- Christmas Inflation -

Loved this quote:

“Appalling,” Catherine Bruckner, a traditionalist who decorates only in holly and evergreen, sneered as she stopped her car in front of an inflated Santa playing poker with two shrewd-eyed reindeer in a menagerie totaling two dozen figures. “It’s bad enough to see those things on Halloween. At Christmas, they rise to a level of tackiness that is horrible.”

We have these things all over the neighborhood and I've often been curious about where their appeal lies.

- Across the Eighth Dimension -

Have you ever noticeed how cars are especially active portals to the eighth dimension? You lose something, can't find it for weeks on end, and then, voilà, it appears in the car.

I had another one of those experiences yesterday. I was going through the car looking for something else, and I found this magnet that my daughter had made more than a year ago.

Now, I'm sure you're thinking: hasn't he cleaned his car in more than a year?

Not an implausible hypothesis, to be sure, but in this case, the car had been cleaned a number of times, including two thorough ones after road trips. I swear there is no way that magnet could have been there all that time. But there it is.

"Spooky," as my daughter would say.

- Writing Schedule -

I managed to make my daily goal of 300 words on the textbook today. That's how I've broken down the task—300 words a day. Since I have to produce so much text, I've decided I need to make regular progress rather than depending on the unpredictable spurts I normally use to write. I've found that it works fairly well for textbook writing inasmuch as the text does not require so much conceptual thought as synthetic and the most important attribute of the writing is clarity rather than nuance and subtlety. Of course, many would argue that my normal academic prose style could use more clarity and less subtlety! :)

Before today, it had been about three weeks since I made my goal. The end of the semester had gotten in the way in all sorts of ways, so it felt quite good to have the writing flowing today. Let's hope it continues!