Catching up

The Gathering Storm moves so slowly that I'm thinking that the plot is being told backwards. Despite my best efforts, I found myself helplessly stuffing mysteries into Reed's library bag the other day. 'Oh, those? Those are his. No, I'm reading The Gathering Storm.' If I force myself to read a chapter a day I could be done by the end of the year. I might also have lost the will to live.

An interesting addition to all of the Getting Things Done stuff I usually do: a pomodoro. That is, a method of getting your stuff done by working in inviolable 25-minute blocks, marked out for you with a timer. It is called pomodoro because this method's purveyor originally used a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato (pomodoro in Italian). I like using it to get me at a single task for a decent period of time. I still use GTD for all of my organization and planning, but the pomodoro is good boots-on-the-ground stuff.

Put your kids in gymnastics. There are a ton of reasons, like physical fitness and fun and all that, but the best reason is that their initial gymnastics classes will completely exhaust them.

I'm not going to get through all of my owned-&-unread books this year as I had hoped. I'll get through a decent number, but it's about time to thin the herd. Which means only that there will be more room for new books. Shelves are no place for office supplies, no matter what Lera says.

Playing: Emilie-Claire Barlow, "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" Yes. Christmas music. I've been listening to Reed play his Christmas music on his violin for weeks now.