personal

Today was an interesting day. We had another one of our “brown bag lunches” at the office, this one a talk (and tasting) about the wares at a local cheese shop. It was actually really quite interesting. Did you know, for instance, that cheese made from cow’s milk is usually yellow because of the beta carotene — which goats, on the other had, digest, making cheese made from their milk white. We each had a plate of five cheeses, which we went through one by one. I think the Cabot clothbound cheddar was everybody’s favorite, although I think more than a little of it would be almost too sweet. It was almost toffee-flavored or candied as is, but still, delicious.

All together, it was one of our more successful brown bag lunches — lunch itself was salad, which itself was different — and I left with some great tastes, a little bit of knowledge, and a 15%-off coupon. (Of course, that cheddar alone is priced at $22.99 a pound, so I’d probably need the coupon if I decide to shop there.)

It was all I could do not to ask about Venezuelan Beaver Cheese.

Of course, the whole day had a kind of weird pall over it. I’m not sure I can express just how saddened I was by the news that Ray Bradbury had passed away. Or just how much the man’s stories and novels meant to me. So maybe I’ll just leave you with this lovely quote from the man himself:

The thing I dream is this: That some night, a hundred nights, a hundred years from now, there will be a boy on Mars reading late at night with a flashlight under the covers. And he’ll look out on the Martian landscape, which will be bleak and rocky and red and not very romantic. But when he turns out the light and lies with a copy of my book, I hope, The Martian Chronicles, the Martian winds outside will stir, and the ghosts that are in my book will rouse up, and my creatures—even though they never lived—will be on Mars. And that’s the dream I have.

If there was ever a better argument for going to Mars, I haven’t heard it. He will be greatly missed.