Had a strange dream a couple nights back. It was vaguely Asian-themed. It begins (or my memory of it begins) in media res, with me riding on a sort of a futuristic jet-ski, with several of my fellows on nearby jetskis. At first it's strangely videogame-esque, as ninjas(?) would pop out of the water in front of me, and I would dispatch them with a swift slash of my katana. After a few rounds of slice-a-ninja, the team was reassembled in the cellar of the alchemist. We were searching for some alechemical doo-hicky and found an elaborate sliding and locking mechanism in the floor. Long metal pieces would slide along tracks in the floor, and when they were in the right arrangement, the floor within their compass would depress a few inches, at which point, they had to be slid into a new arrangement. And... that's it.

I finished reading Bad Astronomy. It was fine, but written for a general audience, so I didn't derive very much that was truly new from it [but not nothing -- although the Hubble can't exactly image the Earth, it can be (and occasionally is) pointed at the Earth, so that one camera captures 'streak flat' images to help calibrate it.]. I have a problem with some of his analogies and writing, but most of this beefing is just me wanting to push him out of the way so I could write it more goodly.

On the 4th of July, as I mentioned before, the Creamer kids came by to plant some pumpkins in the garden. It seemed to be a big hit, particularly with Tristan, who watered the entire garden, I think. They are neat kids, and possibly prime examples of the superintelligent futuristic species that will replace us.

In the evening of the 4th, we had a few friends over to eat, drink, ignite explody stuff, patriotically play Rock Band, and envy the people with the illegal fireworks that lit up the sky.