Meritorious Moments

Today's random topic is Merit Badges. A friend sent me this link to Scientifically Minded Folk who like Beer and Badges. I could lay reasonable claim to a couple dozen badges; I'm pretty good with fire and liquid nitrogen makes good ice cream. Another friend mentioned that he probably qualifies for #67 - I build Robots level IV and I'd have to back him up on that. Meanwhile my science minded drinking buddies in Boston had a Drag Queen Theater outing tonight. Good times, good times.

It was a pretty good time here too!

1. The new equipment I managed to lock up by making it error every 5 seconds for 40 hours so it ran out of memory on its puny 486 compatible brain was recovered by my equipment engineer and works fine.
2. I did my exercise. I got in the cardio and pussups portions of the BodyRev Boot Camp workout with 2 weights.
3. A friend came over for Thai Food and beer. We played with my talking bottle opener (sound clip opens). Then we chatted about all the things we agree on, which was fun because those are all the things it's no use posting to the internet as it just riles up the people whose minds I might want to change.

Tomorrow promises to be fun too. I'm heading to the LA Fes.tival of B.ooks. My friend at UCLA managed to grab a couple tickets to panels I want to see (Critiquing Writing and Managing Spin) then I'm hitting up a friend's 40th birthday party. They've requested gag gifts only, but I think the adult diapers suggestion is out as he was almost an astronaut and the topic of diapers could be a little raw. I'm thinking mustache wax for super styling opportunities.

I'd really like to blog more about what I'm reading, yet feel I should be brief-ish. Just slogged through Laura Kinsale's "ShadowHeart" set in pre-Italy in the 1500s. It had good points but it was rather dense and I never really figured out when/how the hero and heroine fell for each other. They just magically did, or something. It had some non-vanilla interactions which was refreshing, if unsettling, and I kept turning pages, but I didn't really dig it. I did a 180 then and picked up Susan Mallery's contemporary "Irresistible". It is a very fast read. It's fun with likeable protagonists that seem to be reasonable, sensible people that work through problems rationally. But things just run a little too smoothly for me to think of it as anything but fairy tale. I'm only 2/3 of the way through so it could get good or go south, but so far it's enjoyable. Now if I can only put it down early enough to get a good nights sleep for tomorrow.