Day 144: Munching on some of the candy we brought back from England. These are Squashies, raspberry-flavored marshmallow chewy things. Pretty tasty!
Year 50 Day 143
Day 143: My part of the last day of opening week: campus cleanup duty! Last year, my most interesting find was what appeared to be a full suitcase’s worth of women’s clothing. This year, it was a full dozen 22-oz. Heineken beer bottles in the same basic spot; apparently someone in the apartment building on the other side of the fence has a pretty serious “drink it dry and chuck it over the fence” habit going on.
Year 50 Day 142
Day 142: Stopping by my wife’s office in one of Highline’s older buildings. While it’s in poor shape and is scheduled to be demolished and replaced in the next few years, I really do like these funky old ’60s buildings. It’s definitely ready to go, and not worth trying to renovate to modern standards, but I’ll be a little sad to see some of the old character of the campus disappear.
📚 The Romulan Prize by Simon Hawke
52/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
A better-than-average Romulan villain and a quest for a mysterious quarantined planet make this one quite enjoyable. Wraps up a bit quickly at the end, but even so, does so while bringing in some fun threads that could lead to more stories down the line (though I have no idea if the author wrote more Trek or followed up on any of those threads).
Year 50 Day 141
Day 141: Nothing particularly fancy today. We had more opening week stuff at work, but this was more straightforward work planning things and not so much photogenic fun and games. So it’s yet another “me on the couch in the living room in the evening” shot.
Year 50 Day 140
Day 140: Next week is the beginning of fall quarter classes at Highline, so this week is our opening week for faculty and staff. We started with a big welcome event, then followed that with a “Highline Bingo” activity that had us going around campus to visit various services and departments, learning a bit about them, and getting our bingo card marked to try to win prizes. I got a Highline lanyard!
Year 50 Day 139
Day 139: Continuing to work on processing vacation photos. So far I’ve made it through the Seattle to NYC train journey, our days in NYC, and the NYC to London ocean voyage. Now I’m working on our days in London. Lots of these to go through, so this part will take a few days!
📚 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: The Making of the Classic Film by John Tenuto and Maria Jose Tenuto
51/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A very nice “coffee table” book covering the making of TWoK. For someone with a long-time interest in both Trek and behind-the-scenes tidbits and interviews, there isn’t a lot in the text that’s brand-new to me, but there were some things that I hadn’t heard, and the book gives a lot of nice capsule biographies of many of the principal people involved in the film. The look of the book is excellent, much like Titan’s earlier look into the art and effects of TMP. Definitely worthwhile for fans of TWoK.
Year 50 Day 138
Day 138: We swapped out our summer front-of-house decorations for spooky season stuff (most, at least; lights will go up later on), part of which involved re-configuring a decorative skeleton from standing at attention (better for storage) to a less rigid (well, for a skeleton, at least) pose. After coaxing this many bones into place, I’m probably a chiropractor.
📚 Cyberbooks by Ben Bova
50/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Not really that great of a book, but entertaining now as a bit of retro-tech kitsch. A bit of noir mystery and a lot of needling of the publishing industry, all based around the then-SF idea of publishing books electronically. In some ways somewhat naïve about the progression of technology, but in other ways remarkably prescient about the upheaval that electronic publishing and distribution would cause in the traditional publishing world. An entertaining curiosity if you come across it, but not good enough to be actively sought after.
