Who's a happy boy?

Well...why wouldnt he be a happy boy? He spent the ENTIRE day with JUST his daddy! There is a really great video that goes along with these photos, but I can't post it. Callum was laughing his butt off here, but he had just finished breastfeeding (Amanda had just arrived home from work), and her bra and nursing pads are hanging out all over the place. I was just so excited to capture the laughing on video that I didnt even notice....

We had a great day today--let's see what did we do? We drank good coffee, rehearsed the Garner wedding song, took three naps, went to Josephs butcher shop, cruised over to Agway, read "Snuffles makes a friend," played "jack in the box," and hit up Hillman's bakery. Also, I had my little assistant help me prepare a new recipe, which I debuted for Ms. Sally Piles tonight. It was a beef, beer, and vegetable stew, and it was really good; it is a keeper for sure.

Here's a rough transition: what do you think of extraterrestrial life? I've been contemplating it lately, as Amanda and I are working our way through seasons of the X-Files on Netflix. Knowing our government, there just has to be some type of conspiracy. But conspiracy aside, what about just the simple EXISTENCE of aliens? Scientists are always saying its impossible, since earth is the only planet that has the water, oxygen, and atmosphere to sustain life. However, as I often point out, this is only to sustain life as "we" know it; perhaps other planets and galaxies have life that simply exists in other ways. I remember my college astronomy professor telling us how each star we see in the sky is itself a separate solar system--and there are more stars in the sky than there are perks for AIG execs! Its utterly amazing, and one has to ask: How could there NOT be anyone else out there?

This whole thought process came to fruition today as I listened to a story on NPR about these two scientists (Astrosonogramists, is actually what they called themselves) who decided that the world is in fact "okay" enough that they can abandon any otherwise meaningful work in order to study how music might sound on other planets. Seriously. Their rationale (probably to appease the endowment who forked over the money for the study) is this: Things sound different in space, due to different air molecule displacements, atmospheric conditions, and gravitational occurrences. In order to search for life on other planets, they explained, one needs to be able to understand what things like wind, running water, voices, Miley Cyrus music--things that sound a certain way to "us" on earth--sound like on, let's say, Mars. Obviously, these two guys need to grow up and get real jobs, but a few of the things they found out are pretty neat. For example, if you played a piece of church organ music on Earth, it would sound a certain way. But if you played that same piece on Mars, its pitch would change slightly, due to the atmospheric conditions and the disbursement of sound waves. Furthermore, and perhaps most interesting, Mars has such a high concentration of carbon dioxide in the air (CO2 absorbs sound, I guess) that, if you were more than ten feet away from the organ, you couldnt hear anything. Hey, maybe I can buy a whole bunch of CO2 to use when I am at my mom's or Lynne's over the holidays (wah wah wah!). So, in conclusion, there could be a butt load of aliens walking around on Mars that we just aren't "hearing."

Here's the late-great George Carlin's thoughts on E.T. life. Have a good one....

"I think many years ago an advanced extra terrestrial civilization intervened with us genetically and gave us just enough intelligence to develop dangerous technology but not enough to use it wisely. Then they sat back to watch the fun. Kind of like a human zoo. And you know what? They're getting their money's worth."