Days still long

 * I did get some writing done today; I rewrote/typed up the introduction to the current paper. It's....not bad? Short, because I'm still planning on publishing this as a "note" because I don't have a lot of results and most of what I have do not achieve statistical significance, but it seems like a good quick literature review at least. Tomorrow afternoon I will need to prep for the stats class this week as Wednesday and Thursday are busy enough that I cannot count on having enough time to prepare.

* I got out the new cards I ordered and wrote up a few to go out. If you're someone I've sent to regularly in the past you are probably getting one but if you want one to be sure (these are just greeting cards; not Valentine's cards, I don't really "do" Valentine's though I did send a funny one with pug dogs on it to my niece) you can always e-mail me your address. 

* In a minute I will finish this up and see about maybe doing a TINY bit of knitting on the fluffy sweater; I do want to get more pro-active about DOING things instead of just watching tv/surfing the web in the evenings; I think I feel better when I do stuff. (Like writing the cards tonight, and also, I paid all the bills that had come in the past couple days).

I also bought a very simple boxy cardigan pattern and am torn between trying to get a charcoal colored yarn (yes, I have a gray sweater on the needles, but it's a complex one) because I need another gray cardigan, or using some marled brown KnitPicks yarn I bought simply because I liked it without a pattern really in mind. (Then again: I have the fat chunky greyish yarn that I am waiting on my longer big circular needle for, that will make a cardigan - and the marled yarn has the virtue of being already-paid-for and in my stash)

* Still reading mainly on "Death Watch," which is a "Gideon Fell" mystery by John Dickson Carr. I don't know how many of the Fell mysteries he wrote but I have read two others and I enjoyed them. I know he wrote some other books - more of a historical mystery series, I think, set maybe in the early 1800s? - under a different name and I might try tracking some of those down as I enjoy his writing. With the golden era detective novels, it's extremely variable how good the writing is - some it is quite good (A lot of ECR Lorac's novels are well-written) and others are pretty bad (I have one or two I just jettisoned after not being able to tolerate them - one of the things that turns me off a book fast is dialect writing, especially poorly-done dialect writing, and one of the ones I quit on after a couple chapters had the worst kind of "It's-a me, Mario!" badly done Italian accents)

Gideon Fell is basically a - pastiche isn't quite the right word - character drawn on GK Chesterton - he's a large man, with moppy hair and a mustache and who wears an Inverness cloak and has an opinionated, donnish manner, and I kind of enjoy that. I like characters that area  little eccentric in a book. You get the sense he is fundamentally good hearted under the bluster and pretense, and that makes him likable to me. 

Though I admit these days mystery novels are about all I can keep up with; I don't have a lot of time for "fun" reading and I'm often tired when doing it. And SPQR gave me bad dreams, though I might take it back up now that the world seems a tiny bit calmer than it did a few weeks ago.