There were three wrong things today.

The first wrong thing is that HaloScan appears to have lost my comments for the month of September. This is the third time something like this has happened, and I think I've finally had it. If anybody can recommend a reliable host for my comments then PLEASE let me know. HaloScan says "we're working on it," so hopefully the comments will be back soon, but the last time they said that I never saw those comments again. Sorry if anybody lost a good discussion...I know I did.

The second wrong thing was lunch. I spent today working in the imaging center at the university, which is a suite of rooms housing the confocal and electron microscopes, several lesser 'scopes, and a host of expensive computers capable of processing imaging data. You are not allowed to eat in the imaging center. Being the good little nerd that I am, I went down to my office for my lunch break, but when I returned I was met with what I can only describe as an astoundingly yucky smell. Think of a bag of dead turtles marinating in sardine oil and gasoline. Yeah. Not a very microscope-y smell.

I went in search of the source of the smell, and found a fellow of indeterminate age and ethnicity eating something out of a tupperware container. I was about to gently tell him to quit chowing in the imaging center, when I noticed that the material in the tupperware was moving.

I am not a brave person. I left him to his meal.

And finally, the third wrong thing today was that I actually saw somebody walking down the street with a boombox on their shoulder. It was a new boombox, one of those bubble-like Japanese dealies that probably transforms into a solar-powered scooter or something, but this crazy mofo was bopping along with it perched next to his ear just like he had stepped straight out of 1985. I crossed to the other side of the street.

Any astrologers out there want to explain which planets aligned to make today so very wrong?