Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time

Bella has become quite fascinated with the Star Wars movies. She has been watching one of them almost every day. We’ve been concentrating on the original trilogy for now, since they are the most PG of the bunch. Nothing really too scary or too much for her to handle. She amazes me with how much she picks up on, especially with the relationship between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. Return of the Jedi has now become “the one with the giant worm that eats people” i.e. the Sarlacc. ^_^

Saw A Beautiful Mind last night. What an excellent movie! If you haven’t seen it, I would definately recommend it.  Of course I am partial to movies about mathematicians, but even so it was a great movie.

Yesterday was the autumnal equinox. We celebrated that along with Gillian’s birthday by having some family (Karen’s parents and grandmother) over for dinner. We made our medieval stew, which I got the recipe for back when I was in college. I don’t have the recipe in front of me to quote the exact proportions for the feeds 30 version, but here’s a peak at what it entailed when we made it yesterday. First you fry up a pound of bacon. Then you brown cubed beef (we used 2.5 pounds) coated in corn starch in the bacon fat. After removing the meat you add onions, garlic and wine (we used a merlot) to the bacon/beef fat and let that simmer. Meanwhile in a big pot add some water and beef stock, the beef, the bacon, cellery, carrots, mushrooms, wine, and the yummy fat mixture you just made. Let it cook for a couple of hours and enjoy the hearty goodness.

This of course made me nostalgic for my friend Justin from college who’s copy of the recipe I was using. Since I had long ago lost my original copy a few years back I asked Justin to email it to me. So the print-out of that email is what we used for our basis. We first got the recipe from our advisor when we were in the Medieval Reenactment Club in college and have enjoyed it several times since. So if any of my old friends from back in the day, especially you Justin, happen to come across this, we were thinking about you yesterday as we cooked our version of our stew.

Back when I was a student, circa 1995, the computer science department mantained several servers that had dial up access. Some were for faculty use, some for the students, but they were all named after the professors wives. So there was Mary, Evita, and Jane that I can remember. So the geek humor bit for the day: in the mens bathroom closest to the cs lab someone wrote on the wall “for a good time call Mary” followed by the dial-up number. ^_^

Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Anyway, the 14th Dalai Lama recently visited the nearby University of Buffalo. They have a good website detailing the visit, including pictures and video. Interesting stuff, it would have been cool to see in person. Check it out at http://www.buffalo.edu/dalai_lama/index.html

I updated my syndication feed to go through feedburner. So if you already subscribe to this sites feed can you take a moment and point your reader to the new feed? Thanks!

http://feeds.feedburner.com/christophertaverna

Gillian turns 2 years old today. It is so hard to believe that. I stop and think, ‘where did the time go?’ It really doesn’t seem like it’s been 2 years already. I think Isabella is slightly jealous that she is not having a birthday, but is also enjoying the fact that Gillian is celebrating something. Gillian is now walking/running around, although some days she falls a lot. She can make it up and down the stairs by herself now. She is almost potty-trained, just not overnights yet. She’s starting to talk more. It is so amazing to see how much she has grown. It’s funny to think that 2 years ago, Bella was just about Gillian’s age (a little older). I am thankfull for every day I get to spend with my girls. Sometimes it’s hard not to get caught up in the day to day crap that doesn’t really matter. I hate those days when I come home from work and feel too tired to do anything when all I want to do is spend time with the girls playing or whatever.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a talk entitled “Delusions of Space Enthusiasts” which was given by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson as part of SUNY Fredonia’s convocation series. It was a very good experience and I am glad I was able to attend. Dr. Tyson is an excellent speaker and if you get the chance, go and see him. I think I’ll try to read some of his books next.

I was number 25 last night when I went to vote in the primaries. Talk about low turnout. Whoa.

In other news, I read an interesting article today. It focuses on terminology in regards to consdiering terrorism a criminal act or an act of war. Very interesting read. I find myself in agreement with the authors.

Ah, it’s September 11 again. What does that mean to me? 10 years ago today Karen and I had our first date. 5 years ago today I was scrambling to find out if my mom, dad, and stepdad were still alive. I prefer to remeber the 10 years ago than the 5 years ago. 5 years ago I was at my old job, catching updates here and there while ignorant customers kept pestering me about things that don’t really matter. I was fortunate that I didn’t loose anyone close to me. But it is still hard seeing the twin towers in old movies and tv shows.

In other, more local news, Bucky Phillips was captured last Friday. Congratulations to the troopers and all involved in this manhunt. The people who helped him or thought of him as a hero should be ashamed of themsleves. This is a man who is suspected of shooting 3 state troopers, killing one of them. This is a man who caused our corner of the state to be under perpetual lockdown with hordes of troopers on the streets and in the air. It’s sad when you just get used to the sounds of helicopters flying over your house and seeing 20+ trooper cars on the drive home to work. I hope that now that he is caught we can have less of a police-state environment.

And there is my tie-in. I fully expect our ‘occupation’ to end now that Bucky has been caught. Unlike the current administrations push to take away our liberties and seemingly never give them back. “Well they haven’t caught Osama yet” you may counter. That is true, but I believe that if they really wanted to capture him they would have. 9-11-01 was used as the excuse for the executive branch to grasp more power than they should legally have and to invade a completely unrealted country in the name of going after terrorists, not to catch those actually responsible.