I got home from work a little later than I wanted (I spent much too long on the phone with the travel agent, but that’s a different story) and had just started a little exercise time on the Nordic Track before dinner when Jeffrey came back from school and reminded us that they were having a “star party” at 6:30, a half-hour away.
So it was only a little exercise, and dinner had to wait — off we went. Luckily, we didn’t have to go very far; school is a three-minute walk or a two-minute run. Jeffrey ran.
It wasn’t quite dark yet, and there were some light clouds, but that didn’t stop our guides (members of the San Jose Astronomical Association); they had two telescopes set up, one pointed at Venus and the other at Jupiter, both of which were already quite visible, even to the naked eye. And both of which looked much more interesting through the telescopes — we could see three of the moons of Jupiter, and Venus was very clearly a crescent. Later, they moved over to Saturn, and a third telescope arrived and was pointed at the moon. We had to leave after a while, but the party continued till almost 8:30 (I went back over after dinner, and there was only one family left, and they were breaking down the ‘scopes). It was great fun; the kids enjoyed it, too, I think — Jeffrey did, at least.
Fulfilling a dream
While we were out hunting for the latest two Star Trek DVDs yesterday, I happened to notice the boxed set of the Complete Monty Python — 45 episodes on 14 DVDs. Obviously, this was something I needed to have, but I didn’t want to pay full list price for it. So this morning, I ordered it from Ken Crane’s for 30% off (plus $2.50 for shipping) — I didn’t want to wait any longer, because they’ll be reducing their discount to 25% on March 1st. For some reason, they think that they need to make a profit soon.
Two Down
It hasn’t been a good couple of days for dotcoms — at least not the ones I use. Yesterday, I got a note from Driveway saying that they’re exiting the “business” of providing free web-based storage, and that I had better retrieve my data by March 5th, because it’ll be gone on the 6th. And today, eToys is officially calling it quits and filing Chapter 11. I was hoping they’d put everything on their site on super discount, but as of the last time I checked, it’s the same sale they’ve been having since the first of the year.
Tomorrow, it’s back on airplanes for me, this time to Boston (well, Cambridge) for the W3C technical plenary, advisory board, and COO search meetings. The weather looks promising so far….am I tempting fate by saying so?