So writing a blog post is "adding a weblog" now?  Huh.  Interesting.  Maybe it was always like that?  It's been a while.

So... it's February 29th again!  The day we all celebrate the fact that God is such a shitty clockmaker, he can't even make the Earth's orbital period a multiple of its axial rotation.  And let's not even get started on the lunar hand of the clock, or the fact that the arbitrary seven-day week has no celestial timepiece whatsoever...

Unless there was originally a second moon.  That would have been awesome enough that I'd let god off with a warning, and a promise that he wouldn't repeat such shoddy craftsmanship (craftsgodship?) in the future.   More likely, the solar system coalesced via natural processes and god doesn't deserve any blame for our less-than-stellar celestial timepieces.  Or maybe we're just blaming the wrong god?  Maybe it's Brahma's fault.

Oh, right - my life.  Let's see... I defended my thesis and earned my PhD in chemistry, got LASER EYES, got married, started Enforcing at PAX, moved to a vastly superior apartment, and co-wrote a successful R01 grant application.  An application about circular permutants of proteins that FINALLY, after over a year of bureaucracy and languishing and general government inefficiency, got funded.  Sort-of.  It may be another month or so before we see any actual money.

The novelty of being "Dr. Kier" has worn off long ago... yet I still have "Dr." on my debit card, and feel somewhat awkward about that.  (Removing it when the card expires, so I don't feel like a cheap tipper.  Especially since my take-home pay is maybe a few percent more than it was when I was in grad school.)

Also, I've designed a number of games, like Succession, which is kind-of like chess + stratego + go + warhammer + your mom.  I also finally beat NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month) in that I've written >50k words for a (proto-)novel(-type-thing) called "Worldjackers".  It's kind of like Firefly + Super Mario Galaxy + Cowboy Bebop + your m... anyway, it needs significant revision, or possibly a trash can.  I have not been making custom liqueurs and blends so often as before, but I am still hosting Game Night with Christine; it is still generally awesome, though we've recently discontinued forcing newbies to drink Hot Burning Death as an initiation shot, since too many people were vomiting, wailing in pain, and swearing never to return.  (I discovered that my Hot Burning Death - aka ghost chili extract - is very close to pepper spray on the Scoville scale.  I swear it tastes better, though!  Pepper spray just tastes like oppression and police brutality.)

Well, until next time our 365-day solar calendar fails us, this is Dr. Kier signing off.

(Okay, so the novelty hasn't completely worn off yet...)