My inner nerd is a little giddy right now. The other day, I was wondering if the occupants of the space station ever do spacewalks when the shuttle isn't docked. I sort of assumed that they would, but maybe there were safety issues and they didn't.

So today, I asked NASA. That's right. Thanks to the internet, I opened up the window on my instant messenger client for twitter and posted "@NASA: Do the space station residents ever take spacewalks when the shuttle isn't there?"

A few minutes later:

I then did a screen grab, uploaded to Flickr, opened the Flickr silo in Habari, and blam! Awesome. Even a few years ago, it could've taken days or weeks to hunt down this information and share it with you. Silly, maybe. But there's oh so much possibility.

To each of you who has sworn to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; [and] bear true faith and allegiance to the same", I thank you. To those that have left family, friends and comfort behind to live out that oath, I thank you. To the families who have stayed behind and supported those who put themselves in harm's way on our behalf, I thank you. To those left behind when a Soldier, Sailor, or Marine makes that ultimate sacrifice, I thank you.

All politics takes a back seat to the simple fact that our veterans give more than most of us can begin to understand, and for that reason they deserve our thanks and respect.

Grandpa Evans, Grandpa Rickert, Grandpa Merchant, Alan, Jay, Melissa, Chuck, and any other veterans that I've had the pleasure to know, I'm richer for it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The work I do is, at times physically taxing. The hours are inconsistent. The pay is low. And most people have no idea what's involved. And while I know the same can be said for many, many jobs, I can only speak from my own experience.

One of the jokes I like to make during the particularly trying times is "Well, is a life in the arts everything you dreamed it would be?" Most of the time the answer is, unfortunately. "no." But there are times when the answer is a deafening "Yes!". When it's just a job it's like any job. What other people do for fun is work for us. Your Friday night is our Wednesday afternoon. But there are performances that make all the work worthwhile.

My father used to tell me that he had never been paid to perform his music. The money he got at the end of a show wasn't for the show, but for the rehearsals, the set up and teardown, the driving, and the time away from his family. The actual performing was for him.

Being a part of a great performance is its own reward. When the elements you've put your time, sweat, sometimes blood into come together it can be transformative. Sometimes it's a personal experience and sometimes it's something you share with the whole audience. It can be funny or heartrending of awe-inspiring.

This is why We work while others play and play while others work. This is how we're able tho form lasting friendships with people we work with only a few days and hen don't see for weeks, or even years.

It is for those moments that I love what I do. And that is why, even when I doubt my ability to make my living doing what I love, I know, one way or another, I'll keep doing it as long as I'm able. His week has been a much needed reminder of that.

Yesterday was a good day, but a bit rough on the body. The schedule?
6:00a Wake up. Give dean a bottle, get dressed, pack tools, lunches and such.
7:15a Out the door, drop TBWITWW off at work
8:30a Drop Dean off at day care
9:00a Park the car at the train station and take the train downtown
10:00a Work at the MCA. The good kind, not so hard as to be exhausting, but hard enough that you don't feel like you're wasting time.
8:00p Head north for Wine and Pie, Pie and Wine with Katrina
9:00p Arrive at the party
2:00a Head for home
3:00a Back in bed.

I'm too old for this. But it was fun even though I'm moving a bit slow today.

Last weekend was TBWITWW and my seven year anniversary. To which you might say "Holy crap! Has it been that long. Damn I'm old." Or at least that's what I say.

To celebrate, my mom generously arranged a night at a hotel, a fantastic dinner, some money to spend at the casino, and a night away from Dean. And we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Starting with dinner at "The Reserve", the casino's steak house, we went all out. For our appetizer we got the "Shrimp Three Ways" which were cocktail, pancetta wrapped and garlic and herb. TBWITWW had the Filet "Oscar" which came with crab, asparagus and hollandaise (she has a thing for hollandaise sauce) and I had the trio of crusted filets (blue cheese, garlic parmesan, and horseradish). As sides we had the artichoke and spinach gratin and the truffled steak fries. All of these were quite good, although the fries weren't as fantastic as we'd hoped. The horseradish filet was my favorite. We each had a flight of 3 wines with our meal. As the price for the flight wasn't much more than the price of single glasses, it seemed like being able to sample 6 wines was definitely the way to go. For desert I had Creme Brulee and a glass of port. TBWITWW had the cheese plate and an ice wine. It was a lovely way to end a great meal. We can't afford to eat like this often, but I think we would if we had the money.

