LOST in Space

Man that is an awful title for what I am about to provide to you.

First, the "LOST" reference.

Last night I was in the grocery store, getting some toiletries for Tegan and myself, as well as some cough medicine for Ruth. As I entered the store and passed alongside the checkout lines, I noticed the magazine racks and the TV Guide in particular.

You can from the cover why I was so mesmerized.



Naturally I bought it. (I mean . . . it's got THE DRIVESHAFT SONG!!!!!!) The articles are interesting and the promise of LOST-related interactive media was just too much to pass up.

Now for the "Space" part.

Have you heard of MESSENGER? (I fully expect Dr. Actually's hand to be the first one in the air here.)

It is a space probe that is heading to Mercury. Right now it is approximately here.

But to get there, it had to leave Earth orbit, obviously. Lucky for us, while doing so its Hi-Res cameras took many images that NASA has pieced together into a very nice little movie.

A myriad of topics--some hairy, some sexy (or not)

My plan tonight was to begin with a request from Ariel to me over the weekend. She asked me where my beard went and claimed that she liked it when I grew a beard.

Currently I don't feature a beard, but I did have a full beard this past winter.

So, my plan was to give you the opportunity to vote on what sort of beard I might grow to appease Ariel, because you know I love to give you, my loyal readers the chance to make me dance like a puppet on a string.

Ariel claims that she prefers a goatee style rather than the full facial model, so that is what I am limiting my choices to at the moment.

But before giving you photographic choices, you must learn about the various styles.

I won't use all these tedious names but will give you a few choices (complete with my own personal names) to make the voting simpler.

Should I got with what I call the traditional modern goatee? How about one of my personal favorites . . . the Red Sea goatee (because the moustache and chin are separated)?

Or maybe the chin model?

How about the reverse T?

Let me know what you prefer by providing a comment. I'll give the votes due deliberation and begin growing soon . . . as long as you don't make me look like a fool. I can do that on my own with no help from you and besides, I do have a public career to consider.

And, oh yeah . . . Ariel and I thank you for your input.

*****

In a COMPLETELY unrelated bit of posting, I found this story on Slate tonight that just demanded discussion amongst the MFJF 4-square (and all of its subsidiary members). But I will give you a HEADS UP WARNING at the start--this article deals with sex (but doesn't have any graphics, so don't worry about that). If you are turned off by such things, then don't venture down the link above.

School supplies

Ariel will begin kindergarten in a little over a week.

Many parents would take this opportunity to moan and groan over their little girl, I don't want to give her up, boo hoo, cry all the way to the front door of the school, yada, yada, yada.

Tegan and I are not like that. That is due in part to the fact that Ariel (and Ruth) have been in daycare under the careful eye of other people eight hours of every work day since they were 3 months old. We are very comfortable with their situation and have no qualms about what Ariel is about to undergo.

Besides, it is only part of the day and then she returns to the Kindercare that she is very familiar with.

So, spare us the waterworks. She'll be fine and is looking forward to it.



What do kindergarten kids need these days? Well, I can at least give you the supplies list that our elementary school provided to us. This weekend marked the first of many future school supply purchases. As the children age, we'll do it again and again.

Here's the list (and I hope you appreciate it, since I snuck into my sleeping child's bedroom to retrieve the bookbag from her closet--I couldn't find the paper list, and apparently I'll do anything for a blog post.

5 folders for holding papers and such
6 glue sticks (but no huffing please!)
8 No. 2 pencils (Tegan went with the nice metallically hued multicolored ones.)
1 set of washable watercolor paints (8 colors to a set)
1 box of washable markers (8 colors in a box)
3 boxes of crayons (non-toxic please, and yes . . . 8 colors to a box)
1 pair of safety edge, blunt tip Fiskars brand scissors (yes, they specified a brand name here)
1 pencil eraser
1 large backpack

How any of this will help Ariel get into Harvard or become an international artist I don't know. But I guess that is why they are the teachers and I just _________ for a living.

[RANDOM NOTE--I WAS TRYING TO FIX SOMETHING ON MY NAPA VALLEY . . . MEH! POST AND INADVERTANTLY MADE IT DISAPPEAR FOR A FEW DAYS. IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THAT LAST SAN FRANCISCO POST, PLEASE GO DOWN TWO AND DO SO NOW.]

