John and Kendra and others are coming over tonight for their rendition of my birthday party. Last night it was Jeff's turn, and despite the ice prat fall, fun was had by all.

John is going to cook up some Indian food.

I'm a bit sore today since I did a great biff on the ice in front of friend Jeff's house. The fall was spectacular, and I did a good football shoulder roll (thus preventing knee injury), but did manage to get a nice cut to the side of my left eyebrow. The blood flow was spectacular, but the cut itself is nothing major.

According to the HistoryChannel.com, on-this-day.com, a few other odd web sites, and my own brain, January 22nd is chock full of interesting events:

• George Gordon aka Lord P-diddy Byron was born (1788)
• British colonists reached New Zealand (1840)
• Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to achieve a medical degree in the US (1849)
• Chief Dull Knife made a last fight for freedom. He probably should have sharpened his knife. (1879)
• Queen Victoria died (1901)
• The non-communist first Russian Revolution began. It was called "Bloody Sunday." No that's not what Bono was singing about (1905)
• That Tucker guy who made those messed up cars and consequently was the subject of a ponderous Coppola movie was found innocent (1950)
• Those population tickers you see in museums that click once every few seconds for each birth was accurate at least once, as far as I know (1965)
• Laugh In premiered (1968)
• The Beatles began recording Let it Be and Elvis recorded the single "Suspicious Minds". That's mighty suspicious, I would say (1969)
• The coked-up Hill Side Singers sang "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" on American Bandstand. Contrary to predictions, the world did not end in horrible catastrophe of lollipops of peace falling from the sky. Dick Clark's 72nd face lift held up well (1972)
• The Supreme Court ruled on Roe vs. Wade, legalizing abortion in the US and LBJ keeled over (1973)
• Wall of Voodoo performed "Mexican Radio" on American Bandstand. Oh oh oh oh, Mexican radio and I saw it and Juice Newton fucked it all up by singing Queen of Hearts (1983)
• Madeleine Albright was confirmed as the first woman secretary of state (1997)

And now for your edutainment we have a Random Dick Clark quotation:

"What will we all do when the trial is over?"

Kendra has been reading Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris, a book that I also recommend highly. To be succinct, the book is about books and reading in general, a subject, as you might suspect, which melds quite well with my own interests. As a matter of fact, when I got my first full-time job, I went down to Sam Weller's and bought books that I had had my eye on for some time--the direct reversal of what I had been doing a year or so before when I went down to Weller's and commited the abomination of selling books because I was so strapped for cash. I'm not one to sell books, but I've also stopped buying them because I have the cash (or worse sometimes don't), since I have no more room to put them, and don't relish the idea of moving box after box after box of them, and I really shouldn't be wasting money just buying for the sake of buying.

When I read books like Fadiman's, however, I get foolish and think how great it would be to have that one hard-to-find translation of X or how handy it would be to have Y on the shelf. I've also caught myself day dreaming about having a special room devoted to the library complete with dark walnut tables and light streaming from a big old gothic window.

My wallet thanks God for public lending libraries.

Last night we had the meeting of great minds--well at least meeting of the bloggers--over at Kendra and John's (The Emma). Ostensibly I went over there to have some of Kendra's great soup and have drinks, but the evening bifurcated first into watching the Jazz game with Sir Nathan late of Costa Rica, and then eating Kendra's said soup and an additional tasty salad with Kim, late of the Czech Republic. As you may or may not be aware, Kim tends hod and keeps a blog and so does Kendra--thus the meeting of the great minds er blogs er hod tenders.

As with most evenings at the Emma, we discussed various matters and whiled the night away.

I think when I move again I'm going to get a place with radiators as John and Kendra have. Of course, you may have to run into the occasional heat outage as Kendra reported yesterday, but there is something nice about waking up in a toasty home that quietly hisses at you. It is nice, as well, not to have to pay for heat.