Take that, domain thieving bitches

Lady and gentleman, boy and girl, tenpointtype is back!  I felt the odd impulse this morning to see whether the original domain, tenpointtype.org, had become available, and lo, it was so.  I let the domain lapse, very consciously, shortly after I moved to New York, in early 2005.  I hadn't been writing much (I'm still not, of course, but that's not the issue), I was totally broke (I still am, but that's temporary), utterly miserable (not so much), despondent and despairing (again, not so much) and just not interested in publicly whingeing in a non-stop fashion.  Clearly, evil cyber-thieves have automated clients set to discover domains that are not renewed promptly, so when I let the original tenpointtype domain lapse, it got snapped up by parties unknown.  And there was no way in hell I was going to buy it back from the domain kidnappers for $100. So I let it sit, and there things stood, until this morning.  But now, in an idle moment (read: WAAAAAAAY too much work, ever more creative procrastination and work-avoidance), I discovered TPT was available. I've registered the domain, set up a year-long hosting with evil corporate domain hosting people (which next year perhaps I'll switch to someone reasonable, but I was in a hurry), and, well, that's all she wrote.  I don't imagine I'll spend too much time working on the site in the near term future (although I've downloaded WordPress already....),and will continue to whinge here. But it feels like a victory, nonetheless, so I thought I'd share.  Hmm. Shower, grade, write. Sigh.

brullyant

A fab idea, slightly bastardized from the suggestion of a quasi-colleague, who came wandering into my office not long ago to share the tail-end of a bottle of champagne.  I do wish I knew her name...  Anyway, we were discussing a novel, and she enquired about my work before noticing the NYTimes displayed on the monitor, and she laughed.  She suggested the category of "productive non-work," i.e. developmentally useful readings not directly connected to one's work (including intriguing novels).  And it strikes me - my office is a place of binaries: I work, or I fail to work; I deal with university things, or utterly reject and avoid them.  So, I'm going to try and work the middle ground here, and give myself permission, nay, insist that if I'm not working, that I pursue productive non-work rather than exclusively non-productive non-work.  Hah.  Revelate!  Deviate!  Celebrate.  Tomorrow and tomorrow, etc.  The petty pace ain't over yet.