So, one of my New Year's Resolutions is to update my journal more often than once every few months.

Whether or not I'll do it remains to be seen.

I picked up a travel book on Laos from a sidewalk sale yesterday. It had some notes from the Lao glossary in the back of the book, along with a ticket stub of some kind from Laos, stamped in 2002.

My _other_ New Year's resolution is to read a book a week, which is so far shaping up just fine. I'm halfway through the Sixteenth Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, edited by Kelly Link and Ellen Datlow. I used to love these anthologies when I was in high school. I don't know if it's the change in editorship--they replaced the first fantasy editor, Terry Windling, with Kelly Link--or if I've, you know, grown up, but it's not as good a roundup as I remember. I did love, "Singing My Sister Down," which was about a family gathered to watch the narrator's sister be executed because she'd murdered her husband.

Now I'm watching "Born on the Fourth of July," on AMC. They've blanked out all the curse words. Tom Cruise just got into a bar fight for calling the other guy a [jerk].

Next on the list is, "A Gesture Life," by Chang Rae-Lee, and "The Impressionist," by Hari Kunzru.

School's out for another week or two, and I'm resting.

I'm trying to figure out the surgery thing.

That's about it.