Today we followed up on last week's model rocket purchase. The kit we got was a zero-assembly-required kit. The only thing we had to do was construct the launch site, plug in the engine, and push the button.

We threw all of our equipment into the kid trailer for the bike and headed out to the fields behind Bishop Shanahan. I remember setting off a rocket or two in that field before it became occupied with a school building, and now that I think about it, the rocket that Derek fired his egg with in 6th grade ended up in this field.

Abby helped me fill the rocket tube with recovery wadding to keep the parachute from melting, and I wrapped the chute up and stuffed it down in the body tube, capping it off with the nose cone. This rocket came with an altimeter build into the node cone. I wish they would have made it a separate piece that could extend the body tube because then you could use it on other rockets of the same body tube size (they're standard, doncha know).

We all backed away from the rocket after it was set to go, made the last few arrangements and started the countdown. Er, countup, for Abby's sake. We counted to five and while I held in the safety key, she pushed the launch button. The rocket shot into the air, fighting against the wind.

The wind didn't carry the parachute as far as I had expected, mostly because the parachute failed to open completely. As it turns out, we didn't use enough wadding and the parachute was slightly melted, but enough to keep it closed on descent. The rocket wasn't in too bad shape though, and we recovered it for a future flight with a repaired chute.

I have at long labor finished the ceaseless epic of the irrepressable Comtesse Phedre no Delaunay de Montreve. All 901 pages. Characteristics of fantasy novels that I have gleaned toiling over this bountiful manuscript:

• Characters must have names that you can only read in your head and not easily say when describing the book in passing. -- "I finally saw who entered under the banner of the Ioval D' Isioual green and white. Non other than the Cruinthe Spilarqueal D' Agnioth no Veruiel"
• Characters may have at first a subtle hint of their specialty, but regardless eventually present themselves as divine, ultimate masters of their art. -- "Joscelin looked the stoic priest, but he effortlessly dispatched the 35 Pictic warriors in a whirlwind and quickly replaced his pen-knife in its pleather casing, then restored the single strand of missplaced hair with a short puff from his narrowly parted lips."
• All of the interesting naughty details will be skipped, while all of the pointless intricacies of the flavor and color of a particular wine at a particular meal of absolutely no consequence will be embellished when dwelled upon. -- "...the wine produced by pressing only the most late-ripening violet grapes under the priest-cleansed feet of the nude virgins most newly indoctrinated into the order of Naamah from the purest D' Angeline blood in their ancient Ciovalese ceremony whilst their consorts looked on in frothing pleasure. Of the ravaging passion that followed, I will not speak."
• Courtly intrigues just suck compared to a good butt-whooping. -- "Queen Ysadril de Corsel feigned interest in the viscount's tale at first, then yawned openly, seeking comfort in the deep pillows of her evening throne and goblet of virgin-pressed wine. Sensing her interests drifitng, the count impaled her on his deftly drawn sword and departed presence of her corpse on the turn of a heel."

Anyway, I can't say that I didn't enjoy the book. As with most novels, I felt this one could have told its tale in many fewer pages, perhaps not as vividly in some places. There was a point about halfway through the book when I became thoroughly invested in the story, but I'm sad to say that it didn't come until I was halfway through. Had I not perservered, I would not have discovered the rest of the book became much more interesting.

I have an interst in the second book, if only to see what happened to Melisande, the bad guy who gets away at the end. Oh, drat, I just ruined it for you, didn't I? Crap. Anyway, I hope that the second book picks up a little more quickly than the first.

Thanks, Jen, for the birthday gift- In spite of what seem like harsh comments above, I haven't been able to talk of too much else over the past week I've been suffering through this courtly fantasy.

I know that I recently mentioned creating a Wiki for my book stuff. You can find it at Indoor Astronomy. If you want to make edits, the edit password is "wikipass", and you should use your name as the username. The Wiki doesn't care who you are as long as you have the password.

I don't have much online as of yet, since I've only been adding a few paragraphs each day, but you can see what direction I'm going in. Some of the stuff on there is inaccurate or unfinished, since it's still a work in progress. I need to come up with a way that people can leave inline comments on the text. It shouldn't be too hard, but I need to make a decision. For now, just use the Book Suggestions page.

If you have general astronomy questions that I can frame in the context of my book, I'm anxious to read them. Leave them here or there.

What I really need next is a good way to turn my hand drawings (which will be a good creative portion of the content) into something that will work online. What do you think of the logo on the page? This is the kind of style I am thinking of going for for all of the illustrations in the book. It's pretty much exactly like what my regular astronomy illustrations look like, so try not to be too insulting.

Another short weekend down the drain.

We killed Friday evening going out with Mom to the slowest moving buffet I've ever seen. This Chinese buffet is one of those places (like the PA DMV or the Chester County Library) that you go into around 6pm expecting to spend a half hour or so eating, and you end up walking out and it's quarter til 11 and you feel hungry. Weird.

Saturday I wasn't feeling very well in the morning. I was probably up too late after the buffet reading that book Jen gave me for my birthday, but I also had a headache and stomach cramps (buffet?) and didn't much move, let alone leave the house.

On page 350 or so of Kushiel's Dart, everybody dies. No, really. And that's not even half-way through.

In the evening was another D&D game - The Onyx Mirror. You know, I go into these things pretty hyped with a certain plan of accomplishing things, and a certain expectation of player actions (even accounting for a reasonable amount of deviation). And then I come out feeling berated, abused, and stupid. It's no wonder nobody wants to run games for too long of a period.

A little detail on the meta-game: Bad Adam, for misconstruing Larry's exodus to the toilet and for using the DMG when he's not a DM. Also, I had planned to kill Sybilla (Larry) and did, and yet it worked out ok in spite of my history of killing characters out of hand. I feel bad about breaking Elmarik's (Ken) ancestral bow, but the way I look at it, it adds a bit of his own history to it, rather than just a notch of "I killed this".

For the record- You guys weren't supposed to kill the nightwalkers, and because you were too stupid to run with the artifact once you had it, I had to reign them in, and so - no, Dave, you really won't be getting double the XP, you uber-munchkin. Besides, you willingly gave up your oh-so-expensive weapons, bleating the whole time about how this can't possibly be a good idea. And here, I'll spare you the torment of it all: The ancestors of the original merchants knew why they couldn't let the miners leave, and rather than worry their children with their inability to correctly fall back into the flow of time, they left a legacy that turned them evil. Nobody survives. This is bad for you, and you'll see how if you really think about it.

Sunday was a wash. We bought a model rocket to try to launch but Abby fell asleep. A grocery shopping trip later and we're off to bed. Or writing Exhibit 1.0c code, whichever.

There will come a day when, through all of this practice, I will no longer require sleep.

Berta and Abby were eating jellybeans recently. Abby mentioned something about a tummy ache, presumably from eating too much candy. I wondered where she had learned this tidbit, and figured that Berta must have told this to her to prevent her from eating the whole bag of beans. This got me wondering...

Is "you'll get a tummy ache" just an excuse that parents give so that their kids don't eat too much candy? I don't remember ever getting sick from eating too much candy - no amount of candy was too much in my childhood mind. Then again, maybe I stopped myself thinking that I might get sick from it.

Another thought- Maybe adults get sick from eating too much candy and impart this sentiment on their children as an honest attempt at warning.

I think I'm leaning toward the collusion hypothesis. Strangely, I don't think there is an easy way that this hypothesis can be tested, and certainly don't want Abby eating all kinds of sweets just to test my crazy ideas.