Welcome Alexa!

Alexa (short for Alexandria) arrived on Tuesday. This delayed announcement is courtesy of Will and Henry and the paper due today that, despite weeks of work, refused to properly coalesce until around 3 a.m. {sigh}

Anyway, I have stolen a few moments to become acquainted with my new companion and she's just as wonderful as I anticipated. I already have 17 titles downloaded - 9 of which cost me absolutely nothing - and have begun reading this month's first new release. This weekend I plan on finishing it and moving on to the second. And then maybe to a third title.... Basically, I'm going to read a lot, but not anything from or about the 14th, 15th, or 16th centuries.

Letter of the Day: E

Today is Earth Day. And I'm doing better with recycling, reusing, reducing.

But for me, today is more about another "E": Escrow. As in I made an offer to buy a house and they made a counter-offer which I accepted and now I'm in escrow.

Here's another "E" word: Excited. And a non-E word that's just as applicable: Nervous.

Cleaning Up Bloglines Feeds

I love Bloglines, but sometimes the Keep New box is just too easy to check. So here are a bunch of things I want to keep track of:

Once again, Scalzi speaks, er writes, for me - this time about space exploration.

This post from Neil contains other info, but the part that spoke to me is his take on the New Scientist article that's right at the top. Human arrogance isn't surprising, but is still depressing.

I've been trying to convince people for years that it could, and will eventually, happen - will you be prepared when the digital world dies?

Kindle

I ordered my Kindle2 - it's a present from myself, my Dad & M, and J & P who gave me Amazon gift cards. It hasn't even shipped yet, let alone arrived, but I have already picked out her name and a "stack" of books...

Birthday Dinner

Normally I take my birthday off from work, but yesterday was a busy day: my Shakespeare and history class which overlapped with the first of two meetings which overlapped, a class I was teaching which overlapped with my dinner time, and Reference Desk - 7 hours of events scheduled to take place in 6 hours.

Anyway, I decided that after all this jumble, I was going to have pancakes and I happened to mention it to J and P, who said they would like to join me. K and K overheard and showed up to "crash" our dinner. What this meant for me is that instead of having a lonely dinner with only a book, I had a mini-party with four good friends. Lucky me!

Happy Birthday to Me!

A pretty from a good friend:

Despicable

A colleague told me today that some credit card companies are lowering the limit on credit cards without notification, then slamming the customer when the new, lower limit is exceeded. I've had my limit raised and only known by looking at my statement, but I think this new trick is the icing on top all their unreasonable business practices.