Inessentials

Thanks for everyone who has submitted puppy names by commenting on the last post or e-mailing us. I think we have a short-list of two or three names, which we’ll decide on very soon. But it’s not too late for more suggestions.

My thumb is healing fairly well. There might be some scarring, but nothing too bad.

We finally got our taxes done last night. I had done 90% of them two months ago, but was waiting on a couple documents. We’ve had those for a while now, but we had been caught up in other things. I sat down to do 20 minutes of finishing up, but of course turned into four hours of entering data, printing off the taxes to mail, finding a missing document that would save us another $100, entering that, reprinting everything, collating it, and now today it gets sent. Taxes always take longer than I expect. And now it looks like we’ll pay estimated taxes for 2008 since Yale refuses to withhold anything on my fellowship.

Nicole’s parents are coming to visit later this week while Nicole is on spring break, which runs all next week. That’s meant a week of cleaning, laundry, and minor odd jobs around the house in preparation. While they are here, we’ll probably go to NYC to see a show and do some sight-seeing, which is always fun.

This is a busy week for me. I’ve got a number of projects all coming up in a couple weeks, and getting lots done this week is the only way I’ll accomplish any of them.

We started watching Battlestar Galactica. Nicole is definitely a fan. I’m very impressed with the show, but I have a few worries about it relying on sci-fi conventions rather than engaging with them.

Obama is taking a lot of flack for his comment about bitterness, religion, and guns in small-town Pennsylvania. The flack is entirely about whether he should have made these comments, which is good, but not about whether what he said is true. Shouldn’t the discussion about whether a politician should have said something be at least in part about whether that thing is true?