OmegaGranny has posted "Some Assembly Required", with lots of pics.  Be gentle--I look like a fashion disaster, but, boy, I sure was comfy!

PZ Myers loved his father.  A poignant post, with many comments filled with equally loving memories of parents or grandparents.  (Plus a disemvoweled troll or two, but that's par for the course.)

Twice the Rice notes that Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, an adoptee and a possible candidate for president, has suddenly been presented with information on where he was born.  Many adult adoptees are adamant that searching for birthparents is something that should be left to them, and them alone--but in this case, I'm sure some "helpful" member of the media will be haring off after that clue and doing the search for him.

When I peruse the "science fiction" section at our local bookstores (chain stores, all, alas), the majority of the books are fantasy or books related to TV or movie series.  OmegaGranny has a knack, however, for finding new SF.  When done with her books, she forwards them to me.  Right now, I am deep in Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "Retrieval Artist" series, SF police procedurals with a twist.  In this world, humans and aliens live together in a delicate dance guaranteed by a variety of treaties that allow aliens to charge, convict, and punish humans for crimes that seem--to humans--to be incredibly arcane or ridiculous.  Miles Flint, a former police officer, has become a Retrieval Artist--someone who finds people who "disappeared" to avoid punishment for one of these alien-mandated "crimes".  He doesn't find them to drag them to execution--that's the job of "Trackers"; he finds them at the behest of friends or relatives.  Great fun and interesting stories.

RIP, Gerald Ford.  The Watergate scandal was my first foray into real political awareness; I can still remember my dad watching the Watergate Hearings obsessively.  I can also remember Chevy Chase playing the bumbling, tumbling President Ford as a caricature.  Jerry Ford put a close to the Watergate mess by pardoning Nixon, and lost any chance at re-election as a result.