So, I'm back from a week and half vacation and start teaching a new class tonight.

Some of my whiny I-wants have been satisfied by buying a new bed. There was a great article on slate.com about mattresses. I wondered why I was so confused buying a mattress. Apparently all the big manufacturers just relabel them with different names to confound comparison shopping. So I bought one and got a great deal. The bed frame came from overstock.com complete with mypoints bonus money.
And I actually admitted by age (gasp!) to get a discount at the Eddie Bauer Outlet on vacation.

I'm so sorry to report that that retail therapy did indeed make me feel better.

But then this morning's paper had a scary article on natural gas prices for this winter. I probably should've saved the old mattresses as insulation!