Happy almost new year. I am without plans for tonight. I'm plan-less and not at all unhappy about it. I find with NYE events, the less plans, the more fun.

I'm totally moved in to the new place. Just some odds-n-ends left over at the old one. Like my bike. and wok. The house is slowly starting to come together. I painted a few rooms last week then this last saturday I had some familial help finishing the office/bedroom and kitchen. Only one room left in need of paint.

I'm still pretty much without furniture. I'm going to try to find a cheap-ish couch today. I think. I'm determined not to go into too much debt to furnish this place. If that means I live in a sparsely furnished home for a bit, I'm ok with that.

All the top ten album lists are coming out. I've been thinking about it for a couple of days and I honestly can't thinking of any records that came out in 2007 that I really care about. I like the Amy Winehouse record pretty well, does that count?

The Atlantic has a good story about the making of the Golden Compass into a film. I've yet to see the movie but I plan on going soon.

"The Narnia series, in his (Pullman's) view, embraces a worldview that comes close to “life-hating ideology”—punishing, misogynistic, racist, and death-obsessed. By contrast, his own books are filled with a kind of warmth, an exuberance for finding utopia in this life."

One of my fave political writers, Radly Balko, has put his list of "predictions about what will become of our civil liberties in 2008."

Working working working. I shoulda been unemployed months ago. I'm not really complaining but I'm just not used to it. Looks like I'll be at my job til the first week of January. I've decided that once I get settled into the new place, I'm going to try to make some inroads into non-desk job work. I have a few ideas of ways to make some extra cash. The whole book selling thing hasn't really made me much, if anything. I going to keep doing it in hopes of figuring some new angles. The other ideas are extra super secret for now so as not to jinx 'em.

"The big problem with being sniffy about SF is that it’s just too important to ignore. After all, what kind of fool would refuse to be seen reading Borges’s Labyrinths, Stanislaw Lem’s Fiasco, Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Brave New World or Wells’s War of the Worlds just because they were SF?"

- Why don't we love science fiction?

I'm ten hours and forty minutes into DAY 2 of no caffeine and while it sucks, it could be worse. Also helping was the fact that 7 of those DAY 2 hours were spent sleeping. My grand anti-caffeine plan revolves around this one idea - that drinking Sprite Zero will fool my body into thinking it is getting what it needs. I have a theory that I'm not such a soda fiend because of the caffeine as much as the sugar (or fake sugar). The caffeine addiction is just a nice benefit.