Random Thoughts 11/20/12

• I had a nice surprise today.  I got the mail at the church and there was a package, addressed to me, from Amazon.  But I hadn't ordered anything.  I opened it and immediately recognized two books from my Amazon wishlist.  Someone had gone to my list and anonymously gifted two books to me!  How thoughtful is that?!  These two books were a delightful surprise.  Thank you!
• What were the two books?  The first was David L. Robbins' (one of my favorite novelists) Broken Jewel, an historical novel about a WW2 prison camp in the Philippines.  The second book was Shakespeare's Richard III from the Arden Shakespeare series.  Arden presents the plays with extensive footnotes and, in this case, about 200 pages of historical background and analysis.  Just plain awesome.
• Rock chalk, Jayhawk!  It hurts losing that game to Michigan State but still the Jayhawks, though young, look immensely talented.  One of my Jayhawk friends sent me this re-tweet: "Man, we better hope our first nine guys don't all go down or we are gonna be in big trouble!"
• I've been shopping for a couple months now, but now I've begun organizing my Christmas shopping spreadsheets in earnest.  Tis the season!
• Here's a new drone built by Boeing.  Absolutely fascinating.  Their goal is a communications drone that flies for 10 days at a time.
• I was genuinely sad for K-State last week.  Good luck the rest of the way, wildcats.
• I went to my first Tim Hawkins concert last week.  That guy is pretty funny but he's an amazing musician.  
• Altic family holiday decorating schedule: Thanksgiving night, put up the Christmas tree.  Christmas night, take the tree down.  When I was a kid we put the tree up on Christmas eve and took it down on Valentine's.