Lost in footnotes

Alex and I had plans for the fourth for all of two hours. We were going to watch the fireworks at a friend's but that didn't pan out so I am guessing that we'll just have to spend the evening playing duel control Flight Control, and complaining about the noise of the fireworks.That is, as long as I am able to get my new iPhone on Friday.  Yes, I am finally succumbing to the lure of the 3G S. (The 'S' by the way stands for spiffing.) The choice was getting my highlights done or upgrading, and the thought of spending five days in Naples with Alex and not being able to play duel player Flight Control is just too much. What the heck would we do of an evening? So I'll just wear a hat whilst we are on vacation.

Good

• Smitten Kitchen's cold brewed coffee
  
• Planning itinerary for Naples and the books I'll buy in London
• Long weekend
• Week day lunches with colleagues
• Hot sunny days
  

Not-so-good

• More insect bites but less of a reaction this time
  
• Whiffle ball 
• Eating out at lunch and not bring something in
• Tragic root situation
• Random rain showers
• Doing yoga to a Michael Jackson playlist
  

What do you tend to worry about in the middle of the night?

My exam results they are due next month!!!!

A few weekends back Alex and I hoped a train to Philadelphia for a weekend of sightseeing, and oh my word did we see sights or what. Over the course of two days, according to my pedometer, we racked up over 18 miles! No wonder we were exhausted with very sore feet by the time we caught our train home on Sunday night.  We packed a lot into the weekend, but there were many things that we didn't get to do like run up the Rocky steps or explore the dozen or more museums that call Philadelphia home. My favorite parts of the weekend:

• Franklin Walking Seminar (Context Travel) - We were the only two people on this tour and we had a wonderful docent. Learnt a lot about Franklin, and had some great discussions about the marketing of history, how different materials present their exhibitions and the foundation myths of the US
  
• Reading Terminal Market - Awesome farmers' market. Packed to the rafters with fresh produce, Amish ladies, and hole in the wall places to eat 
  
• La Colombe - Philadelphia based coffee company that I am addicted to. They have a cafe near my office, and I dragged Alex to the original cafe in Philly. He had a very yummy iced coffee made with condensed milk, and it was so delish that I wished I'd ordered it instead of a boring latte 
• University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology - Okay I fess up one of the main reasons we went to Philly was so I could check out the Greek & Roman galleries. The museum is a little old school but the Greek & Roman galleries had recently been done up and were pretty darn good. I got quite squeally when I got to see a Villanovan hut urn which was all shades of awesome (if you are into that type of thing!)
  
• Franklin Institute - There were two special exhibits on: Galileo & the Medici (excellent, very technical so Alex was in heaven) and Star Trek (lots of costumes, sets and props; we were in heaven!)
  

I didn't end up taking that many photographs, the walking tour was really intense and given that Alex was snapping away I thought it would be rude if I started talking photos too but I've popped what snapped on Flickr.

Surely absentee monarch is more fitting given that Jackson hasn't dominated the music scene for at least a decade. Perhaps his come back tour would have set the world alight or maybe gone out like a damp squid like the Spice Girls.   Either way he leaves behind his music legacy, and the gossip columns (and news channels by the looks of it) will squeeze out every last column inch and soundbite from his death. I was never really into his music but I do have two memories. Firstly, is the ace Fry and Laurie sketch about Jackson, and secondly Javis Cocker rushing the stage at the 1996 Brits to protest again Jackson.

W00t

• Ate at Blue Hills at Stone Barns and it was totally out of this world
• Got the bed to myself as Alex is working away so I can sleep diagonally
• Kindle when traveling is awesome
  
• British farces (Death at a Funeral is helping me unwind)
  

Meh

• Tardy about my 'Things on Tuesday' as I've been away for the last two days helping out at an event "upstate"
• Twilight - turgid teen tosh
  
• Really bad reaction to insect bites
• Missing Alex as he is working away 
• Need some yoga
• Midweek Netflix watching is stressful but necessary
  

Hallmark propaganda is everywhere today so I thought it might be fun to recap a few fathers from Greek mythology. These chaps definitely would not be seen with a baby bjorn or pushing a Bugaboo to the farmers' market.

Odysseus: Absentee husband and father
Spouse: Penelope
Offspring(s): Telemachus
Left his pregnant wife to go fight in the Trojan War for ten or so years, and then on the way back had an run in with a god which kept him away from Ithaka for another ten years.  Penelope was left fending off suitors with her wits and a  spinning wheel, and Telemachos went emo. On the plus side Odysseus never stopped pining for his family, and eventually returned home (after romancing his way around the Med) to kick some serious ass.

Agamemnon: Infanticide
Spouse: Clytemnestra
Offspring(s): Orestes, Iphigenia, Electra and Chrysothemis
On his way to Troy he incurs the wrath of Artemis and his fleet is left stranded without sufficient wind to get moving. To appease Artemis he sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia, whom he lured to the island under the false promise of being married to Achilles. As you can imagine this does not go down well with Mrs. Agamemnon. Upon Agamemnon's return she kills him (and his captured concubine Cassandra), and then eventually is murdered by her son Orestes. This is of course the classic example of the "cycle of violence" being transmitted down the generations. 

Priam: Indulging his son to the detriment of everybody else
Spouse: Various (inlcluding Hecuba)
Offspring(s): Many (including Paris, Hector and Cassandra)
Priam's son, Paris, has a holiday romance with the wife of the king of Sparta, he smuggles her home to Troy, and instead of knocking some sense into his playboy son Priam welcomes Helen into his home. This action seals the deal for the destruction of his kingdom and family by the Greeks who have come to rescue Helen (and all the booty that Paris nabbed alongside her).
 
