Weather: Regular snow, morning fogs, the official drought may be declared over soon.

Wildlife: There's nothing left but a few feathers of the goose that died on the Lake. Two eagles haunted the carcass, and the neighborhood dogs did the rest. The regular gang is visiting our feeders -- flickers, magpies, chickadees, finches, and a huge flock of doves. Our cat Merry Gold is killing some of the latter birds -- there's more than usual this year, and they're swarming around the neighbor's feeder too.

Charity Alert: The Animal Rescue Site : Feed an Animal in Need

Media Watch:
NFL Football has been fun. The physically-damaged Green Bay and Philadelphia squads finally lost to younger, healthier teams. The Super Bowl ought to be a slugfest between New England and Carolina this Sunday.

I wasn't feeling very good last night, so I just sat and watched all of the chapters of "Barbarians" on the History Channel. The sameness of the production got boring, but I was more annoyed with the shallowness of the stories they told.
I know it's rare when stories of the Goths and Huns are told at all on TV -- but leaving out characters like Stilicho and Genseric makes history sound like "The barbarians came. saw, and looted," without any variety or color.

FYI -- After it's general Stilicho was executed around 408 AD, the Western Empire had no standing army. Flavius Aetius, the last Roman military leader of any consequence, was still a youth, and was likely living as a diplomatic hostage with the Huns. The Visigoth king had no effective opposition to his gang of raiders when he marched on Rome. How the sack of Rome in 410 AD came to pass is a very human story that could have/should have been told at least as well as they told their stories about Attila the Hun.
In 455, two years after Attila's death, Geiseric led the Vandals into Rome, devastated the place, and installed a puppet government which substituted as a sad shadow of the Western Empire for one more generation.
His nation's march around the Western Mediterranian, and their decades-long domination of the region did more to degrade agriculture and commerce, and initiate the "Dark Ages," than any other phenomenon.
Pope Leo's diplomacy with Attila, which might be a legend anyway, has very little relevance when compared to the effects of Geiseric's conquests. If the legend is true, the Vandals just had more to loot when they attacked Rome, but they were coming anyway, no matter what the Pope did!

No, I didn't watch the state of the union address -- i didn't tune in to the Sci-Fi nework at all!

My wife and I have been indulging ourselves in Indian movies for some good times (more later).