We finally got a new car, and money for the old one (which was totaled). Our new new Subaru is a Forester. It has this bizarre feature that holds the brake when you slip the clutch so you don't roll backward. I don’t care for that feature. Otherwise, pretty good car.

I had a dentist appt last week — the first in two years. I kind of forget about my teeth because they never cause me any trouble.

The seller accepted our offer. If the inspection goes as planned, we’ll close on January 8.

The dentist replaced a filling. Or should I say “the filling,” as I only have one. They used some kind of laser instead of a drill — no novocaine, and no pain other than a few zings when something metal touched the tooth root. I was up all night fretting about the novocaine. I hate novocaine.

I more or less quit drinking. This saves like $40/month. Also I’ve lost a little weight, like two or three pounds.

I've been working a lot lately. The workload at Mercy Corps is two or three times what it might be at a creative agency. So a team of basically one designer and one developer can accomplish as much as perhaps 2 – 3 designers and 2 – 3 developers — that says something about the ROI of creative agencies.

It’s too early to tell if it’ll be a boy or a girl yet.

I invented a new workout based on the training methods employed for the crew of 300. Nowhere near as intense, obviously, but the gist is: no isolation, lots of free weights, do something different every time I go in, and every exercise works at least two muscle groups and my core. I’ve put probably an inch around each bicep for the first time in a decade.

I had my eyes examined — again, first time in two years. My eyesight is holding steady at “bad but not quite blind.”

I thought our camera was broken because we dropped it in the ocean. I rinsed it out with fresh water and let it dry for a week or so and whaddya know, it works. Still haven’t taken any pictures yet though. Too busy.

My trick back is feeling a lot better lately. Maybe it’s the new 300 workout?

I don't get all the annual hate over fruitcakes. Have you ever had a well-made fruitcake? They make it with rum.

Am I making myself obvious here? Fruitcakes are booze. They're basically cocktails in dessert form. How can you not like this? Fruitcakes are heavy and dense for the same reason highball glasses only hold 8 ounces. You're not supposed to consume a lot of them.

I reckon most people only encounter prepackaged fruitcakes a là Trader Joe. That's like judging martinis because you can't stand Shirley Temples.

Remember halogen floor lamps? You know, the kind that pointed at the ceiling (because of course it's the ceiling that needs to be well-lit). Remember how they'd get so hot they'd scorch your drywall? And sometimes they had a fancy French name, I think it was torchiere. I shudder to think how much electricity they ate up. For a while there (i.e. the 1990s) it seemed like every time I helped a friend move, we had to wrestle with one of those horrible torchieres. They were awkward to fit around all the other crap in the pickup. And usually someone had left it on, so it was really hot, and we'd have to wait until the very end to load it in. I actually, at one point in my life, owned two of those preposterous things.

Anyway, when was the last time you saw a torchiere? That's what I'm talking about.

You know what I mean.

(ˈhips•tər)
noun informal

One who takes offense at being called a “hipster.”

Just now I misspelled “of.” I typed “ov.” I didn’t mistype it, I misspelled it. Apple Mail helpfully underlined it for me, saving me a little embarrassment.

Everyone has words they never can spell correctly. Usually these are words with lots of double characters (“assassinate,” “embarrassment”) or i-before-e-except-whenever (“receive," “weird”). I have trouble with those words, too. But I honestly have a lot of trouble with “of.”

In elementary school I never aced spelling. I was like 90% with spelling. Pretty good but not all that good. I have a distinct memory of asking Ms. Roland, my second-grade teacher, how to spell “of.” She couldn’t understand what I was asking, because honestly, who doesn’t know how to spell “of?”