Times I got sick: 2
Dog bites received: 1
Computers fixed: 1
Books read: 4
Pages read of Anna Karenina: 731 of 963 (almost there!)
Books started, and put down in disgust: 3
Books given for Christmas: 4
Books received for Christmas: 5
Video games beaten: 1
New Year’s resolutions made: 3
Relatives seen: 8
Wife’s relatives seen: 50+
Times I said, “Wish I were back in the office right now”: 0
Overall Vacation Evaluation Rating (OVER): epic
…and we’re back! How was your vacation (and/or last two weeks)?
Brian D. Buckley 
Days off from work: 2; presents given & received: 0; relatives seen: 5; mystery stories posted: 1; times interviewed: 1; movies seen: 0; regrets: 1 (there were a couple of movies I wanted to see).
My “movies seen” was also zero. Maybe I can rectify that this weekend…
Just curious, which 3 books did you start and put down in disgust?
…and what were your 3 NY’s resolutions?
Three books I stopped reading:
1. The Star Thrower, by Loren Eisley. Highly-recommended collection of essays, but I couldn’t get over the nauseatingly excessive sense of awe and wonder the author seems to have for every single thing that happens to him.
2. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner. Boring, repetitive, pretentious.
3. The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope. Supposed to be an exciting adventure, but bogged down by exposition in the very first chapter.
Three resolutions:
1. Exercise, write the blog, and do other little tasks in the morning before work, so that I have the afternoons free for Resolution #2.
2. Work an hour and a half on the AI every day (half an hour on days I tutor).
3. Start getting ready for bed by 9:00 every night, so I can get more sleep.
(All three of these are just for January to start with, to see how it goes.)
I played in a magic tournament yesterday and got fourth and did a little heel click, learned to fly, ate strange food, got a lot of books (six recieved, five and a half read), and generally did nothing for long periods of time except read and make long and rambling run on sentences. Other than that I worked on my MYP personal project a bit more and further pursued my new hobby-learning Mandarin. So that was my vacation from school. How have you been recently?
I’ve been good, thanks! I spent a few weeks starting to learn Mandarin several years ago. The hanzi memorization is brutal, but at least there’s only one pronunciation per character (unlike Japanese). How are you liking it so far?
I’m enjoying learning mandarin quite a bit. I finally have a textbook, so It’s much easier to direct my learning now than it was before. And new languages can help you remember the joy of learning languages. And drawing chinese characters is just fun!
Cool 🙂