Seven quick takes 031309

Yes, I do know it's Thursday...

1. The last of the four Saturday classes is this week. Yay! Aside from earning brownie points, the classes have been helpful. Unfortunately, our College of Professional Studies is both underfunded and under appreciated. Don't know how much longer they will keep it going.

2. It has been a good night for electronic doohickeys. I managed to uninstall the malfunctioning cookbook software, reinstall cleanly from the disk and, most importantly, import the 268 recipes I had in my saved copy of my personal cookbook. As a safety measure, I've now printed out the recipe index for my cookbook, and will make sure I have printed copies of all of them. It's become a bad habit over the last few years, as the computer is so close to the kitchen, to simply work off the screen when I need the recipe. In this case, paper is good (in addition to the back up of the electronic file I already have - yes, I'm paranoid).

3. The second electronic wonder is a new headphone microphone to use with the Rosetta Stone software. My old mic wasn't picking up enough, no matter how close it was to me, how loud I spoke or how often I reset the level. The new one is a dream. It does mean, however, that I can now see whether or not my pronunciation is off on the little red-yellow-green meter the program uses. A humbling experience.

4. A third electronic doohickey arrived today, but until I can thoroughly play with it, I don't want to say much more, other than it's about time.

5. After one week with six inches of snow, and another with a hard all day rain, this Saturday is going to be fifty degrees and sunny. My poor furnace doesn't know whether it is coming or going; right now, it's only eighteen degrees out. In a spirit of optimism, I plan to finally take down the few snowmen decorations still out.

6. With the possible exception of last Saturday night, I don't think I've had more than about six, maybe six and a half hours of sleep at a time in about two weeks. That doesn't sound like it would be an issue, but I usually need a solid seven and a half to be at the top of my game. "Walking zombie" is an apt description for me right now, down to the black circles around the eyes.

7. So why am I still sitting here?