The Two Cuckoos: Osama bin Laden and Walter Cronkite.

It's still October but feels like August and we're Christmas shopping. Ellie and I hit every department store in First Colony Mall today. We were looking for a dress coat for our granddaughter in Chicago. Finding a dress coat in Houston for a 5 year old that will stand up to Chicago weather turned out to be quite a job. We finally bought the first one we had found at a small specialty store.

Then it was off to Toys R Us. The search for a special Elmo doll was fruitless but we did manage to spend well over $100 on other stuff. And this is only the beginning.

Two Tribune newspapers are in trouble. The Houston Chronicle and Dallas Morning News are also laying off people. I keep wondering when newspapers are going to wake up and realize they are in deep do-do.

Last night's lunar eclipse was quite spectacular. Unfortunately because of my eye surgery, lifting anything much heavier than a pair of binoculars was out of the question. So, I took the 11x80s and my tripod out in the front yard where I had a good view as the moon came over the trees.

Start of the eclipse was supposed to be 8:14 p.m. local but it looked early to me. By 8:11, there was a slight darkening on the southwest corner of the limb. Of course, there is a large crater (Schickard) in that area that could have darkened things a little but by 8:14, there was a very noticeable bite taken out of that corner.

The rest of the eclipse went pretty much as forecast. At first it looked like the eclipse would be darker than normal but as it progressed, some surface features were still visible naked eye. By totality, the color was kind of light orange--according to others that is since I'm pretty much color blind in that part of the spectrum. But even I could see the orange shade as totality went on.

A few of our neighbors drifted by to take a look through the big binoculars throughout the evening. I was hoping to stay out until totality ended but by 9:45 my eye was hurting so I decided to call it quits.

My eye surgery was successful. I'm still a little near sighted in that eye but it's OK and can be corrected. It's totally amazing that surgeons are skilled enough to, within about a fifteen minute period, open a person's eyeball, scoop out a bunch of goop, close it back using only one suture, and send them home. We left our house at 8:00 a.m. and were back in the driveway by 11:15. I rested most of Tuesday and was back in the doctor's office yesterday for removal of the eye patch. Within minutes, my vision checked at 20/25 even though things looked pretty dim because my pupil was (and still is) closed down. Hopefully things will get even better over time but if it only stays as is, I will be happy.

Tomorrow I will go into Kelsey-Seybold clinic for my 4th eye surgery. This time it's to correct what the original surgeon screwed up. Not only did he break the lens capsule, but two weeks later the retina in my right eye detached. I had a very unpleasant surgery and recovery period as a result. Another result was vitreous humor leaking from inside my eyeball into the lens capsule. This gel causes my vision to appear as though I'm looking through a veil. I can move it around by flicking my eye back and forth but people tend to give me a wide berth after I do that a few times. My present ophalmologist believes the gel can be removed, thus tomorrow's surgery. I'm praying that will be the case.

I spent most of yesterday volunteering at the George Observatory during the annual Astronomy day. Weather pretty much did us in for observing much of anything. We had clouds off and on most of the afternoon but it did clear sporadically during the evening. Lots of people turned out, though, so it wasn't a complete bust.

My duty was to handle parking for volunteers and the public. Pretty simple this year because of low turn out. Volunteers stopped coming by 6:00 pm and the public lot was actually getting emptier by 7:00. So I let all my helpers quit and we spent the rest of the evening walking around the deck.