Explanation of my recent silence...

I've been busy. Do you need any more explanation than that?

Somehow I blinked and missed most of 2010, and the holidays are now upon us once more. For me, however, the precursor to the holiday season is "translating 50,000 report card comments" season, which usually happens the week prior to Thanksgiving and on into the beginning of Thanksgiving week. The staff of the MRSD certainly did not disappoint this year, and I was translating way more than I ever care to do ever again (and yet probably will do again in March).

Seemingly in celebration of the victory of surviving conference translation, the Sunday night before Thanksgiving I came down with the flu. I have not had the flu in almost ten years. I hadn't missed it really. Monday I called in to work both at my primary place of employment and the school at which I'd been scheduled to interpret for parent/teacher conferences that evening. I figured they might not like me puking on parents... call it a hunch. Tuesday morning I was feeling slightly better but I called in to work anyway because our policy is that you're supposed to be vomit-free for 24 hours before you come back to work. And then it snowed. Or technically it had already snowed... I hadn't gotten out of bed to look out the window and know it yet. By Tuesday night, the Chamaco was praying to the porcelain god as well, so I called in for Wednesday. Thursday was Thanksgiving and the Chamaco was still running a fever and feeling puny... sort of a bummer holiday. Fortunately I had both Thursday and Friday off as paid holidays, so I missed a whole week of work with no detrimental effect to my paycheck. Points for me. : )

So now we're in that final stretch before Christmas break... for my friends in the public school system that's exactly 10 more school days before they get two weeks off. For those of us in the non-profit sector it's also 10 school days, but with an extra couple of work days with no students thrown in on top of that. The Chamaco's last day before break is the 17th, mine is the 21st. (BTW, one of the teachers I translate for on a regular basis keeps putting things like "November 23st" in her class newsletters, and it cracks me up. No offense to my teacher friends, but on the whole you guys don't proofread at all and some of you are fairly illiterate. I don't care what degree you have.)

I find myself contemplating last year's posting about the differences between 2008 and 2009. I'll probably do some sort of addition to it contrasting those two years with 2010... really I can only think of one notable difference, and I'm not sure how to phrase it without getting myself into trouble. 2010 has been pretty uneventful, but maybe I needed that after the constant upheaval and negativity that constituted 2002-2008. I sense, however, that the break is over and that great things are afoot for 2011 (to be followed by the end of the world in 2012.... yay!) My Google homepage counts down to the end of the B'ak'tun (the Maya long count calendar)... 2 years and 17 days left, people! : ) According to the Aztecs, however (whom I also track on my Google page), today is a rather benign 11-Acatl and they don't forsee the world even potentially ending for another few years at least. (Every 52 years, according to the Aztecs, there has to be a ceremony to keep the sun moving. Seemingly, though, it's been chugging along just fine without the Aztecs for a while now... if only the Aztecs had realized that it was the Earth that was moving and the sun is actually relatively stationary.)

So anyway, it's off to beddy-bye for me. I regret not having anything particularly meaningful to say to my reading several, but this was really just a check-in post. I will, however, leave you with a steaming pile of...

Song o' the Day: "Show Me How to Live" by Audioslave. Been pondering that one a bit lately. Click on the link to see/hear it... I apologize profusely for linking you to Vevo, but I was left with no choice....