Who invented the umbrella?

Question of the day: Who the heck came up with the idea of the umbrella?? It dawned on me as I was walking through downtown this afternoon to find some lunch that I looked like an idiot carrying this peice of parachute material hooked to a bunch of metal..on a stick!! So, who would have come up with such an odd contraption? Anyone have any idea?

Exciting news today: I booked Olivia's plane ticket to New York for MacWorld. After doing some consulting with higher management people, the Agency has decided that they don't want to know about Olivia going to New York with me. You see, before, they were going to try to work out a deal with our travel department and get me a great rate on her airfare, but it turns out that I had to book her flight totally seperately..and it cost me an extra $30 or so. So, we're all set. We'll both be heading to New yawk on July 16th and returning on the 22nd, two whole days after the conference actually ends. That will give us some good time to see the sights and get mugged once or twice. Pretty exciting.

We went to the mall this evening and picked up some Father's Day items for Olivia's dad and then went to Ukrops to get our tickets for Busch Gardens tomorrow. And now, we're sitting here watching Cast Away. They actually released the DVD as a two-DVD set. The first has the movie and a few extras, and the second disc has a bunch of extra featurettes and specials about how they made the movie, etc. Very cool stuff. If you haven't seen this movie, you gotta. It's pretty cool. Thanks to Olivia for surprising me with it tonight. :)

So, tomorrow, we're off to Busch Gardens with some high school friends of Olivia's. That should be pretty fun. i can't wait to ride Apollo's Chariot again. That ride rules. As does The Big Bad Wolf isn't too shabby, either. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. The weather forecast is calling for scattered showers, so let's hope it doesn't ruin our day.