Huzzah, we're back! There are some photos up on Flickr.

Today is a little different here at Folderol. Normally I never do memes or tags or whatever they're called these days, because...well, no one's ever tagged me, so it's been a moot point. But right before Christmas, I got tagged by two - two! - different people for two different things. So here we go.

First, from Brendan:

• Find the nearest book
• Name the book
• The author
• Turn to page 123
• Go to the fifth sentence on the page
• Copy out the next three sentences and post to your blog.
• Tag three more folks.

Since the books next to me are pretty dull reference materials like directories and dictionaries, this was a little difficult. But today, the closest book to me is GURPS Steampunk by William H. Stoddard. So I give you this excerpt, regarding the 19th-century theory that there was a planet between the sun and Mercury named Vulcan:

The attraction of the other planets explains 527 seconds of the shift; the other 38 seconds are unaccounted for. Their true explanation will only be found in 1915, when Albert Einstein will use his general theory of relativity to calculate the sun's gravitational field and find that it exactly predicts the discrepancy. Le Verrier, relying on Newtonian mechanics, thinks the explanation is a planet or a group of smaller bodies orbiting closer to the sun than Mercury, as the planet Neptune accounts for Uranus's orbital irregularities.

(Most steampunky stuff is not so technical...but hey, rules are rules.)


From Darren: 5 things you don't know about me. (Some of you may know all of this already. It's hard to think of things no one would know!)

1. I had so many strep throat infections when I was little that I lost part of the hearing in my right ear. They took my tonsils and my adenoids out when I was seven, and hey, no more strep since then!

2. I grew up on 360 acres of a women's organization founded in the 1940s. For a long time I thought it was perfectly normal to have houses with names and have people from all over the world visit constantly.

3. I wanted to be a classical recordist like Michala Petri until I was 12 or so, and faced the harsh reality that I'd never be that good.

4. my dad worked on an art installation with Robert Wilson back in the '60s. This is where my parents met, actually.

5. I own a pair of jeans and a pair of camo pants; everything else is long skirts or dresses, every day. I just think they're more comfortable.


I am going to be a rebel and not pick any people to do the surveys/memes/tag extravaganza, but if you're around this week and feel like participating, go for it! We get back to normal tomorrow.