After dinner, we went to the Casino floor. Following my mother's advice, we each signed up for the casino's rewards program. Then we went in search of games that looked promising. We went to the $0.02 slot machines first, and each started with a $20 bill. TBWITWW went through hers fairly quickly, while mine took a bit longer. Those machines didn't seem to be paying so we got bored quickly and moved on to video poker. A little more skill was involved here, and the machines were paying better (or at least burning through the money more slowly). Again, TBWITWW burned through her second twenty in about the time it took me to use up the $7 remaining from my first. Still, it took a while and was more fun than the two-penny slots. We decided to try our luck at some other slots, and we each started with another twenty. By my count, this meant I was ahead by $20. We found some promising looking machines (nickel slots with actual handles!) and went to work. Before too long, TBWITWW was up almost $40. I didn't do as well, never going much above my original $20. The woman at the machine next to me won about $45 on a single pull at one point, which isn't too bad for nickel slots. Finally, when my $20 was gone, TBWITWW cashed out with $20.35 remaining. I had a penny. We were then able to cash in our "points" for the evening and each got $10 back. Fun! In the end, we fed $100 to the machines and walked away with $40. Respectable I think and we got a lot of fun for our $60. Granted, I don't think I would have enjoyed it quite as much if it had been our own money rather than a gift, but at the same time, I can see going back. I'd still like to try my hand at the table games, just for the experience. But on a Saturday night it was too crowded for me to be comfortable just jumping in as a beginner, and the limits on the tables were too high to get much playing time out of it, so that will have to wait for another day.

After we were done on the casino floor, we headed back up to our room with no diapers or bottles to worry about.

...

Then we went to bed and didn't get up until after 9am. Ahhh, luxury. We then poked around the room, drank some coffee, packed and checked out. Then we hit the buffet for brunch and topped off our decadent weekend in classic style.

All in all we had a great weekend that was well beyond our normal means. It was a lot of fun and very relaxing, and I'd like to do it again sometime, but it's not something I'm in any hurry for. We missed our boy though and by time we got back to my mom's place were ready to spend the rest of the day with him. We'll post about that soon.

I have some ideas for things I may post about, but I thought I'd ask for some quick feedback.

Would you prefer more frequent, but shorter and possibly less substantive entries (ie, reviews of TV shows and "aside" type posts) longer than Twitter messages, but shorter than my typical paragraphs? Or would you prefer I carry on as I have been?

Ramadan starts today, and as I was looking at information about it for a possible blog post, I saw mentioned that one of the traditions in Islam is the recitation of entire Koran over the course of the 30 days. I haven't read more than a few verses here and there since college in my copy of the Koran, and one of my 101 in 1001 goals was to read the entire Koran, so I thought that this seemed like a good thing to try. My copy of the Koran from college is about 425 pages, this works out to roughly 15 pages per day. Although I'm not reading at the rate I used to, 15 pages a day should be no problem.

So, for the next 30 days, I'm going to read about 15 pages of the Koran each day and post some of the verses that I find interesting. I'm not Muslim, and I'm not going to try to do any deep interpretation of the scriptures or comparisons to other scriptures. That's simply not something I'd be comfortable doing on a first reading of scripture in any case. However, I'd be happy to discuss, in the comments or in future posts, any ideas that people have regarding what I've read. If anyone cares to join me in this project I'll try to post my next-day reading plan each day as well.

So... Day 1 (1:1 - 2:141)

1. The Exordium
The first Chapter, only a few verses long, offers praises to God and asks for guidance.

2. The Cow
The first half of this chapter seems to focus on interactions with those who don't follow Islam. The general idea seems to be that God has revealed himself to various prophets and discounting any of them is wrong.

Notable verses:
(2:62) Believers, Jews, Christians, and Sabaeans -- whoever believes in God and the Last Day and does what is right -- shall be rewarded by their Lord; they have nothing to fear or regret.
(2:87) To Moses We gave the Scriptures and after him We sent other apostles. We gave Jesus son of Mary veritable signs and strengthened him with the Holy Spirit. Will you then scorn each apostle whose message does not suit your fancies, charging some with imposture and slaying others?