The eclipse will be total from 4:44 pm CT to 5:58 pm, so when the moon rises over Chicago at 5:39 pm it will appear a deep red. (If it appears at all, of course; the weather will likely be cloudy.)

Observers on the East Coast will have a better view; Europeans will get to see the whole thing.

...and I don't mean on the locker-room floor. Just now NPR's Weekend Edition reported on a gym in Hong Kong that uses the kinetic energy from people walking on treadmills and using exercise bikes to power its lights. Neat.

Parker's second training session finished up well, but according to the trainer, Joe Hislop, Parker is a smart dog who got a little spoiled. Actually, he got a lot spoiled, which is totally my fault. But now, Parker isn't so spoiled any more. In fact, he knows how to stay down for as long as necessary now. Last night, aided a little by fatigue, he stayed in a down position munching on a bully stick for an hour. Here he is being quite a well-mannered dog while I walked out of sight and back in my office building's lobby:

At least one of my friends (ND-D) would be proud of me: as of tonight, all 21 of the lightbulbs in my apartment are compact fluoroescent, and in some cases of lesser luminosity than the ones they replaced. All told, if every light bulb in the place is blazing away, I'm still using less electricity than if only my kitchen and bathroom lights were on before replacing the bulbs.

Plus, unless I live here 20 years, it's unlikely any of them will ever need replacing.

It's a little thing, but if everyone did it, we'd use a lot less energy.

You will notice that the ParkerCam isn't being updated today. Parker is in his crate, which I had hoped not to use, but circumstances required it:

Wow, do I have a lot of movies to see.

Update, 11:08 pm CT: Wow, Scorsese finally won!

Last update, 11:14 pm CT: Scorsese won again! It never rains...

One more update, 11:18 pm CT: MSNBC just sent a news alert out about the Best Actress Oscar™. I'm wondering: who is checking email from a place they can't see the actual Oscars broadcast? Anyone? Bueller?

Through the ParkerCam I just got to watch my darling soon-to-be-crated-from-now-on puppy disemboweled my comforter:

Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (sub.req.) points out that serious energy conservation does not equal economic disaster:

[T]he assumption, explicit or implicit, that any substantial cut in energy use would require a drastic change in the way we live...is false. Let me tell you about a real-world counterexample: an advanced economy that has managed to combine rising living standards with a substantial decline in per capita energy consumption, and managed to keep total carbon dioxide emissions more or less flat for two decades, even as both its economy and its population grew rapidly. And it achieved all this without fundamentally changing a lifestyle centered on automobiles and single-family houses.

The name of the economy? California.

After play group this evening I (a) wrestled a 24-kilo dog into a bathtub, (b) continued to wrestle said dog who did not want clean water dumped on him repeatedly, which was ironic because (c) less than half an hour before he had rolled around in a mud puddle the size of Connecticut at the dog park.

Poor Parker, he won't be going to the play group much until either (a) the mud in the dog park freezes or (b) the mud dries out.

But in a strange twist, right now he's lying on the floor gnawing on a bully stick, peaceful as a bishop. I do love this puppy most of the time.

Update: As I wrote those words, he started re-arranging the room. Oy.

Parker, a black dog, hangs out on a white couch (because they no longer make this one and natural cotton was the only color slipcover they had left), which is covered in a slightly greenish fleece blanket (because it has an expected lifespan of two months and cost $3 at Target):