It’s Christmas Eve and I am back in Newton for a few days.  Unfortunately, I have to go back to Charlotte today.  You see, I am taking care of Stephanie’s fish over the Christmas break, and I’m apparently bad at it, because I left him at my apartment yesterday and he’ll probably die before I get back there--unless I make an emergency fish-trip today.  His name is Mo, short for Molybdenum, which is element forty-two on the periodic table of the elements.  This is the kind of thing that happens when you marry a chemist. :)

I also finished reading Michael Crichton’s State Of Fear Wednesday night, which meant I only spent five nights reading it.  Not that I exactly set any speed-reading records for that, but I don’t typically read that fast so I’m mentioning it as an indication of how much I enjoyed it.  This marks the fifth Michael Crichton book that I’ve read since Garrison introduced me to the author in seventh grade.  I’ve read: The Andromeda Strain, The Lost World, Prey, Jurassic Park, and State of Fear (in that order); I think it’s my favorite of them.  I am starting to pick up on a certain “Crichton pattern”: a part fiction/part research paper story about a few good guys--at least one of whom is extremely intellectual and holds radical new theories that modern science rejects--go up against bad guys who started off meaning well but things got out of control.  And of course every book has to somehow incorporate chaos theory, the idea that humans can’t predict and therefore can’t control or understand the behavior of complex systems and that trying to do so is a recipe for disaster.  Look forward to long lectures wherein Crichton states his scientific views through the personas of his characters.  The Andromeda Strain doesn’t quite fit into that model but it was his first book.  Not that I’m complaining--I happen to like the way he writes.  I’m just noticing a pattern.  State Of Fear stated a lot of things that I’ve really kinda thought for years but I didn’t realize there was so much evidence for it.  For those of you planning to read the book I won’t spoil it by talking about it...  I wasn’t even planning on getting the book, but it was on sale at the bookstore and I read the inside flap and saw something to the effect of “from the glaciers of Iceland to the volcanoes of Antarctica” and I was sold.  I have always had a fascination with Antarctica for some reason.  Which might surprise some people who know me and my abhorrence for cold weather that seems to intensify with every passing winter.  But I still think Antarctica is really cool, probably because there’s so much there that no one understands or knows anything about.  And I wonder what all is trapped under the ice, since it was a jungle many many moons ago.  Speaking of cold weather, I’d like to see a survivor somewhere that’s not super hot.  I’m not saying they should go to Antarctica or Siberia or Greenland.. I’m more thinking somewhere mountainous like the Andes mountains or Nepal.  I’m getting tired of islands.

This morning I had a dream that the day before I had let an army recruitment guy talk me into signing up for the Marines, and that now I had papers saying Boot Camp would start at 1 am on January first and that after six months I was going to be deployed to Tokyo for some reason.  And then when I was slowly becoming conscious, I was freaking out thinking “why did I sign up for the Marines, there’s a war going on and people are dying, why would I do that??” and I was laying there trying to decide if I had dreamed that or if it really happened, and I finally decided that it was a dream by walking through everything I did yesterday and realizing that I never met any Marine recruitment guy.

Stephanie just called and said I don’t need to pick up Mo, her parents will pick him up on the way back to Laurinburg tomorrow.  That saves two hours of my day.  Wahoo!

I don’t care what your momma says
  Christmas time is near
I dont care what your daddy says
  Christmas time is dear