This Friday I will go under the light. I am having one eye corrected for distance vision and one eye corrected for optimal vision at 20 inches. I will be able to say goodbye to my glasses and contact lenses, hopefully, forever.

Went to a great basketball game last night. Aztecs beat New Mexico. Below is the student Section.

Patricia, Michael, and Victoria are visiting next week. I am looking forward to seeing them all.

On Tuesday, October 30, Susan and I will pick up a rental mini-van and drive to Big Bear. We will take the cat up there and spend the day. We will leave some stuff there, including the cat. Wednesday morning we will drive to Long Beach and pick up Patricia and Victoria from the airport. The 4 of us will drive to Disneyland where we will spend two days seeing what we can of the two parks. On Saturday morning we will pick up Michael at the Ontario airport and go back to Big Bear. This will make the cat real happy :> On Monday, after a couple of days in the mountains, we will drive to San Diego. Tuesday is Sea World and a family dinner. Wednesday we take Patricia and Victoria up to Long Beach and a flight home. Long Beach is much cheaper to fly from/to because Jet Blue makes it so. Michael will be spending the days with his parents and fly out Saturday from San Diego.

A year ago, while entertaining visitors, we purchased Disneyland and Sea World passes. Both sets of passes expire a few days after we use for this trip. What timing.

I am in the middle of the book “The Kite Runner”, what a great book. I plan on watching the movie after I finish. My sister, Linda, said I should read it and she was sure right.

I just finished the last of the 3 Dune books – Children of Dune. They are an incredible set of books. I highly recommend the series to anyone who likes to read, even if they don’t like Science Fiction. The books stand on their own as engaging fiction, without the fact that they are set in the interesting far future of Earthlings after Earth is but a memory.

Laurence Bergreen’s book was an interesting read. A lot of information about Marco Polo that I didn’t know.

The author would tell the story of Marco Polo but occasionally interject asides from current knowledge.

With no formal training or apprenticeship, John Harrison revolutionized clock making and succeeded in a lifelong quest to finally solve a problem that caused nightmares for all sea faring adventures. That nightmare is not knowing where you were. The sun could be used to determine your latitude but there was no way aboard ship to tell how far West (or East) you had sailed. This caused many deaths and much waste of time and money.

Knowing what time it was at a set point on the globe could tell you where you are. Because the difference in that time to local time (determined by the sun), directly correlates to your longitude.

Almost everyone else was attacking the problem via the planets/stars/sun/moon positions. Harrison, working alone, was sure he could create a time piece that would do the trick. When he started watches, even on land, lost minutes a day. As a navigation device that would not do.

I will stop there.

I highly recommended this book.

I feel good. It is nice going back through old clothes that I haven’t worn in years.

I saw the movie Mogol over the weekend. It covers Genghis Khan’s life from 10 years old to uniting the Mongols. It is the type of movie I love and I did. It is the part of his life that gets 30 seconds in most documentaries on his life or even a single sentence – “he united the various tribes on the Asian steppes”. It was a long movie that I am sure many would cut. In my mind not every thing in a movie has to be character or story development or direct plot moments. I don’t mind development of a state of mind moments.

I am reading Adams Vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800. It is a very interesting read. It covers the election of Adams through his loss to Jefferson 4 years later. All the players and all the issues. It is real interesting. A lot of it shows how much things don’t change.