Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

He restored a Bugatti, then drove it from Belgium to Rome and back again. He’s the grandson of a Civil War Veteran, getting ready to celebrate his 80th birthday. He just piloted his own airplane from Florida to Boston.

I had a wonderful time at a banquet last night, thanks to my dinner partner, described above.

Yes, giant dinner parties can be fun when you’re getting to know somebody new and surprising–like the prize in a box of Crackerjack when I was a kid.

It’s certainly not those empty calories that give us so much pleasure.

Gene Kelly, singin’ and dancin’ in the rain–and somebody messed with it–and I loved it. I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but take a look.

This story belongs in the blogosphere! Take it away!

I’ll be offline a bit this weekend because the wonderful folks at Weblogger are doing something helpful to my server. Thanks, Erin, for all the great Manila hosting at Weblogger.com–you’ve helped make this fun.

AccordionGuy’s “come-hither-Bill” was great before I got to it.

My excuse is that now my Gollum has someone to flirt with…

So I confidently expect that AccordionGuy’s every-growing Bill Gates collection will soon be included in the AOL snapshot for “bill gates.”

Kevin, if you want any of those snapshots animated so that they blink, my rates are verrrry reasonable…

It wasn’t postmature ignitulation–but something like that happened to our old furnace while I was shopping. When I got home, the house was full of dark smells and weird heat–and the basement, when I checked it, was billowing smoke!

Three loudly-sirenaceous-red-firetrucks full of kind-and-cheerful-firemen later, the dirty firebox of my furnace was still smoldering but at least not billowing smoke all over the house.

‘You need to get the furnace cleaned every year,” said the fireman. Well, I usually do, but, dang, 2004 was busy with both daughters graduating, both daughters moving (twice), one daughter getting married, and just as things are starting to settle down Frank gets that Nobel phone call, and one of the things that slipped my mind was the furnace.

Not that I’m complaining, especially since our house did not blow up.

At least not yet.

Who will feed my Titan addiction today?

Wired News?

Data beamed back from Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, sketched a picture of a pale orange landscape with a spongy surface topped by a thin crust. “The closest analogs are wet sand or clay,” said John Zarnecki, in charge of instruments analyzing Titan’s surface.

Or CNN?

“Titan a ‘creme brulee’-like surface”

“We think this is a material which may have a thin crust, followed by a region of relatively uniform consistency,” John Zarnecki, the scientist in charge of experiments on Titan’s surface said at a televised news conference from the control center in Germany.

Zarnecki said one of his colleagues had suggested another analogy: creme brulee. “But I don’t suppose that will be appearing in any of our papers,” he said.

Aw, c’mon, John, why not? I’m glad CNN had the good taste to include it.

All things Titanical, cont’d. Thanks to BoingBoing for pointing out this great old Time Magazine cover. I also turned up some fun results from the new Technorati tag game for “titan” and “orange.”

Email from Bert, regarding my orange bloggery, blogged here with his permission:

Hey Betsy, I even had an orange shag rug in my living room!

My favorite Orange blog thing actually is mostly green yet speaks volumes about orange?????

Neeka’s Backlog has been coming mostly from Kiev during the recent political events:

http://vkhokhl.blogspot.com/

Orange has a special meaning in the Ukraine. In their recent presidential election, pro-Western candidate Viktor Yushchenko was nearly poisoned with dioxin (Agent Orange). Supporters, wearing orange to show solidarity, went on to triumph–even though his opponent got millions of rubles in campaign funds from Russia.

Neeka reports that the “orange revolution”, now being more broadly defined as anti-Putin and pro-democracy, has spread to St. Petersburg, where retirees are protesting cuts in their benefits.

This doesn’t sound good for Bush’s friend “Pootie-Poot.”