Is it my imagination, or have I finally found something worth living for?

Got a group of people together yesterday and drove to Detroit to go to the Tigers' game.  I'm not a huge baseball fan, but I had a blast.  It was a really exciting game, and the Tigers came from behind to score 6 runs in the 8th inning and win the game.  It was crazy.

Watched something on 20/20 about the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and I am awed and inspired.  I would LOVE to go to Rome and see it for myself, as it seems absolutely amazing.

I haven't really been paying attention to Michigan's basketball team much this season, but I did see that they lost to Harvard yesterday.  Harvard?  Yikes!  Of all the things Harvard is known for, I don't think its basketball team is among them.  To add insult to injury, Harvard is now coached by former Michigan coach Tommy Amaker.  It sounds like it's not going to be a very great season.

Busy day today.  Going to the football game right now, and then when the game is over I'm going over to the hockey game. 

The weekend has gone by much too quickly. Friday night Lindsey and I went out to eat at Zanzibar, then went back to my place to watch some movies.  Saturday consisted of a couple art exhibits during the day, and then going to Score Keepers to watch the Michigan game.  That was certainly a good time, and nothing I've ever done before.  Good thing Michigan won!  People went crazy.

I slept in this morning and had a nice, leisurely breakfast.  Now I think I might head over to the book store for awhile and just relax.

According to new research, the time of year a woman conceives may influence the future academic performance of her child.

When researchers linked standardized test scores of 1,667,391 Indiana students in grades 3 through 10 with the month in which each student had been conceived, they found that children conceived May through August scored significantly lower on math and language tests than children conceived during other months of the year.

The correlation between test scores and conception season held regardless of race, gender, and grade level.

Read all about it by clicking here.

This makes no sense to me, and is in fact quite sad.  Cities are cracking down on charities that feed the homeless, adopting rules that restrict food giveaways to certain locations, require charities to get permits or limit the number of free meals they can provide.

I would love to know what the reasoning behind this is, because I can't think of one.

Lindsey and I went to the Michigan basketball game yesterday.  They lost to Ohio State, but it was a much closer game than I ever thought it would be.  That was good.  People were crazy since we were playing Ohio State, so it was an especially fun atmosphere.

Home-buyers of tomorrow could find themselves walking across floors made from manure. Researchers at Michigan State University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture insist its no cow pie in the sky dream. They say that fiber from processed and sterilized cow manure could take the place of sawdust in making fiberboard, which is used to make everything from furniture to flooring to store shelves. And the resulting product smells just fine.

The researchers hope it could be part of the solution to the nation's 1.5-trillion- to 2-trillion pound annual farm waste disposal problem.

This is not something I really wanted to know about.  If you have to use manure to make things, fine, but don't tell me about it.  I don't want to think of items in my house being built with manure.

You can read the whole article at Yahoo here.

Want to do something romantic on Valentine's Day?  At participating locations from 5-8 pm on Valentine's Day, you get hostess seating, candlelit dining and your own server. Reservations are required, because evidently this is quite a big deal. 

Lindsey and I are going out for pizza, then we're going to go see Freedom Writers.  This looks like a really good movie, and I've been wanting to see it for a couple weeks now.

Hillary Swank is in it, so you know it's good.  What I didn't know, though, is that Patrick Dempsey is also in the movie.  Hmmm.

ROME (AFP) - An expert on the "Mona Lisa" says he has ascertained with certainty that the symbol of feminine mystique died on July 15, 1542, and was buried at the convent in central Florence where she spent her final days.

Giuseppe Pallanti found a death notice in the archives of a church in Florence that referred to "the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, deceased July 15, 1542, and buried at Sant'Orsola," the Italian press reported Friday.

Born Lisa Gherardini in May 1479, she is thought to have been the second wife of Del Giocondo, a wealthy silk merchant, with whom she had five children.

While intrigue has surrounded the identity of the woman in the famous unsigned, undated Leonardo da Vinci painting housed at the Louvre in Paris, Lisa Gherardini is widely accepted to have been the subject.

Sant'Orsola, where she died at age 63, now disused and in ruins, is near the San Lorenzo basilica.

"It was in this convent that Mona Lisa placed her youngest daughter Marietta, who later became a nun. And it was there that Lisa, as stipulated in the will of her husband who died four years before her, ended her life," Pallanti told the daily La Repubblica on Friday.

Pallanti, author of "Mona Lisa Revealed: The True Identity of Leonardo's Model," has spent nearly three decades combing Florence's archives.

Another researcher, Da Vinci expert Carlo Pedretti, praised Pallanti for the discovery and urged a search at the site for Lisa Gherardini's remains.

"Thanks to modern techniques, scientists can determine her physical aspect, maybe even her face and thereby make an important contribution" to establishing her identity, he told the ANSA news agency.

In a ruling sure to make philandering spouses squirm, Michigan's second-highest court says that anyone involved in an extramarital fling can be prosecuted for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in prison.

Well, I know I'd definitely think twice!

One of France's last World War I veterans, Rene Riffaud, has died at age 108, leaving just three known French survivors of the 1914-18 conflict.

 

Of the three surviving World War I veterans, the oldest — Louis de Cazenave — is 109, according to the veterans' office.