Blue skies, soft towels

Ahh fall... I love this weather!  The sky is a gorgeous blue, the temperature is in the 50s - too bad it can't be like this year round, but I guess if it was it would get boring eventually...

I took my daughter out to wait for the school bus this morning, and noticed that Venus is a bright jewel in the morning skies now.  I must make a note to get the telescope out early Friday morning and take a look at it up close.  Also, Saturn should be visible in the morning - Saturn is great fun to view in a telescope, but I haven't been able to observe it since it left the evening sky several months ago.

Book #2 of 1001 is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.  Of all the stuff Douglas Adams published in his (regrettably too brief) lifetime, this one is my favorite.  It combines a very interesting premise, a good plot, and memorable characters together with a major dash of sheer inventive lunacy and the result is supremely entertaining.  I'd read this book along with its sequels many times before starting this reading project, but it never gets old.  We come to find out that our little planet Earth is in fact the greatest, most complex computer ever created, and it has spent the last few billion years working on finding the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything... A previous computer had come up with the Answer to said Question (42), which makes everyone realize that they never understood what the question was in the first place.  Regrettably, just before the Earth's program is completed and the Question unveiled, the entire planet is destroyed to make room for a new hyperspace bypass.  Luckily, the Earth has a single survivor, an Englishman by the name of Arthur Dent, and he is now wanted by a race of pan-dimensional mice in order that the Earth's program can be retrieved from his brain cells.  Of course, there's more to it than that, and the whole book is liberally peppered with various asides and subplots that are far more interesting and entertaining than the main plot as well.  This one is a classic in my book.