I'm back from my weekend vacation in Fort Pierce. Not much has changed, I see. It's the same old world with the same old problems. Same non-problems, too.

The trip was pretty nice. We'd never before brought our Italian greyhound, Speck, so it was interesting to see how he'd react to the ocean. We've established that he's afraid of the pool, but he approached the ocean with interest... until some cold water reached his little paws. That was it for him. Although he was on a leash, he tried as hard as he could to run away. Later, my parents took Speck on a walk, and he got used to the incoming splashes. So my dad decided to carry him into the water. Then he placed him in. Speck tried to swim out of the water, and he had a pretty good go at it. But my dad helped him, and he tried to run back to the umbrella and beach chairs. He was shivering and wet, so he warmed up and dried off in the sun. That was Saturday.

On Sunday, we decided to be nicer to Speckie by not having him go in the water (which actually was pretty cold). So he was just chillin' there in his beach chair under the beach umbrella on the beach. What a good sport. And actually, he didn't make a mess in the condo at all, which is surprising because he's gone through some phases of being pretty non-housebroken (housefixed?).

On our way out on Sunday afternoon, we took a drive north to Vero Beach where we ate at the ice cream store we always make a point to go to. But instead of going back south, we went north to check out Sebastian Inlet. We just took a peek, actually. We continued to go north on A1A, and there weren't many chances to get back to the mainland. Around those parts, the island (whatever it's called) is very narrow and has little more than the road and houses on the beach. It looked like more of the beach houses were for sale than weren't.

We didn't get to turn around till Melbourne, where we could see clouds of smoke rising from what appeared to be a brush fire. As we headed south on I-95 and I thought about how many Wikipedia links I would include in my forthcoming post, we had to take a detour because of the fire. It took a while, but after that, we could get back on 95, and it was smooth sailing (driving) home from there.

I listen to music a lot, usually through headphones. My laptop's speakers aren't very good, and I tend to be self-conscious about the music I like to listen to. Last week, I was using my headphones a lot, and my ears started to hurt. So I did the sensible thing, which was to stop using the headphones. In fact, I stopped listening to music altogether. Only the pain hasn't entirely gone away. It was pretty unbearable at times last week, but my ears seem to be getting better. Either that or I'm getting accustomed to permanent hearing damage. I guess it's less of a hearing impairment than a feeling that I need to pop my ears. I really, really hope it does go away because it's made me think about the things I take for granted as well as my own mortality. It's one thing to say "I am made of meat and chemicals; when I die, my flesh will rot," but it's quite another to be confronted with the risk of losing the amazing ability to hear sounds in one's environment. Okay, ears, I get the message. I promise I'll never abuse you again.

Here's a site about the Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth. Pretty interesting stuff.

Have you ever wanted your own island? They're for sale at Private Islands Online. I checked out the page for Florida. There are a lot of keys you can buy.

One of baseball's most legendary records is (apparently) Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak in 1941. But how likely was it to happen? Researchers at Cornell University used historical baseball statistics (and a computer) to create 10,000 digital simulations of the entire history of baseball. In each "alternate universe," the players hit and missed randomly, but according to their batting average for that year. So, just how likely was it that Joltin' Joe set this record in our own particular universe? Find out.