Breath — it’s break time

Finals are over. I made it. What a trip.

Right now I am pulling myself together for a week at the fam­ily ski cabin. The plan is to drop off the exhausted lap­top at Tek­serve tomor­row for some repairs. That way, I can have a week of min­i­mal com­puter use. It makes sense to take the week away to really get away. When I get back, I want to inven­tory what I did this past semes­ter and assess my progress. I can assess bet­ter with just a bit of dis­tance. And sleep! I slept 12 hours on Tues­day night after stint in the bath tub with bub­bles and a drink. I am still cranky and spaced out, so I’ll go for another 12 hours tonight.

Today, amid shop­ping for gifts for oth­ers, I went on a minor book binge for myself. One of the most excit­ing things about breaks from classes is read­ing what I want. Here’s some books that I might read in whole or part over the course of the win­ter break:

Code: The Hid­den Lan­guage of Com­puter Hard­ware and Soft­ware by Charles Pet­zold
The first few chap­ters were assigned for Boot­camp over the sum­mer, and I’m enjoy­ing this cod­ing thing.

Ped­a­gogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
I need to work on the final project for the Brazil course, and this has been on my read­ing list for ages. It’s about time.

How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer by Deb­bie Mill­man
This was an impulse buy today. Based on feed­back this semes­ter, my design sense is not ter­ri­bly sen­si­ble. I’m hop­ing this book will help.

Graded Go Prob­lems for Begin­ners by Kano Yoshi­nori 9-dan
For fun. My aunt gave me a lovely Go set for Christmas.

The Art of Polit­i­cal Mur­der: Who Killed the Bishop? by Fran­cisco Gold­man
I went to Goldman’s talk at OSI and got a signed copy. It’s about Mon­signor Gerardi’s assas­si­na­tion in Guatemala after releas­ing the truth report on human rights crimes.

Fair Trade by Jacque­line DeCarlo
This is a Beginner’s Guide. I went to a book sign­ing way back in May.

Speak Truth to Power: Human Rights Defend­ers Who are Chang­ing the World writ­ten by Kerry Kennedy, pho­tos by Eddie Adams
Because, as one of my men­tors says, I need more roll models.