I can’t help it…he’s too cute

I’ll stop posting pictures of the kids when they stop being cute.

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason

2.5/5 stars

It’s a good diversion for a Saturday morning, but not much more than that. Bridget Jones continues her neurotic persuit of happiness, this time off the single’s market and in a relationship. That doesn’t make things much easier, mostly due to Bridget’s paranoia. Not bad, not great.

Holiday Vaudeville

I dragged Andrew to the Kennedy Center this evening for the free Millenium Stage Holiday Vaudeville performance.

Upon arriving, we were given a small paper bag containing a kazoo and wrapped mint. We were told that everything would be used during the show, so we weren’t to get rid of any of it (like tossing the mint’s wrapper).

There were four performers/groups during the one-hour show. The host/emcee was Sean Grissom, a cajun cellist. He performed a few songs between the other acts, including a piece off of his “Celtic Cello” CD which Andrew bought.
Grissom called up Artis the Spoonman first. The Spoonman plays, as you might suspect, spoons. Ordinary spoons.

Next Grissom led the audience in an unforgettable rendition of “The Little Drummer Boy” (or, as he called it, “The Little Cellist Boy”). Here is where we used our candy wrappers, creating the rhythm. However, I must say that we sucked. I had lots of trouble keeping the rhythm, and usually I’m not too bad at that. You can imagine the rest of the audience.

Then Grissom brought up AJ Silver, who does trick roping and whips. Next Grissom lead the audience in “Jingle Bells” on our kazoos. I got the hang of it about halfway through.

Finally the Alexandria Kleztet. The big finale was “Auld Lang Syne” with the audience on kazoos again. At the end we did a mock New Years Eve with a count down, and the audience popping the paper bags at zero.

A very fun show! Almost all of the performances at the Millenium Stage are simulcast on the Internet and archived, so you can watch it if you dare.

Afterwards, we walked out on the terrace overlooking the Potomac.

Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together – mass hysteria.

Well, dogs and cats snuggling, at least…

With any luck, he’ll get fired, too

Check out this article

A rural Alabama judge began wearing a robe embroidered with the Ten Commandments to his Andalusia courtroom this week, echoing the statement made by the state Supreme Court chief justice ousted over a Ten Commandments display.

Covington County Presiding Circuit Court Judge Ashley McKathan said he ordered the robe and had it embroidered using his own money. He said he did it because he felt strongly that he should stand up for his personal religious convictions.

I’m all for standing by your religious convictions, should you have them, but we have a strict policy of separation of chuch and state. This part of American law has apparently eluded McKathan. You’d think a judge would be more familiar with the law, and perhaps we should be ousting judges who can’t even understand such a simple distinction.

UPDATE: Preposterous Universe has a picture.

The Day After Tomorrow

2.5/5 stars

Standard end-of-the-world, let’s-ignore-real-science, and how-about-we-create-some-completely-unbelievable-scenarios kind of movie. Not bad, as long as you’re looking for special effects and not looking for a great story. One plus: the NASA scientist was a woman — this is the first movie I can remember where a NASA person was a woman.

Chirstmas Shopping

We ventured out to the mall today to finish off our Christmas shopping for each other. We had already finished all of our shopping for family and friends, since those all had to be shipped across the country (and a couple up into Canada). So, all we had left was each other. We split up, with Andrew heading off to the other end of the mall to start his shopping.

My first purchase? A Christmas outfit for Felicia, of course.

We were actually out of the mall by about 2 PM, just when it seemed to be getting really busy. Yay us!

Game Night

We had a few friends over tonight for games and dinner. We’d been talking about it for over a year, but with the wedding plans, we just never got around to it. Too bad, because it was a lot of fun, and I hope we make it a regular feature at our place.

Neil arrived first, so Andrew, Neil and I started with a game of “La Strada” — a road building game that we played during the games class we took this summer. Andrew and I had brushed up on it last week, and found that it’s a lot of fun for two players along with being great for more players.

After Stef and Doug arrived, we set up “Carcasonne“, a game we had heard about from the teacher of the games class, but had only played a couple times ourselves. It is a tile-laying game where you build up cities, plains and roads to get points. It, too, is fun for any number of players. Andrew bowed out just before we started because Kendall and Kate arrived. I found that Carcasonne took on a different feel with more players. In the first game we played, the farmers were the most important point-gatherers; however, in a second game with five players, completing a key 17-tile city was the key to the winning score. We haven’t figured out the best strategy for the game, and perhaps there is no “best strategy”.

Finally we played a game of “Munchkin“. We had played last Thanksgiving with Mushi and Jeff, but couldn’t remember the rules, so we muddled through the poorly written instructions. It wasn’t as fun as the others, perhaps because of the myriad exceptions to the rules and confused instructions. We think it might be more fun in subsequent games when we have the game play down.

All in all, though, a very fun evening.

It’s Hotseat time again

I took a bit of a break from answering questions for Ask a High Energy Astronomer for the wedding, but now I’m back.

Let the crackpot science begin!

I’m not sure how, but every time I’m in the hotseat I find some of the wackiest web pages. Today’s candiate? Tachyonized Products.

I found this page by Googling for “tachyon interactions” — that seems like a harmless enough search, yes? Well one of the first results was this page [link no longer exists, as of 9/2015] talking about the physics of tachyons, Tachyon Energy (their term), and the healing power of the Tachyon Energy.

Tachyon Energy is omnipresent and limitless. It has all the potential information for creating perfect form in the universe.

Um. Right. But here’s the best gem from that page:

Everything that transpires in the human body, for example, already exists within Tachyon in perfect form. An excellent example of this is seen in the animal kingdom. It has been observed that animals which are not influenced in any way by human beings live completely healthy lives.

So, apparently animals that live lives completely un-influenced by humans only die from either old age or by the hand of another animal?

Even better, though, was the link to the catalog of “Tachyonized Products”^*. The main difference between a tachyonized product and a non-tacyonized one is that the one on the left is $60 and the one on the right is $20. And frankly, if you’re dumb enough to fall for their spiel, you deserve to lose the money.

^*You might wonder what Tachyonized products are, exactly. According to the web site, “Tachyonized materials are permanent antennas that are able to focus Tachyon Energy.” Oh. that explains it.

Today is THURSDAY

When I first woke up this morning, I was so excited that it was Friday. One more day of work, and then a fun weekend. Yay!

But today is not Friday. Today is Thursday.

Tomorrow is really going to suck.