickle in the back of my throat, if "tickle" means "it felt odd earlier but now it's like a painful rock"
4.  Leah and I are registered at Bed, Bath, and Beyond as well as Wal-Mart.  Have at it: we're Allen Shull and Leah Orbison.
5.  I miss coffee, which makes me miss Leah in a warm, fuzzy, chemical-dependancy way.  Our love is pure.
6.  My car window is still down, but the good news is that there hasn't been any rain, and nobody would want to steal either the car or the McDonald's cup inside.

Well world, I got me a job!  That's right, and it's gonna kill me.  Even though I'm going to love doing something instead of not doing something like I have been for the past month, and I'm going to be making money and stuff, it's still going to be a little overwhelming.  I'm going to be working 20 hours a week--Monday through Thursday 8-12 and 3.5-4.5, so pretty much I'll be ultra-busy next Monday. At least I have Fridays off so I can see Leah on weekends.

Now...  to read Samuel Johnson!!