This morning I sent off my last term paper for the semester. Grades have aliready begun trickling in. A class I thought I was had done well in, on Aristotle's Politics, I got an average grade in. Grades for my hardest class haven't come back yet. But with the average grade in the class on the Politics, I think I've just screwed myself out of any possible scholarships for next year. Odds are increasing that I'll be headed back to the IT mines, slaving away filling the buckets with bits.

My analysis is that I hadn't properly registered the depth of the study of the subject matter required for graduate level work. And hence, I was overly confident and didn't spend enough time studying. Throw in a little bit of bigfishinsmallponditis, and I was quite unprepared for life in the sea. I can only blame myself. At this point, my graduate career is probably salvageable, provided I don't do even worse in the class I didn't do all that well in in my other two philosophy classes. But it certainly isn't a stellar start.

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Which came first, the large family or religion? I first saw this question posited in Policy Review, probably about two years ago. Which way the chain of causation flows is an interesting affair.

Tom Friedman makes 3 level headed suggestions for approaching three difficult problems: Detroit, Afghanistan and US Banks. The approach is the same in all three, don't confuse peripheral issues for what is really at the heart of the matter.

If I had noticed that Future Schlock was written by PJ O'Rourke, I'd not have read it. I haven't read anything by him that I've enjoyed since I was in high school and used to look forward to his pieces in Rolling Stone. But I found this bit comparing the old and new House of the Future attractions at Disney World to be interesting.

I love this response to the recent shoe hurling: No one should read anything more into it than what it was, which was an individual throwing a shoe. However, as these words came from the mouth of the official spokesman of the Secret Service, I can't help but think to myself, ``of course they would say that, they need to engage in full CYA mode.'' It's a shame that other folks aren't saying the same thing.

But to be fair, if the rumors of torture are true, this could be the incident to spark a whole new round of civil war. That would not be a good thing. I doubt it will spiral out of control that badly, but wars have been started over sillier things.

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In wine making news, I racked the raisin wine as it's been going about a month. The recipe I pulled suggested racking 1 month out and again at 6 months. I took a sample. It's an odd flavor, not unbecoming but not quite what I expected. It'll be interested to see how it ages.

I also started a new batch of white grape wine with a touch of berries. I think I'll stick to a first racking after one week and a second racking after a month as that seems to have done well with my first attempt at grape whine.

It kind of amazes me how long wine takes to mature.

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Travel plans for the holidays are locked in. When the wee ones come home from school on the 23rd, we'll be heading out for Ohio. We'll spend two nights in Dayton to attend the big Christmas Eve celebration with my extended family. (Four generations should be on board.) Christmas morning, we'll make the trek up to Toledo to spend time with the in-laws.

I'd wanted to get down to Cincy to attend Christmas day liturgy at our old parish. But it isn't going to happen. Neither will a lunch with some of my former cow-orkers.

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I spoke on the phone with a guy interested in managing the duplex we own back in Dayton as a rental. We'll see how that turns out. I suspect the rental market is good right now. But renting the house out worries me a bit. Well, that's not quite true. Renting the house out worries me a good deal more than a bit.

But with one call and one showing since the house has been on the market, what's a guy going to do?

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I'm plumb out of things to write.