Halfway through this first month of the new year, & that's obviously the most significant event. It may in fact prove difficult to soon eclipse.
Meanwhile I finally attended one of the band's annual parties; its location in this instance was too close to turn it down, even though I'd been invited to another, simultaneous party, involving my family's business, for the first time in the last few years. To quote myself--the original text altered here because too many brackets seem to mess up Blogger/HTML:
We were supposed to bring food based on available Scottish recipes; I noticed one for herring & potatoes &, with a little help...& inspiration from my days with my late Finnish friend, who'd introduced me to pickled herring with potatoes, made a cheap imitation...The party included an official meeting, during which I & two others were awarded certificates for completing level-1 piping.
Asking the PM later, I learned this merely meant I'd been cleared to play the real pipes.
OK--on to "real" history. The Huygens probe has landed on Titan. Though its mission ran only a few hours, & some doofus failed to flip a switch, compromising a second data channel, I consider this the greatest day in Solar System exploration since Voyager 2 left Neptune behind. This is not to minimize the Jovian contributions of Cassini's durable predecessor Galileo, nor the balance of Cassini's own Saturnian mission, which is to last at least a few years. Nor do I wish to overlook the two rovers currently operating on Mars--as orbiters investigate that world from above. These twin rovers, in fact, still rolling around the Red Planet after a year now, are champions in their own right. I happen to be more interested in the outer Solar System, truth be told, & Titan's been described as the last unknown real estate, its exotic atmosphere hiding a no-doubt fascinating surface. Already Europe's lander appears to have spotted liquid-carved channels, though the presence & nature of any liquid there remains uncertain.
FWIW, when I was in high school, some 30 years ago, I came up with a sort of comic-book/cartoon series featuring a character, based on myself, who served as governor ("Satrap") of Saturn under a science-fiction-style interstellar empire. Naturally his HQ was on Titan. In those days I had little better than a Chesley Bonestell painting to go by when depicting this moon; we didn't yet know it was blanketed in smog!