Three Weeks in Review

Well, the big news is that I've got a new job: I'm going to be moving to our Division of Appeals & Opinions (to do appeals rather than opinions, except on occasion). This was official just this Monday, so my start date is still being worked out by people above my pay grade. I expect that the types of cases and the workload will be similar, but with a smoother pace. It'll be basically research and writing, with the occasional oral argument thrown in—which is not so very different from my work now, and while I'll miss some aspects of litigation, the parts I won't miss ought to more than make up for that.

In health and beauty news:

• I spent an entire day with one contact lens inside-out. Didn't sting, didn't feel like the world was curling up in my peripheral vision, just made me feel like my eyes were bugging out, as though I'd spent twenty hours straight in front of the computer screen.
• According to my dentist, regular flossing has gotten my gums to stop bleeding when you look cross-eyed at them, which is good. However, it never ends: now I find that I've been brushing my teeth too hard and causing my gums to shrink back, which means exposing the root, which means ow.
• My seasonal cold began Wednesday. I am aggressively medicating the current symptoms (nasal congestion, sore throat) in hopes of easing the later ones (hacking gagging cough), but decongestants make me feel dopey, twitchy, and like the inside of my head is echoing. This is not really conducive to productivity.
• ETA: Oh, and I finally was successful at giving platelets, last Saturday. Go me.

In travel/fandom news, we've registered for Boskone (note to self: still need to book a hotel room). And we've decided to go to the 2007 Worldcon in Japan, and do about a week or so of sight-seeing before the con; Chad's been wanting to go back and says, not inaccurately, that this is the only way he'll get me to go. Who else is going?

In movie news, the Wallace & Gromit movie is very silly and funny and cute, but trailers before G-rated movies are truly painful.

In weather news, we turned on the central heating today; it's been raining far too much; and it reportedly snowed a bit this morning. The dog disapproves, because the rain means the squirrels (otherwise extremely active at this time of year) go into hiding, and also because she hates having her paws wiped off.

Link dump:

• Serenity in 2000 Words or Less (in the style of The Silmarillion in 1000 Words).
• Via Inner Bitch, a font based on Jane Austen's handwriting.
• A NY Times article about NFL kickers: "And Gillette Stadium is at 75.5 [field-goal percentage], a better percentage than Arizona's Sun Devil Stadium, which may have as much to do with the Patriots' kicker as anything else."

  (The .500 Pats have a bye this week; the Giants pulled off an insane last-second touchdown to beat the Broncos after sucking for half the game. That Manning kid is looking pretty impressive.)

(Yeah, twitchy, can you tell?)