Happy New Year!

2008 was an up and down year for me, so I'm ready to head into 2009! Lots of big anniversaries are coming up in 2009 - 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, 400th anniversary of Galileo's first use of a telescope and the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII's accession to the throne. So that pretty much touches almost every aspect of my life - science education, astronomy and Tudor history. It's going to be a busy but fun year!

A Texas Christmas dinner

Apologies to the vegetarians...

We decided to do Christmas a little different this year... TEXAS STYLE (in my mind I'm hearing LBJ at the BBQ for the Mercury astronauts in the AstroDome in The Right Stuff). We were tired of turkey after the birdzilla from Thanksgiving and we do ham at New Year's, so we decided to do a big BBQ feast instead. I should have put something in the photo for scale, since you can't really get an idea of how large the platters were... that was a lot of food. A lot of yummy, yummy food. :)

(Thanks to Dad for the photo!)

Remembering Majel Barrett Roddenberry

The First Lady of Star Trek has died at the age of 76 from leukemia.

From "Number One" in the original Star Trek pilot through to the voice of the computer in the upcoming J.J. Abrams movie, she has been a part of the Star Trek universe in every incarnation. I'm happy that I, like many other Star Trek fans, had a chance to meet her at a convention. She will be missed.

Back in business

I finally got all of the posts restored over on my science and skepticism blog... so I guess that means I don't have any more excuses to not generate some new posts over there now!