Fighting comment spam

If you have been keeping up with my site . . . and why would you not? . . . you might have noticed some comment interplay between Jack Thunder and I on the problem of blog comment spam.

It has occurred twice on my blog and I dutifully sent in a warning to Blogger about it, hoping to get some feedback on how to deal with it.

I noticed on the Blogger home page that they have provided a way to deal with the problem--comment verification.
I mention this for two reasons: 1.) to pass on the knowledge to other bloggers and 2.) to point out that I will enable this IF comment spam continues to become a problem. My personal feeling is to avoid doing this, as it adds another step to commenting and might discourage people from responding to my posts (which I definitely don't want to do). But, if the spam continues to grow, I will have to take measures to combat it.

The last days . . . Napa? Meh!

You have probably already heard my audioblog as we exited the airport this afternoon, summing up our feelings on arrival back in Ohio. We ARE glad to be home. The kids were excited to see us and really didn't care that much about the awesome souvenirs that we brought back for them. I suppose being happy to see us is the better choice.

But, Tegan did take pictures of our last two days out west, so I dutifully place some of the most evocative ones here for your amusement. It really was true that if we had come home on Sunday we would have saved several bundles of cash and probably would have a better overall feeling about the trip. What was different?

Well, Napa just isn't our thing. We don't care THAT much about wine. I mean, I like to drink it and it goes well with food. And I'll enjoy learning about how wine is made and take a tour of a winery (we didn't) if you price it reasonably and tell me some interesting stuff. But, to just drive around, pay people to sip their wine, and call that a day? We gave it a brief try, but decided we just didn't care that much.

So, we wandered around some of the towns in the Valley, saw some sights, ate expensively priced food (as ALWAYS on this trip), greatly enjoyed warm temperatures and bright sunshine. We did go the to Napa Valley Museum, which was free on Mondays.

Here is Tegan beside a statue of a bear. It was outside the museum.
Another reason that things might have been more stressful and less leisurely on the last few days was the additional of the rental car. Besides adding another expense, for a part of the trip that we came to minimize, the two of us driving around in unfamiliar territory is always cause for some tense words, missed road signs, badly interpreted maps, etc. It always happens, it always will, and we continue to love each other and vacation in the future.

Tegan did get some pictures of grapes growing as I drove, to prove that we were actually where we said we were . . . since we didn't bring any bottles home. (Sorry.)

Oooh, look. The sepia feature on the camera makes this one look all "Grapes of Wrathy" or something.

Once we'd had our fill of Napa, we chilled at our less than stellar Holiday Inn in Vallejo (remember the one right across the street from the Six Flags?). The next day (our last non-travel day) we drove back to San Francisco, across the Bay Bridge this time and to our hotel near the airport.

But along the way, we spent an hour or so wandering the Berkeley campus. Tegan took a few more shots on another pretty day.

Here is a clock tower. I wondered if something important happened there in the Sixties, but maybe I'm getting it mixed up with the maniac in the U.T. clock tower. There was one odd moment when I was thinking of how on of my history books treats the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, showing some pictures of student protestors and wondering if I might recognize the appropriate buildings, when Tegan points out that we are walking past the Free Speech Cafe. Odd.

After Berkeley, we headed back downtown into the Financial (downtown) District of San Fran. Tegan wanted me to see a building that we had noticed marked on a map simply as the "Frank Lloyd Wright" building. I could not remember him doing anything significant in downtown San Francisco, but I wanted to see it if I could.

We followed the map and found the slender street (more of an alley besides Union Square, really). Nothing there that at first screamed FLW. The only possible building was

a squat, brick structure that was more modern looking than all the other buildings.

The archway out front reminded me of another Wright archway in some other city, but what really clinched it was the interior.

I didn't take a picture, because it is now an art gallery of sorts, but the interior is clearly like the Guggenheim's spiraled ramp structure. This building, the V.C. Morris Gift Shop was built before the famous New York museum, and this spiraled interior was Wright's attempt to refine the design in a smaller space before he did it in New York. The ceiling of this gift shop/art museum also reminded me of the interior ceiling treatment of the Johnson Wax Building. I was glad that I got to see it. That's one more FLW structure that I have been inside.

Then we relaxed outside in the sun at Union Square.

We ate cheesecake in the bright sunshine and tried not to think about returning to the work-a-day world.
It was a great vacation overall and we were very happy to have this time together. Thanks especially to Tegan's parents who braved the parenting of two young children for a week while we had fun.