8 Jan 02 
 
	Ah, I found my whiskey.  mmmmm. 
 
	So let's see.  Ah, yes, I've decided to change my navigation for the 
journal, to make it easier to transfer between consecutive posts, and to put the 
latest post at the homepage for the journal.  I will still have the 
navigation-by-calendar at the bottom, if that's the kind of thing that pushes 
your buttons.  And I'm renaming all the files. 
 
	That does not mean this will turn into a blog.  The entries will still be 
plaintext in nature, and if I refer to something online, I will give enough 
details so that one does not need to find the original source.  Some may get 
huffy about this, but the truth is, I've been here for 5 and a half years, so 
many of the links I used to look at no longer exist. 
 
	I know most people who blog do not make entries for the ages, but you may 
have noticed that as time has gone on in my journal my has become less-and=less 
tied to the small events of the day.  More to the point, my main audience when I 
write this journal, believe it or not, has become me.  To a certain extent, even 
when I write my entries explaining various mathematical concepts, I write to 
capture the main thoughts I have at the time of composition.  I go back years 
later and say to myself "What the hell was I thinking?"  There are entries that 
are completely contemptuous of any other reader than myself, being lists of 
doodles I made during lectures or a subway ride.  There are entries with 
multiply-nested parenthetical tawngents which I don't care to end in any 
rational way.  There are in-jokes, and barely fleshed-out allusions. 
 
 
	But let me stop the self-referential part of this entry.  One gets tired of 
people who reflect too much on their purposes, ideals, motivations, audience in 
the online journaling world, because it's not real content per se. 
 
	Just get on with it! 
 
	So I will. 
 
	Going from timeless comments to the specific, I just finished enjoying 
(though in a certain way, I'm still enjoying) the Jameson's Irish Whiskey Stu 
got me for Christmas (boy does he know my tastes).  And Stu got himself a 
Handspring Visor Prism (basically, a PDA with color screen, that has modules 
that can snap into the back).  We got a sewing machine, and I've already made 
two bonnets, one too big and one too small.  I'm wondering if I should go for 
the Goldilocks charm and hope a third one would be just right, or just sew up 
some of the elastic from the too big one to make that one fit (though it would 
look funny... not that it would matter as the purpose of the bonnet is to keep 
my hair from getting in my face at night.  I'll get the hang of this sewing 
thing eventually... hopefully before Amy sends me the stuff to make her 
pillows.) 
 
	I've gotten some nice bath soaps, and some mind teaser books, and some 
glasses (the wine-drinking-kind), and some springform baking pans.  The gifts do 
become more appropriate as I get older, but I wish I would get those strange 
things they used to give me, like the pocket kite or porcelain jester doll.  I 
feel like I have fallen into the role of quotidian wife, though both Stu & I are 
as weird as we've ever been. 
 
	I'm tired and my back hurts, so I'm not going to say anything more today. If 
you are reading this in the first few weeks of January, you will notice this 
page may look odd, but I haven't fixed all the navigation yet, and I don't want 
to simply have this sucker sitting here until I write the Perl scripts to redo 
everything. 
 
	Thbt. Thbt. Thbt.