Happy New Year!

to one and all. May your weather be mild, your tires nail-free, your lenses unfogged and your students above average.

2008. I know it's been said before and better, but weren't we supposed to have flying cars by now? Or at least moon colonies, right?

We do have dark chocolate M&Ms though. That's a wonderment that Asimov or Verne couldn't have possibly predicted. Maybe Da Vinci though. He was pretty sharp, I hear.

No real profound thoughts here, but there are some earthly concerns rattling around in my head, so here goes.

A bit of cleaning for the new year is good, yeah? So I did some vacuuming. Needed to change the bag though. I took out the trash and headed out to get a new bag. It seems that the bag I need (the oh-so-coolly titled 'Z-type') doesn't exist locally. Three stores, no Z-bags. Now I've got a vacuum cleaner with no bags, 'cause, natch, I threw out the old bag. (too many commas? tough) Also, I should mention that the vacuum cleaner was rescued from the trash room. Is that tacky or clever? It's a really nice one except for the fact that it uses vaporware bags. So far, I've picked up a nice vacuum cleaner, a dresser (not so nice), a couch and a coffee table all from roommates. If I cared to, I could get more. Up the street, there's another couch that just got put out since I got home, a mattress set and a TV. Reaping the fruits of a disposable culture, eh?

I did find the bags on Amazon. I'm not sure how I feel about being a guy who buys vacuum bags from Amazon on New Year's Day. Best not to think about it too much.

All that vacuum stuff seemed a lot funnier in my head when I thought about it while doing my morning run looking at the stuff on the side of the road. There was a dead squirrel, too. I don't think I'm making things better here.

Everyone is wondering what to do about the 365 blogs now that the 365 have technically passed. I started on January 5 and made it to 338/365 (with a little bit of fudging at the end), but I'm pretty happy with that. I think I'm going to keep going with it. Not so much focused on the one-a-day thing, but more as a way to keep me focused on looking for photos. I'm not sure how it'll turn out, but we'll see.