Productive, but Grumpy

I'm a little grumpy tonight. Tomorrow at work we're having "holiday treat day" in our department, where people can bring in snacks and desserts to share with everyone. I was going to make baklava - the recipe I got from my ex-girlfriend Colleen, and which a friend of mine once said might be the best he'd ever had. Alas, I started making it and found that Safeway's fillo dough (which they spell phyllo dough) really sucks. It broke into three pieces per sheet as soon as I opened it. And it being nearly 6 pm on Sunday night, I didn't feel like driving around to find another brand, so I punted on making it.

Annoying. Safeway doesn't seem to carry the brand I've always used (Athens, I think it is), and I don't know who might (Albertsons? Whole Foods? The Asian market nearby?). So... no baking for me today. Grrr.

On the plus side, I have nearly finished my Christmas shopping and shipping, with just a few things to wrap, pack and mail - all of which should go out tomorrow. As I told Debbi, I'm not truly in the Christmas mood until my shopping is done!

We also sent out our cards today - they're in the mail as I type.

And, I spent a couple of hours with my leaf blower collecting leaves in my back yard. We've been rain-free for a week or two, so I sucked up quite a few of them. If we managed to make it through the next week without rain, then the day after Christmas I will do a little more as hopefully the bottom layer will have dried out a bit.

So it's been a pretty productive day.

Yesterday wasn't quite so productive. I had an ultimate frisbee tournament, and was then pretty wiped out for the rest of the day, so we mostly stayed home. Other than going out for a nice dinner at my favorite Italian restaurant, that is (I was craving their chicken-and-veal tortellini). Fortunately despite not playing for a couple of weeks I have not been very stiff today. A good thing.

Tomorrow night is our regular weekly game, so we'll see how long I last!

Ceej has browbeaten me into learning Python (well, okay, she hasn't really; she's just been writing about it in her blog). Bill Bumgarner recommended Dive Into Python, so I ordered the book.

I've been using Ruby for the last 7 months or so and think it's pretty nifty. It's hard to tell whether I'd be motivated to switch. Ruby has a clean, readable syntax and extremely intuitive semantics, I find. Python is more established, has more third-party modules available, and if I want to write scripts on Spies Ceej is more likely to pull out all the stops to support Python than Ruby. If Python proves to be equally readable and intuitive then I may switch. Otherwise, I may use Ruby for some projects and Python for others.

Unless, of course, I decide I hate Python. Which is always a possibility. We'll see. As long as it doesn't have strong static type checking like C++ then there's hope. (String static type checking is the manifestation of purest evil.)

Pretty quiet week, I guess, other than the usual plugging away at work. I'm so ready for my holiday break.