Marsha: Did you ever get the oil changed in this car?

Joshua: Yeah.

Marsha: Oh, yeah. The free change at Tire Kingdom.

Joshua: God save our gracious car , God save our noble car, God save . . .

Marsha: Stop!

I finally finished After Virtue. Ryan Oprea was right--I should have read this book long ago!

Cassini is playing back pictures from Phoebe. The moon overall is characterized by very sheer impact craters that look as though someone carved them out with ice-cream scoopers. Perhaps all of the other outer planet moons look like this, but this is the closest pass yet to any outer planet small icy satellite. (Voyager 2's pass by Miranda was the previous closest.). See these closeups: an image of the limb and a closeup of a single crater with fascinating regolith detail.

Reenactment and More

I suppose I should be blogging about my reading and actually writing something, but married life is making me so rather bourgeois. Yesterday, Marsha took me on a "recreation of our first date." It wasn't quite my birthday (which is actually Monday this year, and the brother-and-sister-in-law who introduced us weren't present, and the scene was Cleveland rather than Cincy, but the venues were in the same genres and in the same sequence.

We started out with consumer shopping doing a little business at the Apple store and visting both Gallion's and Joseph-Beth. From there, we proceeded to the Art Museum, inspecting our favorite art objects and romantic landscapes. We then wandered around downtown for a while, watching the sea of people converging on Jacob's Field, while waiting for to be able to use our 6 p.m. parking voucher. For dinner, we went to Fat Fish Blue (a cajun/creole sister establishment to Red Fish, where we went on our first date). The food was pretty good, although we couldn't quite finish the Carpetbagger. After dinner, we proceeded to the Hanna building for a play. "I Love You, You're Wonderful, Now Change" was pretty good. Hilarious, actually. Marsha really liked it. :) My favorite part was the vignette of the law firm commercial offering to represent sexually unsatisfied lovers.

Afterwards, we were almost crunched on I-77 by some drunk idiots coming out of the ball game. :(

First sharp images of Phoebe!

Thomas Pearson (now at Cato) shared some links with me. Apparently, Andrew Burns of Hillsdale College fame is working for the CPA in Iraq, and managing a large budget. See articles here and here.

I remember reading the third book of Spenser with Andrew in Simpson only a few years ago. I imagine that, had I not met Marsha last summer, I would be there now too, putting my Arabic to good use and taking such a heady opportunity.

I hope that all of you readers get an opportunity to listen to the Reagan funeral. Bush senior's speech was surprising. When he make the superlative ("I learned more from him . . . than from anyone else I encountered in all my years of public life") and choked with emotion--this was certainly the most moving part of the entire service. One may tend to think of him as a liberal Republican who came to high office by benefit of Reagan's capital. One saw a different side at that moment. For his part, Bush junior spoke more presidentially, more like Reagan himself in his ceremonial pulpit manner, than probably just about anything we have heard since Reagan himself was in the role. Made me proud--and left me wanting to do something for the campaign. And Thatcher's eulogy was, well, very fine English.

Cassini is approaching Phoebe! The little moon is getting closer and closer.

Glass!

My brother Andrew went to California and brought me back a beautiful chunk of obsidion.

Blueberries for Sal . . .

. . . strawberries for Marsha!

(Raspberries for Joshua?)

Spirit approaches the Columbia Hills, and is now only a few hundred meters away.

We had one of my brothers, his spouse, and my two sisters over for lunch on Sunday. Marsha roasted a turkey, and prepared an entire turkey-and-dressing-with-cranberries spread. Anna dubbed the feast Thanksgiving Reloaded.

Sic transit Venus

Marsha kicked me out of bed at 6:30 (after a terrrible night's sleep), and I have spent the last 40 minutes or so watching Venus creep to the edge of the Sun's disk. Not exactly something any of us have seen before. I hope that Tom Dobbins has good weather--he went all the way to Rome to observe the event!

It's a small world after all!

Marsha and I were just talking and found out that we both "had" the same teacher at Tree of Life in Columbus!!!

I had Susan Ryder for second grade, circa 1981. In March 1991, Marsha taught Junior and Senior English with Mrs. Ryder for a Preliminary Student Involvement Experience as part of the education program at Cedarville.