Yesterday I talked about how the weather had suddenly turned cooler.

Last night, a bunch of guys showed up at my office singing Christmas carols.

Some people! *shakes head*

Fall is here. I woke up early this morning and my blanket wasn't enough, so I got my big heavy quilt, snuggled under it, and went back to sleep.

The temp is 65 degrees, so even though I wore a long-sleeve shirt, I still feel the bite.

I turned the heater on in my office for the first time.

I love the heat of Georgia, but it's also good to welcome the cooler weather.

I love Amazon.com. I get lots of great deals there.

But sometimes, you can get ripped off.

I've been really sick this past weekend. I also pretty much lost my voice. I'm hoping it'll be back by tomorrow morning, 'cause that's when I have to start teaching classes again.

In the meantime, I've seen two incredible movies:

Brick: This is an old-school film-noir "hardboiled gumshoe" movie -- set in a modern SoCal high school. Nobody dresses like the 40s, but they all use 40s slang. Some people find this ridiculous. Knowing how arbitrary teenage slang is, I find it a minor suspension of disbelief. Some people find high schoolers inherently ridiculous. Having been one, I can see no reason not to portray (some of) them as dignified and sober. I loved this film.

United 93: For the fifth anniversary, I finally got a chance to watch it. It was difficult to watch, as I knew it would be. It was very, very well done. It was more like The Passion of the Christ(in emotional trauma) than any other movie I've watched in the last ten years. Like Passion, I love it, but I won't be buying it.

A couple of weeks into the semester, and I'm in my usual position: snowed under with work. I have all sorts of administrative tasks this early in the semester, not to mention that I'm now in seminary and spent all last weekend at a class, and the weekend before at a conference in Atlanta, and every spare moment is spent studying Greek, and I'm covering a class for my dad next Monday that I have to prepare for, and am leading a small group at school I have to prepare for.

On the bright side, during preplanning, the faculty voted to amend the faculty's dress code to make coats and ties non-mandatory. Today, we got word that the President's Cabinet voted to approve our vote.

Yay! No more fashionable nooses around my neck! No more trying to decide whether a tie matches a shirt! No more buying shirts that I later realize I don't have a tie to match! Yay the end of a massive, MASSIVE headache!