Welcome to Mars.
I’m immensely proud of my son who, at 19 months of age, can now pick out and name both Earth and Mars out of a line-up of planets in our solar system. This is very timely. He learned to say “Hi Mars!” about the same time NASA did. We landed a new robot in the polar region of our little red neighbor on Sunday. This one, the Phoenix, is charged with the task to dig and perform chemical analysis on the bits it finds. Godspeed, little firebird. It’s also shooting back some photos of its new home across the void of space and back to our humble, little orbiting sphere. Worth checking out.
All Dressed Up.
I’m going through the gears of a performance weekend. Tonight was dress rehearsal. Bad dress, good performance, or so we say... God, I hope so. I exited the stage tonight, took one look at the expression on my instructor’s face, and just wanted to crumple to the floor crying, “I’m so sorry.” I’m going to go have a beer and then practice some more, a fat lot of good it’s going to do me now.
Energy Defined.
I heard an absurd commercial on the radio for an equally absurd energy drink, this one geared towards women. Gives you tons of energy and has only 5 calories. People, let me be perfectly clear. A calorie is defined as “a unit of energy.” That is the literal definition. If your energy drink has no calories then it has no energy. What it has is drugs. In this particular case, caffeine and a lot of it. Am I above ingesting caffeine? No, of course not. There is a mug of tea in my hand several times a day and it’s usually caffeinated. If you want to drink caffeine, go ahead. But have a Jolt and be honest about it. It’s not healthy just because the slender little can says “healthy” on it. There are a whole lot of ingredients listed on the back. Read. If, that is, you can focus your eyes on that tiny print while you’re jittering around like that.