12-20-2024 Entry

I woke up after a short sleep, went back for a short nap after waking up, then I got up after 7:00 and had a shave and a shower. Pat had taken Cooper out for his morning walk, and we had a little breakfast before we hit the road to drive home. Thankfully, Ann drove, so I was able to snooze for a bit during the ride back. Made it back with no traffic, so I had a little bit of time to chill before heading over to HP for the holiday lunch with Alberto's section. It was nice seeing and talking to a number of my former colleagues. They had catered the lunch with Thai food, which was tasty. I shared my sendoff slides for Blair with the section, and it went well, got some good laughs along the way. Blair enjoyed and appreciated it as well. It was a quiet afternoon. I did some trimming of the bushes in the front yard, then I finished painting the side garage door trim. I read some and tried to have a nap without much success. Ann pulled some greens arugula, mesclun) from our garden, including several radishes, and she made a salad for dinner that was tasty. Not much went on in the evening.

Catching up on books I've read recently. I finished John Scalzi's The Collapsing Empire, which was about human civilization in the future scattered across the galaxy and connected by The Flow. The Flow is breaking down, and this first book in the trilogy details the empire and its threatened existence. It was a good story. I am also now reading Space Oddities by Harry Cliff. The author is a PhD physicist who explores some of the frontier areas of fundamental physics that are testing the validity of the Standard Model of Particle Physics. It's well written and accessible in its description of some pretty esoteric particle behavior.