Miscellany

For years now, I've been wanting my mom to send me our old Christmas tree ornaments, of which there are boxes and boxes (and boxes!). Now that we're homeowners, she has sent us these boxes. I've had this craft project planned since probably 2006 or so; I know we had some very nice ornaments, but we also had some cheapo ornaments too. I thought I'd upcycle them into a wreath. Finally I have had the opportunity to do this, and here's the result on our door:

• Today I bought four bags of books at my university library's used book sale. Score!
• Henry has TWO teeth now, and he likes to chew my fingers with them.
• I'm doing a conference presentation at LACC on Saturday, and I think I might do a ten-minute presentation containing the primary information/argument, then use whatever time I have left for some outtakes. The title is "'No More Than a Year': Isocrates and the Assessment of First-Year Writing." With this presentation, I may or may not be embarking on a new series of research projects. I am definitely entering an area that is not very familiar to me (assessment) and another area that is outside my main specialty (classical rhetoric). The outtakes, which have to do with ideas of natural ability, are interesting, but they don't quite fit into the main focus of the presentation.

• "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" -- Whitney Houston
• "Hey Ya!" -- Outkast
• "Yeah!" -- Usher, Ludacris, Lil Jon
• "Bad Moon Rising" -- Creedence Clearwater Revival (played by a cover band on the float)
• "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" -- Cyndi Lauper

The Wall Street Journal news feed is always kind of screwy in my experience, but I got a kick out of this. It seems they couldn't just pick a verb and stick with it:

It's starting to feel that way, isn't it? I dread seeing our next TIAA-CREF statements, ugh.

Not sure if it works, really, but it's been stuck in my mind:

Facebook : social software :: the diamond journey pendant : jewelry.

Both are very popular but not anything special. I realize Facebook has a lot of fans, but I must just not get it, or something. It doesn't seem to have the potential for cleverness, spontaneity, or appropriation that a space like FARK does. The architecture is too "Select which action you want to do!" and predetermined. "Oooh, I could throw a cake at someone, or I could make meatpie of someone, or spit game at someone!" Facebook, to me, is like a feeble translation of an online community for those who have no idea what online communities are. Or have I not given Facebook enough of a chance?

Sorry folks. Thanksgiving weekend, for me, was spent at my parents' house in Alabama, and it was like I was a Borg drone in a regeneration cycle. (Regeneration cycle incomplete, BTW.) I hope to do better in the future, though.

Tomorrow I'll be leaving for a weekend trip to New Orleans for LACC, so I might end up missing a day in NaBloPoMo.

In other news, I've beefed up my placeholder Facebook profile, which I've had for a long time, and started adding friends. I slightly prefer MySpace, but the thing that finally convinced me to pay more attention to Facebook is that an old friend from college found me via Facebook. That kind of thing happens every day, but this case was special as this old friend is from Indonesia and, I believe, moved back there after college. I never thought I'd find her again. So I figured if I could find Devi via Facebook, it must be pretty good.

It's also interesting that there are all these references to objects now on Facebook; I'm sure many others have made the comparison before, but it seems almost MOO-like.