It’s not that there’s nothing going on in our lives right now.  It’s just that I am profoundly lazy so there hasn’t been any updates for a while now.  Max has started playing PeeWee basketball.  Our camera doesn’t like to take pictures inside semi-bright gyms so don’t expect much in the way of pictures.  However, he did have his first game last weekend.  6-year olds playing basketball is a hoot.  Sometimes they pass, sometimes they just pick the ball up and carry it for a while then dribble, then pick it up again.  The main thing is that Max had two rebounds in the game.  He also had one basket!  It was pretty amusing overall.  The rebound dropped right into his hands and he just kind of looked at the ball wondering what to do next.  Somewhere in his brain he remembered that you bounce the ball in basketball so he dribbled it two handed twice on the floor.  Then he just kind of tossed it towards the basket and it went in.  He was pretty proud.

Lori and I saw The Book of Eli two weeks ago.  It’s a pretty good movie.  At first I was so-so on it, but as I thought more about the movie, I liked it more and more.  It has a good twist at the end where at first you think, “Well that invalidates the entire movie.”  But then you think back and realize it was foreshadowed through the entire movie if you were paying attention.

We also just watched The Love Bug.  Max thought it was pretty funny.  Nice to see that movies can be amusing without lots of computer graphics.  The car had a lot of personality without any wisecracking or telegraphing the jokes.  Of course, the car did dribble oil on people it didn’t like.  I guess that counts as snark for 1968.

The picture in my February 1 post reminds me of an internet meme that’s been floating around for a while.  It’s a picture of a cat that looks really interested in something and it says “This is relevant to my interests.”

Do you see it?

We’ve finally met one of our goals for the year.  We have a new aquarium up and running in our living room.  Right now it only has three guppies in it.  You have to start with small, cheap (or for the more cynical among you, “expendable”) fish so that the nutrient/bacteria/acid balance of the water is suitable for other fish later.  It’s really fun having fish in the living room.  Max has named all three fish.  The cats also have named the fish, but their names for the fish are more like, Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner.  Jula in particular cannot wait for the fish to be more cat friendly.

If she ever figures out how to lift the lid on that tank, those fish are in trouble.

As some of you may be aware, the Mars Spirit Rover is apparently irrevocably stuck.  The rover has performed far beyond what NASA expected.  The rover was originally only supposed to operate for a few months but has just kept trucking on and on.  The story is here:

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/01/26/end-road-nasas-mars-rover-spirit/

And here’s an excellent comic that captures the desolation of the plucky little rover:

At least, it might be worth it to be a dictator if you could have cool guns like these golden guns that Saddam Hussein had.  Well, except for that whole “death by hanging” thing at the end.

http://www.kingofforwards.com/amazing/saddams-golden-guns/

And a quick pic if you don’t want to click on the link.

Check out this cool high resolution photo of the surface of Mars.  The spice must flow!  You really have to wonder what created all those rock spires.

We just recently finished watching District 9.  That was a really good movie about aliens who come to earth and are treated really badly by the humans.  Rather than your typical alien invasion movie, it was about aliens whose spaceship broke down and they couldn’t leave.  Humans exploited them in various ways until they couldn’t take it anymore.  Fun, albeit depressing movie.  Also, the humans burst like water balloons which is always a plus.

We also just watched the 80s classic Red Dawn.  Somehow I managed to get through the 80s without ever seeing this movie.  It was ok.  Probably one of those movies which was much more powerful at the time but now seems really dated.  Especially its portrayal of the Soviets as bloodthirsty monsters.  This was more or less true during Stalin’s days but by the 80s they had mellowed out a lot.  An interesting note is that Red Dawn is getting remade only this time America will be invaded by the Chinese.  I found a shot taken from the new sets:

I’ll be interested to see how the movie is adapted to our current culture.

The original was just a tad to implausible for me.  I have a hard time imagining paratroopers landing in rural Colorado and machine gunning a high school full of students.  What’s the strategic value of a Colorado high school?  Why would you start your invasion there where your shock troops can be easily surrounded and cut off from supplies?  How can a group of untrained high school kids manage to survive in the woods for so long?  For that matter, why was there only an inch of snow on the ground in the Colorado mountains in January?

Snowtastic isn’t that great of a word is it?  Snowderful?  Snowriffic?  Well, whatever it is, we have enough snow here to actually have some fun outside.  We got to play outside today and sled down our wonderfully steep driveway.  Here’s a couple of pictures:

Trying to drive up a steep, snowpacked driveway is not particularly fun (or is it?) but it sure is great for sledding.  These new sleds we got for Christmas mean I don’t have to drag out the air compressor and inflate the snow tubes all the time now.

Some interesting people who share my birthday:

Mary Tyler Moore

Ted Danson

Charles Goodyear (The tire guy)

Also, Charlamagne was canonized in this day in 1165.  Then, Thomas Becket was murdered in Canturbury in 1170.  That meddlesome priest, indeed.

Today was also the battle of Wounded Knee in 1890.

Hey, we got more snow here!  Well, it was less than an inch but more than half an inch so it counts as snow in my book.  We haven’t been above freezing for over a week now so whenever a few flakes fall, it sticks really well.