(no subject)

I heard this pointed out on liberal talk radio last night, from a Sunday Times on the army's shift from invasion to peacekeeping and reconstruction:

The mission remains as important as the battles that preceded it, for if some order is not brought to Iraq and the economy restored to a functioning state, the war these men fought so hard to win may seem to have been in vain.

Colonel Grimsley puts it in a larger, political context, understanding the importance of success in Iraq for President Bush and his re-election campaign next year.

"They have invested everything in this," he said.

For the soldiers, this is little solace.

No kidding.

nature walk addendum

From a web page I found while looking for something else:

Shoreline at Mountain View Park is a beautiful 700-acre park with a saltwater lake, golf course, rolling grassy hills, and bay trails. It's hard to believe it's built on mountains of trash. For 13 years, starting in 1968, 500 acres of the land near the bay was used here as a landfill for trash from the city of San Francisco. In 1983, Mountain View closed the dump and began turning it into a park. There are still active landfills just to the north in Palo Alto and to the south in Sunnyvale, but they will be turned into parks also someday.

Shoreline is the park I cut across toward the end of my Stevens Creek Trail walk, and also where we shot the press kit photos on Sunday.

congratulate me

I've officially joined the ranks of the (slightly) visually impaired!

Then I drove back to work wearing a roll-up sheet of tinted plastic to protect my dilated pupils from the devilish sun, and the splint I just bought to prevent my possibly arthritic finger from getting any worse... except when I'm working, writing, or making music.

It hasn't been a great week. I'll probably feel good about finally having dealt with my gradually blurring vision, though, once I get done feeling bad about not having dealt with it years ago.

On the way to my appointment--back when I could see--I saw a small truck with the vanity plate "RY CLEV", superimposed on a white board that said "VE" on one side and "ER" on the other. And it was!

life floats by

Working on the press kit last night made me late for the Cinematic Orchestra show, which makes me an idiot. It's nice for once to be a hard-working and dedicated idiot, though.

( I still got to see a good hour, though. )