SAVE YOUR CORKS!! As some of you know, we started the Great Cork Project in the fall of 2005. The walls of the wine cellar are nasty, ugly poured concrete, so I came up the idea of using old wine corks as a wall covering. The corks are cut in half lengthwise and glued to the walls. It takes about 36 corks (72 cork halves) to cover one square foot, and we currently have an eight foot by 20 inch section covered - that's a little less than 500 corks. If we try to cover the entire wine cellar, I estimate it will take around 9,000 corks, so we're always looking for more. Real cork only, please.

[Thanks for your support.]

In keeping with our birthday theme this week, Happy Sixteenth Birthday to Gary's daughter Katie! She is going to another friend's birthday party in town tonight, so Gary will pick her up and give her a ride there later today.

The most interesting sixteenth birthday party that I can recall was the one we had at our house for my Aunt Dorothy. She was a Leap Year baby, born on February 29th so we had a "sixteenth" birthday party for her when she was in her mid-sixties - she was sixteen if you only counted the years that there was really a February 29th. My mother gave her a box of dried orange navels because they freaked her out.

[Nice.]

Read an interesting - rather ominous - post about China and its economic future. (Hat tip: Instapundit). I'm not sure what, if anything, can be done about this combination ponzi scheme/shell game, but it makes me want to check my investments to make sure I don't have a lot tied up with them.

A few years ago, China entered the market as a satellite launch provider. Their rocket was called "Long March" - although we dubbed it "Short March" after a series of disasterous failures, including one that veered off course after liftoff and took out a village, killing many people. At least that's what the foreign observers said, although the official Chinese report was that there were six casualties. No explanation for the hundreds of shoes that littered the devasted hillside where the village once stood. Which kind of underscores the concerns I have with the Chinese - there is no way to verify information that comes out of that country, so the idea that they may be covering up some very bad economic conditions sounds rather probable to me.

[I hope I'm wrong.]

And in other news . . . Tropical Storm Zeta is still with us, but just barely. This afternoon's forecast shows the remnants hanging around for a few more days, but it "should" dissipate. Here is the final paragraph from the NHC today:

I SUPPOSE IT IS ONLY FITTING THAT THE RECORD-BREAKING 2005 ATLANTIC HURRICANE SEASON ENDS WITH A RECORD BREAKING STORM. TODAY... ZETA SURPASSED 1954 ALICE #2 AS THE LONGEST-LIVED TROPICAL CYCLONE TO FORM IN DECEMBER AND CROSS OVER INTO THE NEXT YEAR. ZETA WAS ALSO THE LONGEST-LIVED JANUARY TROPICAL CYCLONE. IN ADDITION...ZETA RESULTED IN THE 2005 SEASON HAVING THE LARGEST ACCUMULATED CYCLONE ENERGY...OR ACE... SURPASSING THE 1950 SEASON. SO... UNTIL THE 2006 SEASON BEGINS... UNLESS ZETA SOMEHOW MAKES AN UNLIKELY MIRACLE COMEBACK... THIS IS THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER SIGNING OFF FOR 2005... FINALLY.

[Adios.]

Quote du jour:

"By insisting on having your bottle pointing to the north when the cork is being drawn, and calling the waiter Max, you may induce an impression on your guests which hours of laboured boasting might be powerless to achieve."

Saki (1870 - 1916) Scottish short-story writer

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