What I did on my birthday and other stuff

This is going to be a long and rambling post. First, mindyklasky has a new book out. It's called Sorcery and the Single Girl and it's the second outing for her young witch-about-town Jane Madison. The actual release was yesterday, but I had promised a review to somebody else. jimhines has a nice interview with the author.

Yesterday was my 41st birthday. How did I celebrate, you ask? I:
1) handed out dictionaries to 3rd graders (a Rotary project)
2) discussed grants-in-aid with a fellow Rotarian
3) Cooked hamburgers for 70 senior citizens at a nursing home (Rotary project)
4) Took my car in for service.
Yep, I'm a wild and crazy kind of guy ;-)

Monday's post was a link to a Making Light discussion on models vs. reality. The third or forth comment on that thread? "The map is not the terrain." If that's familiar, you probably heard if from Robert DeNiro in the movie Ronin, which is a pretty good action movie. (The movie lifted the quote from much earlier material). It's also exactly what Jim MacDonald (see Friday's post) proved while debunking the Betty & Barney Hill UFO abduction story. Bottom line? If you're not reading Making Light you should be.

Like I said, a rambling post, but hopefully something of interest for everybody.