It's the last day of 2005, and I woke up feeling ill. It's a strange kind of illness: I don't feel very sick, but there's just a little bit of everything thrown in. A mild sore throat. Some nasal congestion. A little bit of fatigue. I asked Phillip to meet Lynn at the museum this morning without me. He decided to call Lynn and postpone it until Monday. I'm not sure why - it was their trip, after all.

I spent this last day of 2005 helping Phillip burn a CD for Colin, and recuperating.

Last week, my supervisor looked at the clinic's upcoming schedules and saw that we had a mere 18 patients for today. (70 patients is considered a dead day for us.) So my supervisor asked me if I'd like to take today off. So I took a day of vacation today.

After asking Phillip if he'd mind me finding some geocaches without him, I planned a day of solo geocaching. I picked out five caches on the University of Washington campus. Four of them were puzzle caches that I'd solved at various times over the past week.

I took the 43 to the U District this morning and spent the majority of the day geocaching - at times in the pouring rain. My day started at the Oceanography Teaching building, took me on a generally northeasterly route through the Health Sciences building, through the Medicinal Herb Garden, out past the Husky Stadium and Women's Softball Field, and finally to the Soccer Field. It seemed like a lot of walking when I planned it out, but apparently my daily walks home have done me good.

I found four of the five caches and caught the 43 back home. I sent an email to the owner of the one DNF cache and learned that I had solved the puzzle correctly and had been looking in the right area. Although I made two separate attempts today, and spent almost an hour searching, I guess I didn't look hard enough. Either that, or the cache has been muggled. That's geocaching.

It was a great day off.

I went into Everything Bad Is Good For You with preconceived ideas, but with an open mind - or, at least, a willingness to let the book open my mind. (See December 17) The author didn't convince me of his argument that popular culture is making society smarter. He presented some interesting ideas within his argument, however.

Steven Johnson, the author, made an interesting point that the thrill of video games comes from learning how to play them as you go along - in exploring new environments and discovering what is in the next level. He points to the millions of dollars spent on guide books and hint books that people typically need to complete a video games as evidence that video games are not brain numbing activities. That's true enough. But I say to Mr. Johnson: How is that really different than playing chess or bridge, which society was doing long before video games? It is possible, I suppose, to reach the end of a game of chess without a guidebook. But without a guidebook or, better yet, a teacher, all you can ever hope to do is reach the end of a chess game. Once you've finished a video game, the guidebook becomes useless, and your skill in future games comes from knowing what's in the next level. There are people who spend their entire lives learning how to play chess well.

The author almost had me convinced when he pointed out that the plot of a typical episode of The Sopranos is more complex than a typical episode of Hill Street Blues, which was more complex than Starsky and Hutch, which was more complex than Dragnet. Then, for some reason, he killed his own argument (for me, anyway) by pointing out that the multi-layered, multi-character style of stories that Hill Street Blues pioneered had actually been used in soap operas before it. That, and the quotes by Steve Allen about how bland early television was, suggests to me that society had been sophisticated enough for a show like The Sopranos long ago, but that the fault was with the networks who didn't trust the audience.

Besides, I wonder, how does the plot of Der Ring des Nibelungen compare in complexity to an episode of The Sopranos?

And I didn't buy his argument at all that the fact that people discuss the strategy of Fear Factor in chatrooms as evidence of the sophistication of modern culture.

The book obviously made me think, even if it didn't convince me.

That whiteboard in the hallway has been in this apartment longer than I have. I don't remember, now, how long after I moved in that the first cartoon of Gladden T Hart appeared on that whiteboard. The cartoons often had no point and made no sense: Gladden in a submarine. Gladden on a horse. Gladden in a business suit or a space suit or a bunny suit. Gladden with horns or feathers. Whatever popped into my head. It seemed like there was always a cartoon on that whiteboard. When the girls arrived, they too would end up as whiteboard cartoons occasionally. Gladys Night in a calico dress. Squeak running a taco stand. Gladys and Squeak sharing a square on Hollywood Squares. Gladden was the subject of the vast majority of cartoons, however. He's just too much of a good boy for me to avoid poking fun at him.

There was a cartoon of Squeak on the whiteboard the night that she died. I don't remember, now, what it was - it don't think it was flattering. When we returned home from the emergency clinic, with Squeak's body in a box, I promptly erased the cartoon. I've never drawn another one on the whiteboard. I like to think of myself as lacking superstitions, but I know better.

I was thinking about that last night, when I had a good playtime with Gladden. Since the girls died, he and I have bonded better than we ever have before.

Phillip and I spent Christmas Eve with my family. My sister and her family hosted it this year. It was our first-ever Christmas barbecue - shrimp for my sister and me, ribs for everyone else. I had no idea that Phillip bought me that mug from Jack's General Store, at Ocean Park, that I had my eye on during our latest trip to the ocean. I vaguely remember him needing the car keys during one of our trips to Jack's, but I obviously didn't think much of it. If Phillip guessed that I bought him that Tibetan singing bowl he had his eye on at Ten Thousand Villages, he didn't let on that he did. Gladden somehow saved up enough money to give us Kate Bush's new CD: Aerial.

Phillip and I did our annual Christmas Day trip to the movies - this year without either Karen and Beth or Kurt and Lori. We saw Wallace & Gromit and The Curse of the Were-Rabbit at The Crest. (We both enjoyed it a lot. We're still laughing about it.) Other than the film, we spent Christmas doing pretty much nothing.

We spent today with Pet. That ghost pirate who has been on our car's antenna for over two years (right before our first trip to the ocean) is now replaced by Signal the Frog, thanks to Pet. I think I left my favorite Folklife hat at Pet's house, and it's an hour-and-a-half drive there. I am exhausted right now, and I'm not sure what I'm writing.