Now that we are fully into the "holiday break" from grad school, much traveling and merrymaking is abounding.  What that means, unfortunately, is that I haven't had much blogging time.  I hope you'll forgive me.  I assure you that come the new year I will be on an actual vacation and most certainly be blogging.  Cause I love it.

A short post today dealing primarily with how stupidly we design the school year.  Or for that matter, the timing of religious holidays.  And while Hannukah commemorates the actual date of an event (on the hebrew calender, which is why it "skips around" the secular one), Jesus was born in the Spring.  And, Spring would be a AMAZING time to have a break.  Think of it.  EVERY holiday season wouldn't be mired with weather related travel fiascoes. People could spend their holidays with their loved ones (not to mention they could go outside with those loved ones), not stuck commuting to them.  Are we doing it in the middle of Winter to have something to cover on the news?  This really is some self-inflected shit, and I think we should rethink it. 

Second.  The fact that we use microwave timers to time things we put in the oven is really starnge to me.  Useful?  Yes.  But it's just weird that the microwave has a function in the kitchen that it has no business having.  Microwave = Timer for stuff?  No, a microwave heats stuff up.  Defrosts stuff.  All i'm saying is its weird.  And if the government is watching you, they are probably doing it via your microwave.  Basically the take home message here is that I think microwaves are evil dark-hearted machines.  Beware.

A teaser trailer to end on.  Yesterday I went to the casino (Mohegan Sun) with my friend Steve.  It is our 4th extremely-semi-annual trip (we have gone 4 times since approximately 2000), and we always have a great time.  This was no exception.  Even though we got lost on our way home (got back to my house at 4:30am) and I was subjected to 25 minutes of 'Easy Listening Holiday Jams' on Lite 94.7, I couldn't even sleep when I got home.  The adrenaline was still too high.  Long story short, I entered a 55 person poker tourney and won 3rd place, $578 dollars total.  It. Was. Amazing.  There ARE pictures.  There ARE hilarious sub-plots.  It WILL be written about soon.  to be continued . . .