Visitors! Water on Mars! My first-ever CD review! And MOAR!

Ah, family. My dad and step-mom came to visit, and what a grand time it was. I just finished uploading the pictures to my picasaweb account, but they're not ready for viewing yet. Also, Since I'm a Mac person now (I think we're called iPeople or something), I'm using the Mac Picasa photo uploader, which doesn't upload videos like Picasa does, so I'm in the process of creating a YouTube account to post pornography videos to.

We had a marvelous holiday, filled with frantic hither-and-thither dashing about New York City. We went to Niagara Falls for the weekend of my birthday. Katie gave me Season 3 of The Muppet Show, Boom Blox and a copy of Matter (which I haven't been able to start because Paco gifted me a copy of Perdido Street Station that I am currently ravenously devouring. (Double -ly adverb score! 1000 points! wOOt!)) She also game me my new super bag and a giant card that belts out the theme from Star Wars at about 450dB. It being my 30th birthday, daddy splurged and footed the bill for our tickets to The Lion King on Broadway.

We had the opportunity to see/do most of the things Dad and Liz wanted to see/do while they were here. Central Park, a Broadway show, Times Square (twice), Coney Island, Incredible Hulk in theatres, the Statue of Liberty, the German restaurant near our house, the Empire State Building, Ground Zero, the Build-A-Bear Workshop, a Yankees game (2-1 win over the Padres), and we still had time to play Boom Blox on the Wii and watch Kill Bill and Batman Begins.

Judas Priest, is there any wonder I got sick again the day they left? Same symptoms as last time, too. Well, I'm feeling better today, at any rate. The new project I'm involved with at work is a reprint of a Spanish science book BookLinks did a couple of years ago.

Astonishingly exciting is the fact that Katie got a new job! She was working at the deviously-named Battery Park City Day Nursery in Manhattan, just a stone's throw from the World Trade Center site. But she just finished her New York State teaching certification hassle, and she just landed a position at the Metropolitan Montessori School in the Upper West Side (a super-nice neighbourhood just west of Central Park in Manhattan). Some good girl. The school's website is here.

Less good is the severe flooding that has trashed a good chunk of Katie's home state of Iowa. Thankfully, her town of Decorah is in the northeast corner of the state, so it was spared the complete drowning that happened in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City.

Here's a digest of all the information I've been collecting over the last couple of weeks.

Most impressive are the photos from the Mars Phoenix lander that seem to indicate that there is water ice (as opposed to carbon dioxide ice) on Mars, which could indicate that life is possible on Mars. Which is awesome. The original press release from NASA is here, and Wired has provided a helpful FAQ here.

Here's a link to a video that shows what it's like to be a little girl growing up in Oklahoma. Good God in heaven.

Of course, it wouldn't be a post if I didn't include some sort of Mega Man love. Even if this Mega Man love is a little too literal:


Also, LaughingSquid brings us this news of a Tokyo bicycle storage tower that can store nearly ten thousand bikes. Something like that is practically designed to break down and/or jam.

Barack Obama has launched a new website called fightthesmears.com which is designed to call out his detractors on the lies they continue to spread about him and his family. Smear campaigns are an excellent example of the failings inherent in democracy. Good on Obama for calling attention to them.

I just this morning stumbled upon a website called The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. As a grammar/punctuation/spelling nerd, I find it absolutely hilarious.

Oh, yes, my first CD review, I almost forgot.Oliver Benjamin Thayer's Small Apocalypse was made available on his website the day before my birthday. It's free, so go grab it right away. Of course, musicians need cookies and hookers, too, so feel free to drop a few coppers in his virtual PayPal hat as you pass by. Some of the tracks remind me of They Might Be Giants, while others just beam with the rosy glow of nostalgia, conjuring memories (for me, at least) of pleasant evenings at PJ's in Taichung.

Final score: 10. Good work, young Jedi!

That's it for now. The next post will have links to captioned photos and videos from the recent visit. We're going to see Billy Joel play at the Mohegan Sun casino this weekend.

Now fuck off.

Love, Adam
All baby cows are lost!