Today is one of the floater holidays at IBM. I think floater days are
there so that IBMers in different Canadian provinces have roughly the
same number of holidays. Monday will be a civic holiday, too.

What do you do with an unexpected holiday?

What I do for work (or my studies, at least) is so much fun that I
don’t need to escape from it, so I don’t have any daydreams or
ready-made escape plans for going off to the beach or something like
that.

Instead, I spent the morning hanging out with a friend I haven’t seen
in more than a year. I picked up two parcels, too: a care package from
my mom, and a thank-you gift from Tito Henk, Kathy’s boyfriend’s
father. =)

Then I spent the afternoon reading a book on how to read. To be
precise: “How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent
Reading”, by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren. I learned that the
although I still have to think about whether or not the Great Books
will play that much of a role in my life. Fortunately, W- actually has
books like Edward Gibbons’ The History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, so I can go and judge for myself.

In the evening, W-, J- and I had one of my favorites: strawberry salad
with raspberry vinaigrette. She was particularly insistent on playing
store after yesterday’s math-lesson-disguised-as-play. And now we’re
watching Annie. J- has seen it so many times, but she still loves it.
=)

I guess that’s what I want my holidays to be: a chance to slow down
and savor life, and a time to think ahead, too…

Random Emacs symbol: tramp-handle-directory-files – Function: Like `directory-files’ for tramp files.