What Do You Give a Rocket Scientist for His Birthday?

He wants the world, and I'd like to give it to him.

Last year he asked for a globe and I gave him something so forgettable I can't remember what it was.

Look, I like globes. I like orreries too. But here in our own private little solar system, the problem is space, and it's not infinite. It's all been conquered and the final frontier is full up. There is not a single cubic foot available to put a globe. Not even a moon. Not even an asteroid.

Ok, that's not exactly true. There is space to suspend a globe from the ceiling. I've been looking for a pulley system that would move the earth with some up and down action. Use the spider plant as a counter-balance and pretend it's a comet or an alien ship. Alas, my online search turned up no such globe-and-pulley product. (I did find a cool levitating Uranus for $299, but decided that might not send the right birthday message.)

Ideally we need a holographic globe. Again my searches yielded bupkis, but perhaps one will be available by the time this year's gift gets knocked over and broken after being repeatedly blasted with plastic BBs by six-foot-tall creatures with the minds of 12-year-old boys who like to reenact 'Star Wars.'

Alternatively, I'm thinking about getting him a set of new dishes. Seriously. I just bought a new Corning Corelle serving plate on clearance, and the Rocket Scientist thinks it's the coolest thing since the SpaceX Dragon launch.

Look, he really likes these dishes. Made in the USA, they are break- and chip-resistant plus are safe in the dishwasher, oven, and microwave. They are made with a patented process blah blah blah. They are square.

It occurred to me that having this new set of dishes may inspire the Rocket Scientist to cook, set the table, load, and unload the dishwasher more frequently instead of wasting time looking for the capital of Mauritania on a 12-inch-diameter sphere.
 
It's also true that the new Corelle ware will stack better and take up less space in the kitchen cabinet than our current crockery, but I doubt we gain enough room to fit a globe. Also, storing it in the kitchen sounds like a recipe for global warming ....

I truly can't bear to disappoint Rocket Scientist two years in a row. So I guess I should move some piles of junk out of the study to make room for a globe. At least it would give the space some atmosphere. Some of this junk hasn't been touched in eons, so I doubt anyone would miss a few piles that get sucked into the black hole known as the basement.

So I'm signing off to do more globe shopping. That has a nice sound to it even though it's not as much fun as globe-hopping, globe-trotting, and dishware shopping. At least it sounds better than black-hole sucking, and is easier to spell than 'orreries.'

Or maybe I should buy him the globe and the dishes. That way I can give him the world on a platter ....

Pass it along and remember, It's all (c)opyrighted(c)2012(c)(c)