Pick Up Sticks

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse...

Well, my traditional Christmas observance has passed...making corduroy on My Mountain as Santa makes his rounds...as always it was a quiet night...enlivened only by the miracle that Jobs made, the iPod.

Radio is dominated by Christmas music on Christmas Eve and Christmas Night. I like a little blast of Yuletide Tunes, but eight hours two nights in a row kills the mood, don't you think?

After a little carol time, I tuned into the Tinfoil Hat Set's fave show, Coast to Coast AM (Art Bell's old show)...not much to hold my interest there, so I deployed the iPod.

I listened to a nice album of Frank Sinatra covers "Dear Mr Sinatra" by John Pizzarelli with the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, and Steely Dan's 2003 studio gem "Everything Must Go" before catching up on some podcasts of my favorite radio shows.

There's one thing about podcasts...there's no news at the top and bottom of the hour...if there is still news that wasn't edited out, it's old enough not to be news anymore. After two nights and two days of this I end up a little news-starved...even during Christmas news happens, and I'm nothing if not a junky for news.

There's Phobos/Grunt news, it began to trickle out again on the Winter Solstice a couple of days before Christmas. At the time, I posted my Quick Phobos/Grunt Update 5. Universe Today fills in some more blanks and covers the possible recovery of the Planetary Society's Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE)

Should Phobos/Grunt's debris land in Afghanistan as USSTRATCOM predicts, finding the intact LIFE experiment would be a small victory...the little package is designed to survive the heat of reentry, and sustain a 4000G impact, so a miracle is theoretically possible.

Speaking of impacting space debris, there's more on the Siberian fellow who's roof was penetrated by falling parts of Roscosmos' latest launch failure. After escaping with his life because he was out of his easy chair hauling in an armful of firewood, the homeowner fixed the roof himself while authorities wrangled over exactly who would repair the damage.

A Russian Proton rocket had troubles on the launch pad Monday. Fortunately the launch was aborted and the spacecraft is in for repair before it's rescheduled launch.

In my neighborhood, several Lake Tahoe Basin towns flirted with record high afternoon temperatures for Boxing Day. Truckee missed tying the 1976 record of 56°F by a single degree. South Lake Tahoe tied their 1976 record, and Reno will be flirting with record highs Friday and Saturday. Still no relief in sight on the snowfall front...sigh...

The Locals are getting restless and starting to talk. The Sierra Storm King weighs in, and the Sacramento Bee wonders, "Where's the Sierra Snow?"

Sadly, pioneering Surf Swell Forecaster and founding genius of Surfline.com, Sean Collins passed away Monday in Southern California...Godspeed to a true meteo-pioneer.