winter means…

• Thick, quiet blankets of pure white on pine trees
• Cross-country skiing on forest paths
• Sledding down the orchard hill
• Hot chocolate and soup
• Crackling fires with board games and books
• Snow forts
• Bundling up (and then unbundling again)
• Snow days!

well, well…

1. Glider and tow plane
2. Champagne Supernova
3. Vermont
4. Paycheck
5. Red October
6. Mozzarella pesto burgers
7. Jupiter
8. Ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene
9. The Gates of the Desert

gotta get it in writing before tomorrow night: my theories, and theories I agree with

1. Harry wins.  Otherwise there’s no point.
2. Remus Lupin and Neville Longbottom die.  (Oh, yeah, and Voldemort.)
   1. Neville dies doing something incredibly outrageously heroic, that allows Harry to blast Voldy.
   2. Lupin dies for the sole reason that then Harry’s ties to his parents will be limited to Snape and Petunia Dursley, and that just seems like the kind of thing Rowling likes to do.
3. Snape had an unbreakable vow with Dumbledore: If Snape could protect the fact that he is a double agent giving the Order of the Phoenix information on the Death Eaters only by killing Dumbledore, he must go through with it.
4. Voldemort orders Lucius Malfoy to do something, but Malfoy botches the job.  Voldemort kills Lucius Malfoy and turns to Draco, giving him the same order; but when it comes down to it Draco hesitates and, through inaction, allows Harry to deliver the mortal blow to Voldemort.
5. Snape gives Harry the means to destroy Voldemort.  Some piece of information, or the last horcrux, or some potion or spell.  Too bad Sirius Black isn’t around any more, ’cause if he was, I’d predict that right as Snape does that, Siruis would kill him.
6. Three possible ideas on how Voldemort eats it, in increasing order of how likely I think they are:
   1. Voldemort casts something at Harry and it reflects back at him.  (Rowling used that one already.)
   2. The second-to-last chapter ends with Harry standing over Voldemort, who is sniveling on the ground trying to be all obsequious, and Harry speaks the words “Avada Kedavra.”  That will be the only time that any of the kids uses one of the unforgivable curses.  (I don’t think any of them is really going to be able to kedavra anyone, given how nasty you supposedly have to be to cast those spells.)
   3. A third party enters the scuffle (Snape?  Draco?  Kreacher?) and (accidentally?) knocks Voldemort back to his death.  Think Gollum destroying the One Ring.
7. Harry will magically (gasp!) not act overly pubescent any more.

Did I make it?

Originally posted 15 April 2006:

 

1. Be addressed as “Lieutenant Shoer” once again (Ithaca Composite Squadron, Civil Air Patrol)
2. Kayak in Cayuga Lake (or should I call it Kayaka Lake?) — No have kayak. Yet?
3. Go wine-tasting any time I like — Not that I do. But I could!
4. Officially call myself a rocket scientist
5. Be the first person in the world to work on an entirely new class of spacecraft — Well, in the first group to do so.
6. Have a color as a mascot
7. Live in my own apartment
8. Be surrounded by gorges and waterfalls
9. Walk down the hall to the ornithopter lab or mix things up with a visit to the college synchotron — Again, not that I do, but I could! There are some pretty damn cool toys around here.
10. Use Zaphod Beeblebrox’s pickup line: “Hey baby, you wanna see my spaceship?” — Haven’t come close to making this one yet, much to my disappointment. But just give me a couple years!!

today’s bloggery contains everything from

• odes a la Stephen Fry via Alden, to
• Disney meets Ephs.

science fiction

1. The Battlestar Valkyrie
2. T-65 X-Wing Fighter
3. Prime motiles
4. Flux capacitor
5. The Arean Space Supremacy Executive
6. One reverberating carbonizer with mutate capacity
7. Precogs
8. Anson Guthrie

viernes y sabado

1. Green iguana
2. Callithump
3. Feedback control systems
4. Magnetic plasma deflector shield
5. Iguana iguana
6. Davy Jones
7. Apples
8. “Ya hya chouhada!”
9. White Dragon-class interplanetary gunship
10. Superconductors

dexter

1. Mount Doom
2. Sir James Galway
3. Henryck Gorecki
4. Humalog Lispro
5. 5DOF robot Jacobian
6. Shana Tova
7. Ella
8. Appendix nuts
9. LN2
10. Suhizen reghaosh khenatsuket!

nothing to do with each other

1. Uvular trill
2. Baghdad
3. Ligers
4. Johnny Depp
5. Camera tripods
6. The evening news
7. Coyote