Full Worm Moon tonight!

Nuts, not again!  I missed another reminder on my calendar: it's the Full Worm Moon tonight!

I'm not the right person to ask about the Worm thing; perhaps it's just as it sounds, about earthworms.  The ground's frozen yet here, I wouldn't expect to see any.  Maybe if you're south of here the worms are finally moving in the soil. 

Of special note tonight, if your sky is clear:

Jupiter's moon Io crosses Jupiter's face from 8:45 to 11:01 p.m. EST. But much more visible in a telescope will be Io's tiny black shadow crossing Jupiter, from 9:42 to 11:58 p.m. EST.

Just checked the sky chart and my WeatherPixie, looks like the moon’s at 15 degrees above the east-south-eastern sky from my location.  I think I’ll head outside and take a peek.

10:13:01 PM    comment []

Frontline: The Long Road to War

Damned good documentary showing last night on PBS.  I hope I can catch a reply on another local channel.  PBS is not noted for being a right-wing mouthpiece; I’m pretty comfortable with most of what I saw last evening, and with what is published at the corresponding website.

Every country bears some blame for things going this bad in Iraq.

Interesting to revisit the timeline from the end of the Gulf War to now, noting which parties sought to close down inspections and what their motivations may have been.

Will this play out again the same way, or did we (every country) learn something over the last decade?

And can we get the hell out of the way of the Iraqi people and let them reorganize and rebuild a truly democratic nation with assistance only as requested?

5:49:03 PM    comment []

The call came

He called last night, at midnight our time.

Reassuring and not.

He's packed, awaiting orders.  And he won't be out this spring -- he's been euphemistically “stop-lossed”, now required to stay in the service until next spring.

My daughter asks this morning why we’re going to bake cookies for her step-brother now, why not wait until closer to Easter.

Damn, it didn’t keep at all, the truth came out at 7:30 am: because he may not get them later, he’s leaving soon to go to war.

Not exactly something a parent can practice saying with a straight, calm face.

9:31:21 AM    comment []

Death and taxes…

I don’t really want to think about their combined inevitability right now.  In fact, I’ll skip the topic of death.

But taxes are a bitch this year, more than ever before.

I guess part of the problem is that my spouse and I haven’t been thinking and acting aggressively about tax shelters.  Maybe my spouse and I are too fiscally centrist, not rightist in mindset.

Whatever the case, we paid more in taxes this year than I made.  That’s stupid.  What the hell did I work for, all those insanely crazy hours, just to get laid off to make some CEO’s numbers look better and at the end of it all have nothing to show for it?

Hey, I like the idea that my tax dollars help pay for education and other services essential to welfare of others, Americans and needy overseas.

I just don’t like the fact that I paid for a bunch of weenies who’ve driven this country into the ground, failed to make any improvement on this economy, tanked our relationships with nearly every country in the world.

I’ve got little to nothing to show for my money, my sweat equity.

Except maybe a puny down payment on a little war action and 10 years of deficits.

9:23:16 AM    comment []