The sad fact is I'm only surprised it hasn't touched my family's orbit sooner. It's one of those under-reported things on the border. All those mass graves that are making the national news now? Yeah, it's old news to border dwellers.

shrift, is that the color too? In any case, a reasonable bridesmaid dress.

ION, TJ's gorgonzola and walnut stuffed ravioli: thumbs up.

Happy Easter!! Although you'd never guess it. Everything was open today. I'm so used to being very aware of both Christian and Jewish holidays in NY, but here they barely register.

Jesse, I'm in that zone right now...I know we are moving, but no clue where. Can't really look for a rental until May/June, but if we don't start the cleaning/clearing/packing process now, we will be paying to move stuff that we will be getting rid of.

I started pretty early myself. I followed the rule of thumb that you can get rid of a third of your stuff without missing it, which turned out to be totally true. And it was so liberating to get rid of crap I had been hauling around for years.

shrift, is that the color too?

Should be, yeah. Marine blue.

That'll look good on you.

(I'm still bitter I was maid of honor for my friend who managed to pick 3 colors really bad on me: pale yellow, beige and a rust I can't pull off. I ended up with beige. She looked great. The bridesmaids looked great. I was just passable.)

Banana bread? REALLY GOOD!! Even if it freakishly rose.

I'm seeing a banana bread in my near future as well, since I bought way too many at the store today. But I've been getting foot cramps, so I figured I need them.

Scrappy, I'm sorry to hear the bad news on you neice. My thoughts to you and her family.

And sara, I can't imagine that situation. I think I would just totally shut down.

I just watched the Kate Beckinsale version of Emma. I think I spent most of it thinking about how different KB looks, and how cute her nose was, and why would she change it.

Good god, sara. That's unbelievable. I hope she's able to recover without any more trauma.

shrift, you'll look terrific in that dress. Congratulations on impending aunt-hood!

No packing for us in the foreseeable future. Our stay in this house for 3-5 years has morphed into 5-7 years instead. We do have to some serious weeding out of the storage room. DH has a set of encyclopedias from his childhood in there and I've got boxes of VHS tapes, among other things. There's no more room for stuff we NEED to store, like Christmas decorations and the extra vacuum cleaner.

This is cool: Death of massive star creates brightest burst ever seen

Astronomers have found by far the most distant naked-eye object ever seen.

Gamma-Ray Bursts are the most powerful explosive events in the Universe. They occur in far-off galaxies and so are usually faint. But on the morning of March 19th 2008 the Swift satellite found a burst which was so bright it could have been seen without binoculars or a telescope even though it was seven thousand times further away than the Andromeda galaxy.

The burst was discovered by the Swift satellite on a fantastic day for GRB hunters. Swift typically finds only two a week; but for the first time Swift found five bursts within 24 hours. The second burst of the day is the new record holder. The enormous energy released in the explosion – brighter than the light from all of the stars in five million Milky Way Galaxies – was caused by the death of a massive star which collapsed to form a black hole.

I read somewhere else that if this explosion had occurred in our galaxy, it would have briefly appeared as bright as the sun. Imagine that - in the middle of the night, it suddenly turns into broad daylight. Or it's day, and suddenly there's two suns....

eta: If night turned into day, there'd probably be a bunch of people who woke up in the middle of the night, saw it was day, got up and rushed to work, when suddenly the star faded away and it was night again....