Things I Learned Today (II)

• Keeping one heater on is apparently not sufficient to keep my apartment warm through the day.  I came home and it was 63.  I have since turned on the other heater, but after half an hour my thermometer records no progress.  Might be because my heaters are actually "convectors," and at the moment they're blowing cold air.  Lovely.
• My boss(es) loves me.  I got an award yesterday (yes, I'm stretching the "today" part of the post title a bit)  at the quarterly recognition event-thinger for my work over the past few months which included twenty-four hours of leave for me to use at my discretion, which is one of the more joyful things that has happened to me in a while.
• Metro's timing system is completely bollocksed up.  As I was trying to return home today, an Orange line train showed up three minutes earlier than the posted times said it would, and then departed as I was coming down the stairs.  Three minutes later, when the boards showed the Orange line train arriving, a Blue line train comes up instead, four minutes ahead of schedule.  I realize that I haven't given a proper rant about Metro yet, and given that it's been such a quiet week - and will probably be a quiet week next week too - I may need to devote some time to DC's delightfully dysfunctional urban railway.
• Hosni Mubarak has a death wish.
• Diets are easy to break.  Leftover cookies from yesterday's recognition event (see above) were in the lounge today, and I may or may not have consumed four of them over the course of the day.  At this rate I'll never get my abs back.
• And lastly...filing cabinets are expensive!  I had thought about getting one, but there's no way I want to drop $50 for a filing cabinet!  Bah, humbug!

Oh, and I will write those posts on Air and Space, I promise!  It's just that right now I feeling like getting under some blankets with some food and staying there - blasted convectors!

The Midwinter Solstice

It is the evening of December 21st, the longest night of the year, which I also like to call the Darkest Night of the Year, not for any scientific reason, but perhaps because I've been influenced by one too many fantasy authors who link the power of evil magic to the winter solstice (Susan Cooper, I'm looking at you).  This time three years ago I was somewhere over the Atlantic (flying back from studying abroad in Germany), fighting a persistent head-cold, and talking with an attractive gentleman about graduate school, while trying not to fall asleep (at least, not until the conversation was finished).  This year, to chase away the dark, so to speak, I'm headed to dinner with K&R, bringing with me a bottle of excellent wine that I got for $3.49 at Safeway.  Thank you, Safeway card and (I suspect) the power of overstock.  After that, I come home to wrap Christmas presents, and hopefully get some more blogging done.  Watch the space below this post - I have at least three more to write that should come before this one.

However, to tide you over until I put out some more posts, here are two more pictures from St. Peter, which I attended on Sunday evening again (my ratings remain essentially unchanged).  I took pictures in between the end of Vespers and the beginning of Mass, so now you can see the stained glass:

Yes, there's a dude in the way, but I didn't want to be too conspicuous, since this isn't a tourist attraction.

Trendy angle shot?  Nope - the result of trying to be a stealthy photographer.  Looks like I need practice.  (Nice stations of the cross, though, aren't they?)