The Fredösphere

Today was a good day for goofing around so I skipped work.  The wifeösphere and I did lunch at Noodle & Co. which just opened at Arborland.  Very nice.  High class fast food.  We also sampled Cold Stone's ice cream and she liked it a lot, but I was not overwhelmed.  Then we shopped for birdbaths at that hoity-toity hardware store downtown (yes, Ann Arbor's hoity-toitiosity extends even to its hardware stores) but fell in love with a sundial instead.  The wifeösphere said "it will be more practical" meaning our pre-school kids will learn something from it, but it cracked me up that she said called a sundial practical.

Speaking of Rendezvous, I finished this Arthur C. Clark classic today.  (The movie version is coming out this year?  Somebody better tell imdb.)  Compared with Cryptonomicon it seemed light, almost thin, but the action of the second half redeemed it.  Having read Greg Baer's Eon first was also a mistake.  Eon clearly drew a lot of inspiration from Rendezvous but far surpassed it in ideas.  And guess what, people:  if a sci-fi novel lives and dies on the strength of its ideas.