After a bit of a flight delay that landed us near home at 2am this morning, we're back.

Speaking of back(s), here is Mr. Squirrel's back, next to some Very Large Trees. (Guess where?)

Specifically for Buzz...

An article, just for you (and me)!!

Re: working out and lowering cancer risk -- "The greatest benefits went to those who had quit smoking and also exercised, with just 82 cancer cases compared to 95 in sedentary former smokers."

See? We rock!

Bullets, with updates!

See what happens when you draft? You end up with updates to points that no one even saw...

• Apparently blogging about blogrolling fixed the problem. Who knew? This must be similar to blogging about lost objects.
  
• My car is refinanced, barring any weirdness. I'm happy, and I have one less thing on my plate. Update: Er, there were some issues with this later in the day, but they only resulted in an extra $11/month, and I'll go with it for now.
  
• Mr. Squirrel is calling PsychoCollege today to try some stalling tactics. I spent a good half hour talking with our new grad chair (I do love him) about the possible ways to fix this situation. I believe Mr. Squirrel is going to take the "honest" approach and say that this was not what he was expecting, and that he must wait until the other interviews play out. Update: PsychoCollege basically withdrew the offer. Apparently they wanted him to decide today, and when he wasn't willing to do that (actually, he hadn't talked that far... this happened after about five minutes of discussion about details of the offer) the Dean cut him off and said something to the effect of 'this isn't likely to work, because we need a decision NOW.' Mr. Squirrel is a wee bit morose, because this is a sucky way to have your first official offer play out.
• Oh, and the loan money that finally went through (after the registrar lost my paperwork for the fourth semester in a row) is dwelling in a black hole somewhere. The bank has transferred it electronically to my college, but it's not in my account. Contacting the bursar has resulted only in my frustration (and some choice swear words at home). Now they're "not promising" it will reach me by the 27th, and I have started a steady stream of polite but really pissed off emails to various places. As if that has a chance in hell of helping.
  

bullets of problems (for someone else to solve)

• Blogrolling hasn't worked for the last several days.
• Mr. Squirrel was just offered a one-year contract, four hours from here, and is supposed to get back to them on Wednesday. What does one do, when there are interviews being set up for January at other schools? This was supposed to be a tenure-track position, too, and he has no idea why they'd offer him this instead. (Well, they said they were opening the search back up for next year, which makes this offer a bit of an insult.)
  
• I still haven't refinanced my car, and have been playing phone tag with the dealership chick over the last two days.
  
• My desire to exercise has flown out the window. I was up to about an hour of cardio a day - and enjoying it - but now I keep finding reasons to avoid the bike. Have set a small goal today (20 minutes), simply to get myself back into the habit.
  

Of course they are.

My parents are in Chile right now. They leave Concepción for Santiago in a couple days.

...and more

I've promised Mr. Squirrel that if he gets the tenure-track job, we can go to Amsterdam for a few days this spring. I was thinking how silly that was, financially, even though fares are dirt cheap (flight + hotel = $500 each) until I remembered: I'm saving at least $2000/year from not smoking.

Shouldn't there still be rewards for not smoking, this early (less than 2 years) into my quit?

Oh, also...

... in addition to vibes, I need recommendations for a Neil Gaiman book. Apparently - or, according to all of my recommendations on Amazon and other sites - I would enjoy his books. Haven't read any of them.

Candles!

There's a big candle sale at Pier One*. I got 9 (varying size pillar) candles for $29, today. This is good, because the power is likely to go out as we get slammed by Big Storm.

*Note: this is the online version (obviously) but it seemed like all the candles in-store were on sale.