It seems the very air I'm breathing

For Sunday we had plans to meet my sister and her husband. This would be another chance for bunny_hugger to meet more of my immediate family, and also a rare chance for me to see my sister, who's remarkably elusive. My parents think they saw more of me, when I was living in Singapore, then they did of my sister, who was living about an hour away.

( We spent the day with my sister, her husband, and many kinds of sea life, including elaborate mixed feelings about sharks. We spent the evening with Doctor Who, old model. )

In addition we tracked down, online, a Companion of the Doctor who'd appeared only in comic strip form, an alien shapeshifter with a preference for taking on the form of a penguin after a failed romance. This pleased us as well as it could be for our final night together this trip.

Trivia: Sir Stamford Fleming's paper on ``Terrestrial Time'' attempted to avoid the politically sensitive question of where to set a prime meridian by instead setting a worldwide clock for the center of the Earth, with 24 time zones given Roman numerals on a special dial on the outside of clock faces, and an inner dial of 24 letters --- omitting J and Z --- to represent the hours, so that a particular time might be, as example, ``M.22''. Source: Time Lord: Sir Stamford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time. Clark Blaise. (And no, I'm not clear on how this avoids the prime meridian issue --- or the International Date Line issue --- either. My sense is Fleming kind of hoped it would be confused out of existence.)

Currently Reading: When Computers Were Human, David Alan Grier.