Still trying to catch up on my American Idol watching, so here are my thoughts on last night’s performances by the guys.

I actually had something resembling a life last night, so The Wife and I didn’t get around to watching the eight remaining women perform on American Idol until this evening. Given that we cut down to the Final Twelve this week, the pressure was definitely on.

The gals were on stage last night, after this week’s schedule shift due to an illness by Crystal Bowersox. Crystal, who is rumored to have diabetes, looked fine and led off the show.

The ladies were scheduled to perform Tuesday night, but a trip to the hospital by Crystal Bowersox shuffled things up. Instead, the guys went on last night, and they showed marked improvement from last week.

Tonight the twelve men of the Top 24 performed on American Idol. There are definitely some good voices in the group, and some likable personalities, but I’m not sure there’s anyone with real star quality.

I hoped to be proven wrong this evening.

Since Hollywood Week, all the American Idol hype has been about how great the talent of the women has been this year. Tonight, they get to prove whether that praise is warranted or not.

Every time there’s the slightest amount of snow in Central Texas, the entire city of Austin shuts down. Usually, this is an overreaction.

Today was different. When I got up this morning, it was already sleeting. A couple of hours later, it turned to snow, and it’s been snowing on and off since then. In nearly four decades in Austin, I’m not sure I can remember when we’ve gotten so much snow.

During last weekend’s game between the Minnesota Vikings and the New Orleans Saints, the Wife observed on the striking resemblance between Brad Childress, the Minnesota head coach, and Les Grossman, Tom Cruise’s character from Tropic Thunder.

I had to agree.

My efforts at astrophotography have been rough lately. The best convergences of the last few months have been cloud obscured. This included Friday night, when the full moon was only a few degrees away from Mars, which was at opposition to the Earth.

Note: Opposition is when the Earth and a planet are in line with the sun, marking their closest approach in a particular orbit of the sun. Due to the elliptical nature of the planets’ orbits, not all oppositions are the same distance. On Friday, the Earth and Mars were 62 million miles from each other. The closest they can come is 35 million miles, which occurred a few years back.

Going into the BCS championship game between the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Texas Longhorns, if you had told me that with four minutes left in the game, we would be down by three points and have the ball, I would have said I liked our chances. If you had told me that we would get there with our true freshman quarterback, I would have told you that you were nuts.

After a very ugly first half, most of America thought the Longhorns would be blown off the field in the second half. I’ll admit that I was worried it was going to get ugly.

Instead, the Longhorns dug deep and were playing for the win late in the game. And while the final score differential as seventeen (thanks for showing your ass, Coach Saban), Texas proved their strength of heart and depth of talent on that field.