Sunday night potpourri

Web 2.0 killed the blogiosphere: Honestly, if I've been MIA, it's because I've discovered Facebook. And I'm in that sweet spot where I'm still readjusting my Scrabble and Boggle strategy to their online FB versions, and coming in neither last nor best in games, but getting the full blast of that partial reinforcement schedule, against which I am helpless. Mm, partial reinforcement schedule. Oh, and if you wanna "friend" me (ordinarily, the juvenalia of FB doesn't bother me, but I still feel like an idiot using that particular neoverb) but don't know who I am, drop an email, and I'll find you.

A close shave: Burma was handed off to someone else with marginally more experience and a much more camera-friendly phenotype. It's hard to do PR when you can't see over most podia.
That said, it really is for the best: I ought to be focused on career change. This is a dream job that I've got; it just isn't my dream.

Amusing ourselves to death: K's still here. But because he's adamant that he'll be heading for LA in January, and because I somehow believe him (Lucy with the football, anyone?), we've been running around consuming entertainment media as if...well, as if one of us may be going away and the other contemplating a 75 percent pay cut. Some reviews possibly forthcoming. And, god help me, I've finally got an answer to that erstwhile rhetorical question "I wonder how often I could eat at Chipotle before I finally got sick of it?" There will be a January Imposition of Discipline, make no mistake about it.

Now competitive with camels, vis-a-vis that eye-of-the-needle thing: Speaking of the contemplation of poverty, my Penn application is finally complete, after some last-minute drama involving a professor who misunderstood when the deadline was, and a vacation away from computers and telephones. I'm sure we'll laugh about it someday. Michigan and Ohio, the vastly undercontemplated runners-up, aren't due until Jan 15 but are almost complete anyway. Ohio uses the TRS-80 of application interfaces (Italophile, you thought Embark was bad?), which is putting me off the school, though I know it shouldn't, and Michigan asks overly-earnest (and ambiguously-worded) mini-essay questions, which is having a similar effect. Wisconsin did not survive scrutiny of its funding statistics.