A man with very big Tonka toys helped us finish transforming our property from an automotive chop shop and open pit incinerator to an organic gardening and river playing paradise today. Just in time, too, for the first party guests will be here in two days.

I’ve already learned in my five months along the river that sometimes the water brings you things. This week, it brought us a kayak. Not a nice one, but one without any holes. And the previous owners were thoughtful ewnough to slip two paddles inside before leaving it too close to the edge, somewhere upriver from us. It’s a bit too small for me, but that didn’t stop me from playing with it last night. I sat high up, making the system most unstable. I rolled several times, got wedged insode once, and generally looked like a doofus. But it was fun, and that’s the whole point of living along the river.

60 -- The number of cubic yards of composted cricket manure (Kricket Krap) to be delivered to our farm on Monday.

I’ve set up some forums to talk about the party if you’re so inclined. They’re not pretty – I’m slowly getting them up for the farm, and haven;t completed the stylesheet work – but they’re functional. If you want to set up rental car-pools or talk about where to eat in Athens Friday night, that’s the place to do it.

We watched the DVD of Ralph Bakshi’s “Lord of the Rings” last night (using the new computer as a player). I remember watching this at the theater, eagerly waiting for years for part two, and loving the soundtrack. I still don’t think it was all that bad of an attempt to commit the story to film, but there could have been a lot of improvement. Here’s the definitive critique.

I just stumbled upon a brief description of an astrophysics project I worked on during the summer of 1992, a “non-trivial” massaging of data from a full-sky survey at the 34.5 MHz radio frequency. The results were satisfactory, and to finish the summer I gave a talk in front of the resident astronomers detailing the project. It looks like the entire survey is on-line, complete with images you can see in your browser. My name’s not on that page, but I’m pretty sure those are my images. I drifted away from astrophysics the following year, mostly because most of the successful physicists I knew were far more consumed by their study than I wanted to be. Still, it’s neat when I run across remnants of my former career path.

As I was wlking down the hall in my office building to the restroom, I passed a couple of maintenance workers doing their job. They looked as if they came straight out of a coal mine, with their clothes and faces covered in fine. black dust. They were hauling coiled-up extention cords over their shoulders. They were wearning no shoes; their bright white crew socks shone in contrast to the rest of them. I’m sure I look mighty strange to outsiders when I’m doing my job sometimes. too.

People who really know me understand what a croquet fiend I can be. Maybe I should set aside some egg money for an Extreme Croquet mallet. At current egg prices, the conversion rate is fourty dozen eggs per single mallet.

I’d be negligent as a weblog-keeper is I didn’t give you a way to [“watch” me sign for my new laptop](http://wwwapps.ups.com/etracking/tracking.cgi?TypeOfInquiryNumber=T&InquiryNumber1=1Z V53 16E 42 0889 173 6) when it comes tomorrow.

Uncle Owen, I think this R2 unit has a bad motivator.