Wishing you love and joy, from our family to yours.

Tonight, Jupiter and Venus are in conjunction in the southwestern sky, and it’s neat to behold. The two planets look like bright stars, unless you know the difference (planets do not ‘twinkle’) and the moon is just a sliver in the night.

Between Venus and Jupiter, Venus is the brighter planet and will remain high up on the skyline all throughout the month of December. Jupiter, on the other hand, will be descending on the western horizon in December. Just before the month ends, we’ll be able to see a fleeting Mercury accompany Jupiter at dusk. Venus will still be visible, but somewhere above the conjunction of Jupiter and Mercury.

The full moon on December 12 will be the closest to Earth since 1993, and won’t be coming this close again until 2016.

Click below for a bigger, blurry picture:

(First photo stolen from Betsy Cramer, the second one is mine.)

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Something About You - Single Ukulele Jim Release Date: Sep 25, 2008 Genre: Folk ℗ 2008 Ukulele Jim

You can now order the single for “Something About You”, the first song off the new album I’m putting together. It’s only 99 cents.

It’s also available on Amazon.

Please support indie artists like myself.

(Pictures stolen from Dan Siebert.)

A fast moving brush fire has started in the hills above Montecito. I left work at SBCC shortly after it started and the huge flames were very visible from the east campus. It looked really bad.

Apparently downtown traffic is really screwed up, there’s a major power outage, and people are already losing their homes in the blaze. Spot fires on Westmont campus are being reported. Major evacuations are underway.

They’re calling it the “Tea Fire” for some reason. I heard that they think it started above the Tea House structure on Westmont Campus, but that’s really no excuse for giving the fire such a ridiculous name. That’s just lazy… if anything, they should have called it the Tea House Fire. The local media really like to dumb things down.

(Pictures stolen from Lisa Slavid via EdHat.)

Now get out there and vote!

My little girl wrote her very first short fiction today at pre-school. It’s better than most stories I wrote in college.

A Train One
by E., age 3

Well once upon a time this train brought mail to everyone. And then when he was done doing that he went home. And then when he went home he played with his friends. He played with his friends some more and more. And then when he was done doing that he took a nap.

THE END

…Okay, I admit it’s a pretty awful photoshop job. But shut up.