No comet but I did see the space station the other morning.

Very cool!

Gloomy skies means we see lots of clouds. I miss Hale-Bopp, actually. That was impressive, and apparent for long enough to view between nights of inclement weather.

In all the talk about papal autonomenclature and Suzi being the pope, let's not forget that tomorrow is Pi Day!

This post brought to you by my Pi Day Pi Pies.

I was in Pasadena when Hale-Bopp went by, and I got the local news coverage of the Heaven's Gate deaths. Though I always did enjoy going out on the balcony and looking at that big smear of light in the sky.

Holy Jesuit Pope, Batman.

But if you're smelling the same thing you're looking at, how is that not "smell is highly memory-linked"? I mean, imagining any smell at any time is standard, right? We all do that from time to time? So when it's clearly linked to the stimulus, isn't that really sharp memory? When I read 1984, I can smell almonds, but that's because I binged on almond cookies the first time I read it, so they're paired in my mind. Is that synaesthesia too?

I thought it was the olfactory version of seeing something in your minds eye, or getting earwormed with "Islands In The Stream" when you see a picture of Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers together.

What's the discipline who charts? Not just the hapless person that managed to work out F1 gets you help in Excel as well as Word?

My sister has three ways of splitting a set of twenty people. She can split by gender (10/10), or by age bracket 18-34/35+ (10/10) and low income/medium income (10/10).

She provides no more information about how each set overlaps. Me, I just want her to do three pie carts...but together, without stating how many poor women under 35 there are in the group.

I don't feel like I can help her much in two dimensions, especially since everyone is 50/50. I'd probably do stacket columns in some sort of way to indicate you're not counting people more than once.

It's more like I can smell the picture. And (other than the bourbon) these aren't particular favorites or particularly evocative memories. Why would I smell a Fig Newton of all things? If I smelled a Nutterbutter that would be my Grandfather. There have got to be a dozen cookies that come before Fig Newton in my emotional/cookie continuum. Today I was watching a special on Moroccan street food and when it was shown I smelled a particular tomato sauce -- not the grilled sardines, ubiquitous orange juice, mountains of spices, or smoke from the goat's head everything -- a mild tame sauce I'd dipped shrimp in once at a stall.

And, right now, if I TRY to smell a Fig Newton I can not. Even if I looked at the picture again I probably wouldn't (which seems NOT synesthesic if that's a word).

I've been sleeping like hell lately. I've had tiny flashes of hallucinations in the past when seriously sleep deprived -- I'd see an image for a second that I knew darn well wasn't there. Maybe I'm just having scent hallucinations.

I'll start writing them in my dream journal and see if any pattern develops. There's certainly room. For the last four nights its pretty much been "Fell asleep too close to dawn, slept through my alarm, dressed and out the door in 18 minutes, can't remember a thing dream-wise."

But naming yourself after the founder of a different order makes a very different statement than naming yourself after the founder of your own order, don't you think?

Not necessarily. None of the papal Benedictines have taken the name Benedict, though plenty of others have.

I have no other papal thoughts. Maybe other than papal indifference.

I cannot sleep which sucks as I have to work 12+ hours today. My whole neighborhood wreaks of jasmine. It's overwhelming and makes me think of the late seasons of Angel. Not in a good way. It also sets off my allergies, which is making the bronchitis work.