Laius: Attempted infanticide
Spouse: Jocasta
Offspring(s): Oedipus
An oracle warns Laius not to father a child with his wife as his future son will kill him, and marry Jocasta. Upon the birth of their son they order for him to be left on a mountainside to die of exposure. Of course, a meddlesome shepherd comes across the baby and saves him. Laius has tried to side-step a prophercy but as with all Greek myths there is no escaping your destiny.

Daedalus: Child indangerment
Offspring(s): Icarus And Iapyx
Daedalus was the original mad inventor, and was locked up in a tower by Minos to keep him from blabbing about the labryinth he'd built. In order to escape, Daedalus fashioned wings made of feathers and wax for him and Icarus. Sadly Icarus did not listen to his father and flew too close to the sun. Extreme heat and wax are not the best combination, and Icarus fell into the sea.

Heracles: Familicide
Spouse: Megara
Offspring(s): Therimachus, Deicoon, Creontiades
Driven mad by Hera, Heracles murders his family as he is under the delusion that they are the family of his enemy, and it of course is fine to murder the family of your enemy.

Helios: Child indangerment
Spouse(s): Various
Offspring(s): Many (including Phaethon)
Once again a father is only too willing to indulge his son and gives him the keys to the turbo charged charriot.  It all ends in tears wwith Phaethon falling into a river, and his sisters weeping for him so much they were turned into trees.

Late night for me. Let's just say that I have had two cups of coffee so I am awake for the foreseeable future...

DVDs

• Caprica - BSG prequel that is sitting on the coffee table waiting on Alex being in the right mood to watch it. I am thinking it might be a good fit for the 4th of July long weekend. I mean we ain't going to be watching the fireworks
  
• Star Trek: TNG - Someone wont let me watch Deep Space Nine until we have re-watched all of TNG. Half way through season 5 and it is dragging somewhat
  

Television

• Virtuality - Ronald D. Moore did a pilot for Fox, and they have repackaged it as a tv movie. That probably means it is now a failed pilot but as ever the optimist I am hopeful for a resurrection, especially after seeing the 12 min preview and webisodes
  
• Stargate Universe - the trailer makes it look edgier than Atlantis or SG-1, and it has Robert Carlyle in it so nuff said
  
• Torchwood - The 'Children of Earth' mini-series airs in July and it feels a little bit like Midwitch Cuckoos (though spooky children always give off that vibe to be)
• Doctor Who - Finally getting the Christmas special that was aired AGES ago in the UK. It also looks like BBC America has wrangled the Doctor from Sci-Fi Channel
• Warehouse 13 - Cute but worth a watch given that there isn't that much on at the moment
  

Films
For whatever reason there tends to be a dearth of sci-fi movies opening in the summer, the powers that be obviously think that genre is better suited to fall which is why it made no sense to open last year's X-Files movie in the summer.

• Star Trek - So you've seen it once just keep watching it because it really is that good!
  
• Harry Potter & The Half Blood Prince - Not strictly sci-fi but wizards are hardly mainstream
• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - same as above but this time with robots in disguise
• The Time Traveler's Wife - Not another Sarah Connor Terminator spin-off I promise. The book is excellent, but the time travel is rather more a literary plot device than an actually exploration into time travel
  

I tend to do quite a bit of navel gazing during yoga classes, and by navel gazing I mean putting my introspective head on though I do literally spend time gazing at my actual navel as well. I find yoga quite mindless, especially when you filter out the mediation and the new age rhetoric, as all you are doing is breathing and following instructions for a series of poses. I like to think I do my best thinking on the mat, and today I was mulling over why I have been feeling so out of sorts. I managed to identify key ingredients that had been missing this week - escapism and thinking.

Escapism comes in many forms.  My favs are studying ancient civilisations and watching genre tv shows based on cool futuristic stuff (hello science fiction and fantasy).  I find that both of those things lead to thinking and that in turn leads to a happy me. Does this makes me an uber nerd? Because I really hope so. Last week was primarily about the day job, and in the evening I only had time to watch the Daily Show and Colbert. As much as I love Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert they are very much based in reality, and given that most of my favourite shows are on break for the summer there are slim pick-in's for programs that transport you to a galaxy far far away. 

Is it odd that a lack of Fringe, Supernatural, Battlestar Galactica, Chuck and Doll House disrupt my reality so much? Not really when you think about the Obama-BSG article the Onion ran a few months back. Dude, I am totally on the same page as I have an entire summer to fill before school and the new tv seasons begin in earnest. What am I meant to do till then?

Next up will be my summer sci-fi survival guide.

I think I was a bit hormonal this week. Had a wee mid-week melt down due to the ongoing sleep deprivation, discovering that instead of the Alitalia charge on my credit card I actually had an incorrect one from a totally different company and a few other dull things.  Cue much wailing and flapping of arms. Alitalia say that my flights are fine, and it might take a few weeks for the charge to go through - Italian! When I eventually got through to the company that had incorrectly charged my card (and after they had done somed poking about) they apologized for the mistake.  So no harm no foul. Next week should be better as Alex is going to be staying in a hotel a few nights (so he'll be closer to his project), but I am being "loaned out" so I'll be out over night at an event up state. Any how it's Friday night, there is still carrot cake, the temp has dropped enough to have tea, and I am catching up with Burn Notice (bliss!).  I predict a weekend of Flight Control, murder mysteries and madeleines. I might even find time to post the photos from Philadelphia.