Well, that time has come again. Merry Christmas everybody!

Kelly and I are preparing to head off to London this afternoon. I'm pretty psyched about it all.

Yesterday I finished a web-friendly PDF of my dissertation, but it's 18 MB, so I have to figure out how I'm going to put it online. ASU only lets me have 10 MB, and I've already used most of that up. That's also not a very friendly size for email either. Hmmm.

Since I'm working on getting a good job/postdoc, I figure my crappy homepage should be updated to look a bit more professional. I liked how my blog turned out, so I copied that style, and I think the results look pretty good.

I think I've got the blog looking the way I want it to. I need to futz around with the sidebar elements somewhat. But unfortunately, it doesn't look right in Internet Explorer. I don't know what the problem is yet.

EDIT: Fixed it! I had to add an extra float property. For some reason IE7 assigned a float:right to the main content, so it moved when the window was resized. Now it doesn't because I added a float:left, so everything sticks to the left side of the window.

Pardon my dust but the new Blogger setup disagrees quite strongly with my very old layout. It will take me a little while to recreate it with all the new web doodads.

AGU was good. My talk was poorly attended since it was in the "mixed-bag" session, but I did get a few questions from informed parties. The talk before mine was about Permian polar forests, and the one after was about Humpback whales. But the main purpose of the meeting was to talk to certain individuals and make contacts for my future postdocs. That went well. Now I'm back working frantically to make sure my proposal is complete this week. I'm also working on finalizing my adjunct teaching position at Chandler-Gilbert Community College for the spring.

My friend Lisa gave me a copy of Guitar Hero II for Christmas. It is frickin' awesome! There's some really good songs on there. Kelly and I are still working through it. Thanks Lisa!

Kelly and I watched the hackiest movie ever: Moving Violations. This 1985 gem stars not Bill Murray but his brother John Murray. And not Stacey Keach but his son James Keach. And Marty McFly's whiny sister. And the "where's the beef?" lady. And Jennifer Tilly playing what appears to be a mentally retarded NASA scientist. Oh, and if you look closely, you can spot Don Cheadle in a brief scene as a drive-thru employee. Did I mention the movie is about traffic school?

I turned in my manuscript to the bookstore for binding. And extra copies to my dad for binding. See, my dad knows the guy who does thesis binding for ASU, so I can get a discount on extra copies by going directly through him, bypassing the ASU bookstore. I also paid the extra fee for copyright, so I can publish my own copies later if I see fit. So I think that's it. I'm done.

I gotta get my AGU talk finished, though.

I've had this song stuck in my head ever since I heard it--"Parentheses" by The Blow. It's not the usual kind of song that I like, but I think the lyrics are sweet. My favorite lines:

If something in the deli aisle
Makes you cry
Of course I'll put my arms around you and walk you outside
Through the sliding doors
Why would I mind?