A Special Moment

I couldn't let today go by without having a special moment recorded. Today, when I was waiting for the bus there were a few minutes when I got to be a kid again. The bus stop was on an upward slope and one end of the bench was rather high off the sidewalk. When I sat down I realized I could actually swing my legs; they didn't reach down to the ground.

It's a little thing, I know. But those few minutes when I was all alone and swinging my legs made me feel like a kid again, and that I had nothing to worry about in the whole world.

Be seeing you,
Steven

Writing Update

Another advancing step in writing my novel: I've finished a first draft of the Prologue. When I'm finished the whole thing there should be a Prologue, Three Parts, and an Epilogue.

One part down, four to go.

Be seeing you,
Steven

A Guest In The House

Well, our homestay student arrived today all the way from Korea. His name is Sun-Ho (I'm not sure how to spell it), but he likes us to call him Sunny. He literally just got in this afternoon so we really don't know each other much at all. We watched a bit of Star Trek earlier and now he's taking a nap before dinner; jetlag can simply kill you, and that's all there is to it.

Anyways, he starts school on Monday, so this evening and tomorrow will be spent in settling in. Maybe one of these Sundays I can even take him to church to meet the gang.

Be seeing you,
Steven

So That's Who I Remind Me Of

When I consider men of golden talents,
I'm delighted, in my introverted way,
To discover, as I'm drawing up the balance,
How much we have in common, I and they.

Like Burns, I have a weakness for the bottle,
Like Shakespeare, little Latin and less Greek;
I bite my fingernails like Aristotle;
Like Thackeray, I have a snobbish streak.

I'm afflicted with the vanity of Byron,
I've inherited the spitefulness of Pope;
Like Petrarch, I'm a sucker for a siren,
Like Milton, I've a tendency to mope.

My spelling is suggestive of a Chaucer;
Like Johnson, well, I do not wish to die
(I also drink my coffee from the saucer);
And if Goldsmith was a parrot, so am I.

Like Villon, I have debits by the carload,
Like Swinburne, I'm afraid I need a nurse;
By my dicing is Christopher out-Marlowed,
And I dream as much as Coleridge, only worse.

In comparison with men of golden talents,
I am all a man of talent ought to be;
I resemble every genius in his vice, however heinous--
Yet I write so much like me.

--Ogden Nash

Be seeing you,
Steven

Lessons In Astronomy

Wikipedia-Definition of planet

Here's a simple astronomy question: how many planets are in the solar system? The simple answer: Nine. Can you name them all? Mercury; Venus; Earth; Mars; Jupiter; Saturn; Uranus; Neptune.

Pluto.

Ah, yes. Pluto. The black sheep of the family. Strayed from the center of our love many a century ago, now cutting his own orbital pathway for himself out there; living on the edge. He has also made some new friends in his own strange way, having fallen into a crowd that, to be perfectly honest, we really know almost nothing about. Just what do they do out there in the Kuiper Belt? We can't even be sure what to call most of them. All we have are some astronomical identification numbers and those really don't tell us much. What are they up to?

The discovery of these suspicious 'wanderers', with their questionable motives, has caused quite a stir in the scientific community. Some believe that this time, Pluto has gone too far. They are pushing to cut off his inheritance. Banished. Excommunicated. Removed from the family. “He is not one of us,” they cry. “Send him away forever.” Others beg for leniency, sure that one day Pluto will return in humility and leave behind his former selfish existence. But if they are right, it may very well mean accepting some of those friends, those 'Kuiper Belt Objects', for which he has forsaken us.

A new resolution may help solve this age-old dilemma. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has proposed—but not adopted—a final definition which is designed to decide once and for all the code by which our entire family must abide:

A) Sufficient mass to form itself into an at least nearly-rounded shape.
B) In orbit of a star, and cannot be a star or the satellite of another object.

Many questions have risen as to this definition. For the full details, see the SPACE.com article. The IAU intends to vote on the subject on Thursday, August 24.

Personally, I always thought that Pluto, along with all the other KBO's should be considered a sort of sub-category. Not quite planets, but not quite anything else. 'Dwarf planets' could work, but I was thinking of a term more along the lines of...oddballs.

Be seeing you,
Steven

Conundrum

The above word is "a paradoxical, insoluable, or difficult problem; a dilemma." I'm having quite a time trying to find a title (and thus, a name for a central character) for a short story I've come up with; why do girls have to be at the center of every guy's problems? It needs to be a name that isn't totally out of place in modern times, but alternately isn't a name that gets heard a lot. Also, for a variety of reasons, I don't want it to be the name of any girl I know. These are a few of the ones I'm considering, plus their meanings:

Lenore--"Light"
Leslie--"Meadowlands"
Lianna--"My God Has Answered"
Lorene--"Small Victories"
Lucinda--"Beautiful Light"
Sabrina--"Princess"
Selena--"The Moon"
Serena--"Serenity"
Siobhan--"God Is Gracious"
Deborah--"Honey Bee"
Desiree--"Desired"
Diana--"Divine"
Dorothy--"Gift of God"
Dulcinea--"Sweet"
Theresa--"Harvester"

Be seeing you,
Steven